To start the year, though, Erin got pregnant. We don’t know exactly when, but there is some debate as to the early part of January. The outcome is that she spent almost ten months pregnant and most of that not feeling well on top of starting a master’s degree at Westminster College in Salt Lake City (a degree she decided she did not like and that the professors were not challenging enough). The combination of the pregnancy and work and school was a little more than she wanted to handle, especially since coming on summer we ended up asking her mom to come out and help take care of her. Which she did. She had a couple of plane tickets home and ended up staying until CAMPER was born, which was a great blessing. Her mantra and focus was to make sure I had the time to focus on completing my degree and about two weeks after CAMPER was born and after Erin’s dad flew out to spend some time with his new (and only) grandchild, Lisa went home and Erin and I got to figure out how to be parent’s on our own.

Preceding our knowing Erin was pregnant was Erin being called in to work one day to have her [insert nasty colorful metaphor here] of a boss call her into the office on a Saturday and fire her for reasons that, a year later, still feel and sound like they were piles of dog-doo left out too long in the sun and just ripe enough to make your noise crinkle and your eyes water. On the one hand I was glad Erin was out of the environment and honestly needed her to move on but she wasn’t ready to and the two dip-sticks she worked for ended up causing a lot of problems and I am sure they feel completely justified to do what they did to Erin and one of her co-workers. Honestly, I hope they burn in hell. This caused me to have to work longer for the company I’d started working for the previous summer (until February) as Erin looked for a job. She got a new one in the accounting department of a web-hosting and design company and really enjoyed the camaraderie that went along with the experience. She quit that in September after hiring and training a replacement and then (definitely) after having CAMPER. After Erin got her new job and I was hired to help work on the School of Education’s website at BYU, I quit the other job and focused more of my attention on school.

I did end up having to take a few classes that matched BYU’s Languages of Learning credit (essentially higher math classes) and ended up doing Logic, both Deductive Logic and Predicate Logic, over the four months between the end of Winter Semester (other places refer to this as Spring) and Fall Semester. That was interesting and required a lot of dedicated time to the gods of studying and logic and frustration. But, in the end, I passed and moved on.

As stated, Erin was pregnant and there was an entire week where things got bad and I (pretty much) had to pull myself out of school and work for a week so I could take care of her. After Lisa came out, Erin didn’t drive herself anywhere until after Lisa went home. Of course, passing out in the grocery store affects what people allow pregnant women to do. In this case, driving was out.

Since this year marks (at least for me) the longest year of school EVER I am happy to note that I am now done. Sure, I’ve said it, but I finally got to gaze at my grades and I actually did make it. There is a surreal feeling about being done and thinking that something special should mark the end. The fact is, I am done and the day switched to night that switched to day and other than acting like a complete retard around my little (Hattaway) family. On top of which, the day after I finished my classes Erin and CAMPER and I were in a truck, accompanied by Erin’s brother and Auntie (thanks Auntie) and driving due south and east and then east first on US 6 and then I-70 toward Massachusetts. We spent the better part of four days in a car and moving van driving, took a day off, and then spent a day unloading the truck before it was taken back in light of the Christmas holiday. We turned it in two hours after the Penske place was closed and still had someone move it out of the way for us.

We also set up the office (I am thinking of taking a series of pictures or maybe running film on the lair or loft space or whatever we are calling it and posting it under the title, “Where I Do What I Do.” If I do and you come back to the site I am sure you will see whatever it is I do. Of course, with everything set up I need to plug in and launch my external harddrive to make sure it is working. I am also thinking of replacing my other external hard drives hard drive because it died in the house fire and that was very sad for me. On top of which, I probably ought to have at least one external harddrive doing Time Machine to make sure my stuff is being backed up.

I think, if I take the time, I will look and see how many posts I did over 2008 and maybe do a review of what I wrote about and the elections. Anyway, my year, in recap, has been filled with school, Erin, pregnancy and CAMPER, and moving to Massachusetts. It’s been a good year and I hope to write the chronicles of the drive from Utah to Massachusetts.

Real Heroes Fly ]]> http://www.johnhattaway.com/2008/12/2008-in-review/feed/ 0 http://www.johnhattaway.com/2008/12/after-christmas-and-into-the-new-year/ http://www.johnhattaway.com/2008/12/after-christmas-and-into-the-new-year/#comments Sat, 27 Dec 2008 19:52:18 +0000 smokingpen http://www.johnhattaway.com/?p=1609 I note that it has been a while since I’ve posted. Honestly, I know exactly why and where the time has gone. More, I realize that I am trying to figure myself out on this side of the country (for those that didn’t know, Erin, CAMPER and I moved from Utah to Massachusetts… if you need the new address you should probably email me) and figure out work, life, living situations and etc. We are currently staying with Erin’s padres. That is nice. Especially since they set aside the upstairs for our little family giving CAMPER his own room and Erin and me a room to sleep in and a room to work in (that is two separate rooms). As for the drive across the country… well… I will have to consider what I want to say about that. I am sure if you go to Erin’s website you can check out her comments on the trip.

That’s it for now. More later. Maybe.

Oh, and I think I found a couple of templates I may play with look wise, so… the site will probably change around a bit.

Real Heroes Fly ]]> http://www.johnhattaway.com/2008/12/after-christmas-and-into-the-new-year/feed/ 0 http://www.johnhattaway.com/2005/12/figting-ambiguity/ http://www.johnhattaway.com/2005/12/figting-ambiguity/#comments Fri, 02 Dec 2005 21:57:06 +0000 smokingpen http://www.johnhattaway.com/?p=214 I made a coworker mad today. And when I say mad, I mean, had she the opportunity and proper motivation I am pretty certain she would’ve reached over and slapped me even though she was the one pushing what was going on. All I did was look at her, listen (can’t say I heard a whole lot), and then agree – emphatically – with the very point she was trying to make. Once again, it appears that my nature has won out over any semblance of propriety that was bred into me. This certainly isn’t because my parents raised me to act the way I do… or did they?

The issue dealt with my confidence in what I do. What does that mean? You may be asking. Well, let me tell you. When I know something you know I know it if it is important to the task at hand. This does not mean I go out of my way to share everything I know with people. My favorite thing to tell people is that I know nothing, have no talents, and no skills whatsoever. It makes some people mad. Causes others to role their eyes. And causes me to get a pretty good chuckle out of the interaction.

However, today, which reminded me of Donald Sutherlands character in Kelly’s Heroes – Oddball, I was informed that there was a lot of negative energy that seemed to flow whenever I started messing around with the people in my training group who, coincidentally, sit around me. In short, when inside jokes start to fly the chick from over the ocean and past the equator does’t like it and feels the negative waves, man.

At the same time, I am not saying I am right in my actions, but to hear her lecture me as though I were a little boy didn’t really sit well with me (she’s married). Especially as she sat there and prefaced a lot of her comments with, “I come from a place where we are all very sarcastic…” and then proceeded to lay into me about some of my attitudes.

Like I said, I listened and then I said, “I guess I won’t be interacting with you anymore,” and before she could proceed to tear my an even bigger one I turned around, grabbed my chair and sat down.

You know, there are just some people out there you’re not going to get along with. I knew, from the get go, that this was one of them. There are actually others at work with whom I have trouble relating. We don’t really get along and that is a problem in the sense that Fidelity encourages teams and team activities. If I were in New Hampshire I would say, “Great, well, let’s try to get along,” but I’m not and the resultant outcome is that I don’t really worry about those things. This division and this group doesn’t have team activities, we are not assigned to assist each other in special projects, and in the end, many people either feel very transient about working with Fidelity or are trying very hard to do what they need in order to succeed and get hired on as a full-time employee. To work hard so you can achieve a specific goal is admirable. Fidelity is an excellent place to work and I’ve enjoyed most of my experience with the company. And yet, there’s these people here who don’t see you unless you wear a specific color on your badge and those people, in Utah, give the whole organization a pretty bad name.

There’s more to it than that. I am going to school come January and will not be working for this company past that point. I don’t think this is a bad thing. I’m taking charge of my life, getting that elusive degree, working hard, and finding the right kinds of successes where I can have a career, where I am not in debt, and where I can check off at least one item on my father’s laundry list of things I am not doing or have not done. Fidelity is a good home and were my goals to also include school this would be a wonderful place to work and an excellent employer to begin a career.

Not gonna happen. Not this year. Not in this division.

I guess part of the frustration comes in the form of schedules and how they choose to treat employees. What surprises me is that people in this division don’t last long – regardless of employment status. Someone who lasts five years deserves not just the Fidelity pyramid and plaque but an award party. The reason is that Console, the ambiguous entity it is, does whatever it wants when scheduling people. Two days ago I was handed my new schedule. I start at 9:30 a.m. and get done at 6:00 p.m. This is not a prime schedule, for me, but hey, I can sleep a little longer. Much of my problem is lack of sleep. Then you sit and wait to see this new schedule come across the schedule viewer and the outcome is that Console (remember ambiguous entity) schedules you for whatever they want. No warning. No announcement of mandatory or voluntary overtime. They just put you down for a number of hours and expect that you, the employee, will kowtow and come in.

Sure, sure, you get paid to work overtime and if an emergency comes up (note the word emergency) you can mostly get out of it; but that doesn’t change the fact that as an employee you are supposed to revere Console and what they do. When people talk about Console they use ambiguous language like, “You don’t want to make Console mad,” or, “Console won’t like that,” and the outcome is, because they can blame everything on ambiguity, you begin to believe that outside of scheduling and tracking schedule adherence, this “Console” creature has some mystical power that can alter your fate or future.

Computers and ambiguous entities have brought about the death of civilization. Okay, not really. Civilization isn’t going to end because you can e-mail your resume to 100,000 people at the click of a finger, a large number and possibly unrealistic in practice, but true. The problem is that people take technology and then create the ambiguous as a way of enforcing schedules and enforcing overtime and enforcing what is unpopular because you cannot directly point at someone and say, “He (or she) is responsible.” We’ve lost the ability, in a lot of areas, to find accountability.

Yes, there are people that man “Console” but they are merely extensions of Ambiguity. They are the ones who help perpetuate the Console myth. You can’t fight console. You shouldn’t upset console. And when you do, whatever console is, then everyone is afraid that bad things will happen.

I’m just frustrated. It happens. This is all coming to an end. I can go without sleep for a few more weeks and given that I am seeing a pretty hefty cost for my textbooks in January I can use the money. However, it means I have to deal with coworkers and ambiguity for a few more weeks and that is hard.

Fortunately I have an interview at BYU on Monday. Good things are bound to happen.

Granted, I purchased Band of Brothers through Amazon.com after Half.com took almost four months to refund the purchase price when the seller didn’t send me what I paid for. I’m still waiting to hear whether or not I received my copy of “Dancing in Red Shoes will Kill You,” that is supposed to go to my parents house, but when I was down there last, it hadn’t arrived yet. Not a serious priority, I read the book several months ago and ordered a copy for myself to have on my bookshelf (when I finally breakdown and purchase one).

I did go to Prince Perelson today and update them on my work history, which reminds me I need to go and update my resume, fix it, make it more inline with that my contact at that company wants.

Number two is still in the hospital. I went and saw her and her clones were running around. After living with that family none of the kids said anything to me. They all just looked at me as though I were some form of interlocutor. When they left I talked to number two but she kept growing distant and the drugs (and nurses) kept getting in the way.

What I did notice, today, was an accident on Parleys that blocked all of the lanes of traffic except one. It took me a very long time to go about a ¼ mile. In other places in the country, this is a hint to the men and women on the Salt Lake Police force; they move the damaged vehicles off the road. Here, as I recall, they don’t. That seems important to me (other than the really bad drivers about this place).

The first thing that comes to mind is that I was called to be the second councilor in the Elder’s Quorum presidency. Andy, I live with Andy and Debbie, is the President and a gentleman neither of us knows is the first councilor. He told me, when the call was extended to me and I called him on the floor for playing out that he hadn’t called me into the Elder’s Quorum, that he felt very serious about having me as the second councilor, the his initial response was not to have me in his presidency at all, but that he felt very strongly about having me as a councilor.

I also discovered that there was a forest behind the house across 30 acres of field that remains mostly fallow and is allowed to grow to seed. This forest has a path that leads through the woods and ends at a quarry that sits like a scar on beautiful skin. The point in this is that I have found a place where I can walk and be alone.

What was really cool about this discovery is that I found that the quarry was dug down to the water table in a spot, and since it was at night, and since I had a flashlight on me, I started looking at the water and discovered something was living in the water. Something moved and raced away from the light, which had me thinking about Gollum from the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. As I kept looking whatever it was raced away from the shore, made some noise, and raced back – always keeping out of the light, which was really very frustrating.

I’ve also been working part-time (which is still four days a week) at the bookstore and requested that they bring me on full-time. Garth spoke to Paul who said there shouldn’t be a problem with that but had to check the house before he could make the decision. If I go full-time it will happen in the next couple of weeks.

Today, they had me working in Music all day long, and on top of that, I did re-shelves for the bulk of the day. What that means is that I took products that was had in other parts of the store, on displays, and got to put it back in place in the racks where it belongs, normally. Cheryl, music supervisor, was there and kept watching over me as I worked, which was a little weird, but she kept bringing up conversation topics that were interesting, but at the same time weird as I believe that she is married.

At lunch, as I was trying to work on some writing, there were four girls sitting in the break room who started peppering me with questions about what I was working on, why I typed so fast, why I thought I could get published, why now – to get published and write something, etc., that it was rather awkward. On top of that, I didn’t get any writing done, and really just sat there staring at a screen and only wrote crap.

It’s November 1st and things are going pretty well. I still like the east coast, New England, and what’s happening. In case someone is curious, I have no intention of moving west anytime in the foreseeable future.

Real Heroes Fly ]]> http://www.johnhattaway.com/2004/11/november-1st-2004/feed/ 0 http://www.johnhattaway.com/2004/10/experiences-and-sleep/ http://www.johnhattaway.com/2004/10/experiences-and-sleep/#comments Thu, 14 Oct 2004 05:39:16 +0000 smokingpen http://www.johnhattaway.com/?p=27 Have you ever just had one of those experiences that, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t get to sleep? Or, if you do get to sleep after an hour you wake up and can’t get back to sleep and so you lay about, or read, or do something else until you are so tired that you sleep, again only to sleep for an hour and start all over again. Yeah, I don’t sleep a lot at night. This is not something that is comfortable to me since I work, I go to school, I have my own projects I am working on and want to move forward with, and in the end I am frustratingly inactive during the vital parts of the day and asleep when I need to be awake – and forcing myself to be awake to try to get sleep regularly isn’t working either.

Now comes the part where people offer advice. And I think that’s great. A co-worker suggested yesterday that I take some pills to help me sleep, and barring that, I use some weird root that will help make my sleeping patterns more normal. That’s great. If not drugs something that will alter my metabolism in such a way that it will allow me to sleep.

There have been other suggestions. People like to offer opinions and I like to listen and then think about and eventually ignore what is going on. What gets me is that before I moved east the advice I was offered was that I needed to concentrate on sleeping during the night and being awake during the day. That seemed like odd advice, at the time, and now seems rather sagacious as I look at how I am reacting to the changes that have taken place. Moreover, the days are different here. I realize that may seem weird of me to say, but they are. I am farther (to distance) north now than I have ever lived in my life and I think that is playing games with my circadian rhythm. I am off now and I don’t know what to do to get it back on track.

I share all of that because I finally got frustrated at several things this evening. For instance, in a period of a week I have finally started beating my sinus infection (a plague of months) and have also gotten a cold. The sniffles, runny nose, that were signs of positive change in me – meaning that my sinuses are finally draining – have turned into a curse of coughs and sore throats and my lymph nodes are also a little swollen. In other words, I have a head cold and I am working backward on a sinus infection, I don’t sleep at night because my circadian rhythm is totally off, and I work way to freaking much… oh and did I mention that I have about four writing projects and a letter (long one) to my mother all in the works on top of school assignments…. Maybe I should just shut-up now.

Anyway, things are good. Books are great. Hundreds of titles pass through my hands daily and I seem to ignore every single one of them. I could not tell you, from one customer to the next, what titles people are buying other than to say that a certain look of a certain book has passed by me multiple times. Beyond that, I don’t see the books. Of course, that is going to change next week when I start to assist customers in finding books and magazines and music; but hopefully my resolve not to spend thousands of dollars on books will be enough to get me through the temptation (now if only I’d remember that on the employee appreciation weekend coming up as we get 40% off books and music for three days and I have a box).

School is also proving to be interesting. I signed up for a World Lit. course next term, financial aid should be progressing as of today, and I also take a philosophy class. All of this so that by January I can transfer to days and overload my schedule with as many credit hours as they will let me take. Oh, and I need to buy a car so when financial aid really does kick in I will be paying for a used car (maybe a Honda) very soon. Which reminds me that one of the girls at work had to replace a tire on her car because it was tracking wrong only to have the right front axle go out on her because the CV (constant velocity) joint had gone bad and then had warn all the way through the axle. I’d asked, when she was talking about the tire, whether or not she had other problems with that wheel and she’d forgotten to mention that one issue. And now I’ve offered to help her save money and change her oil for her (and she’s not even my type).

Church should prove to be interesting. Andy accepted a new calling and now has gone to great pains not to speak to me about the what’s and where-with-alls about it. He met with the High Councilor, Branch President, and possibly the past person with that calling last night (while I was at school) and is very mum about the outcome. I don’t need to know details, but at the same time, I have told him that whatever he needs me to do I am there to do it. Period.

On top of all that I think I am doing pretty snazzy. Apparently in the couple of weeks I’ve been at work I have become the life of the registers. People are trying to keep up with me and to banter like me and I think that is about as funny as it gets. On the other side of that we have a girl (Angel) who was hired and trained about a month before me who is an exceptional employee (and a looker) and who just does what she is supposed to do as a part of her job breaking ground for me. Instead of be the wunderkind that I normally am (because I go to work to work) I am merely another good employee and I am grateful for that.

Finally, mostly because I am tired, I want to do a shout-out to Rebecca (little sis) and say, just because I don’t answer a comment for a few days or weeks doesn’t mean I cannot or do not know what to say. Some comments are best left for when it is appropriate, or more accurately, when the speaker (me) is prepared to deal with that. For instance, this evening we were talking about conundrums. Which came first the chicken or the egg. Catch-22’s. And as a result of that one of the guys standing around said, “The chicken had to come first otherwise there was no egg.” When I said, “I believe both have always existed simultaneously,” the group became uneasy at the idea until I added, “a woman is born with eggs already within her, as is a chicken, the eggs already exist when the woman, or chicken, exists, though they are not fertile, therefore both the chicken and the egg have always existed together and not separately.” There is no other answer to that conundrum.

I also came up with the dating conundrum. Or, I don’t date because I can’t date the girls I am meeting and I am only meeting girls I can’t date, so I don’t date. Which isn’t entirely true. I am picky, selective, I won’t always just go out with anyone, and the person, or persons, I am willing to go out with have reasons why I cannot ask them out at present.

Oh, the Catch-22 conundrum is Yosarian stating, (paraphrasing) “You have to be crazy to fly these bombing missions, but if you are crazy you cannot fly the missions, but if you know you are crazy then you aren’t crazy; but to fly the missions is crazy and if you’re crazy you cannot fly the bombing missions.” To do one thing another has to already exist. But that one thing can’t exist unless the previous item also already exists.

My next imponderable is: If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it does it make a noise?

I have a personal answer for this one, but I am curious to know what Rebecca thinks first.

Real Heroes Fly ]]> http://www.johnhattaway.com/2004/10/experiences-and-sleep/feed/ 1 http://www.johnhattaway.com/2004/08/the-difference-between-here-and-there/ http://www.johnhattaway.com/2004/08/the-difference-between-here-and-there/#comments Sat, 14 Aug 2004 20:26:05 +0000 smokingpen http://www.johnhattaway.com/?p=9 I woke up the other morning, it was uncomfortable and a part of me was completely set to go straight to the store, purchase whatever it was that I needed at whatever cost, come back to the house I am staying in and install it. That’s what I was going to do. It didn’t occur to me, until later in the day when I’d ignored what I was going to do, that I had lived like this once before in my life.

What occurred to me, and this may not come as a surprise to anyone, is that the difference between Utah and the East Coast is really the difference between arid weather and humid weather. Dry and wet. That’s what got me. Since leaving Texas for, uhm, different pastures, I have lived in an arid environment where when people talk about intolerable humidity they are talking about the evaporation of water for an hour or so right after it rains. They are not talking about the pervasive, and constant, amount of water in the air. And to make matters slightly worse, since there’s a hurricane and a tropical storm moving up the east coast out of Florida, pushing all sorts of mostly awkward weather patterns into the northeast, it meant that I had to actually live through an increase in the natural humidity for the area.

Not since Texas, and I believe before my mission, have I had to live through humidity like that. It was before my mission when I was working swing shift at a plastics plant, and every third week-ish had to work graveyard which meant sleeping days, did I have to try and get a goodnight’s rest while somehow expecting the temperature to cool off and the moisture in the air (which makes everything permanently wet) to disappear, have I had the problem I had the other night.

Most nights, the temperature drops, the humidity lessens, you get some sleep, the next morning (or afternoon… you know, whatever) you wake up and the humidity is back, but it’s not that bad. Yeah, uhm. Not the other day. It was bad and I wondered how I’d fallen so far as to lose my sense of ability to sleep anywhere under almost any condition? What happened to me? How can I have fallen so far?

What I mean is, I have had to adapt to all sorts of different conditions and situations already (for example people here like to wear their LDS conversion stories on their sleeves and share those stories at the drop of a BoM whereas in Utah you share mission stories at the drop of spittle from the baby in your lap), but on top of adapting to new conditions and situations here I am having to come to terms with humidity, in an extreme, yet again. It’s not all bad. I mean, given that I can locate a job where I want to be working and other things come to fruition then purchasing an air-conditioning unit with humidity control won’t be bad, regardless of where I choose to work, but at the same time, getting to that point, making that distinction – or whatever, is proving to be a chore in and of itself.

I can deal with humidity just like I can deal with the extremes of heat. There isn’t a lot to be said, or implied, in either area. What is interesting to me is that I chose to come and do this. I chose to drive for four days straight to sit in a sweat box and actually enjoy sitting in the sweat box. It’s proved to be an interesting adventure and experience.

More later.

Real Heroes Fly ]]> http://www.johnhattaway.com/2004/08/the-difference-between-here-and-there/feed/ 0 http://www.johnhattaway.com/2004/08/before-and-after-the-move/ http://www.johnhattaway.com/2004/08/before-and-after-the-move/#comments Sun, 08 Aug 2004 05:07:20 +0000 smokingpen http://www.johnhattaway.com/?p=6 I have begun to notice that many of my thoughts are beginning to rotate around the date of my move from Utah to Boston. There are the events that took place before the move and those that take place since the move. Nothing that crosses over between the two seems to matter, much, to me. It either happened before or after. Not during.

During that period of time when I was moving it was all about those four days on the road. I was in the truck with Andy. We drove. Occasionally we stopped because Debbie and the girls needed to stop. But in the long run, it was about being on the road for twelve hours a day for four days. They were long, not necessarily comfortable, and in the end I was happy to see the 2500 miles of road behind us. That was during the move.

Before the move I planned, prepared, scoped, looked, thought, prayed, and did whatever else was appropriate or necessary, within my purview of this change, to prepare for life on the Right coast – this is the East coast for those who look at a map and can’t adjust to left and right. The Left coast is the Pacific, the Right is the Atlantic. My thoughts were centered on how this would affect those around me, the reasons I was moving, the reasons I’d gotten to this point, constantly asking “why” in relation to the move, and several other variations related to family and friends. It never really occurred to me that the move itself might prove to be difficult.

But moving is difficult. I am beginning to believe that it doesn’t really matter whether you move with a caravan of people, family included, or you move alone. There are changes that have to take place. You have to gather around you new people, make new contacts, struggle for new opportunities, and in the end make decisions based off of notions that may, or may not, be acceptable within the new purview that you find yourself in. In my case, I’d never been to Boston before and making the decision to move here, to accept that this was the right change for me, to do that as a part of my ‘new’ life was a little overwhelming. In essence, I’d decided to change everything about who I was for some notion of what I might become. So I packed up my things, gave a lot of my stuff away, stored my books (which proved to be very hard for me) and relocated to a new part of the world. It is, I’d imagine, like the pioneers or Saints as they left what was familiar for what was completely unfathomable in the west. Except, in my case, I was leaving what was comfortable for what I thought was going to be a cake walk.

This is not to say that I am naive enough to believe that this whole affair wasn’t going to require changes and adaptations. Both have been taking place; both have been occurring; both will continue to occur. I meet people all of the time and one observer (thanks Larry) suggested that I have a tendency to have interesting people around me all of the time. I don’t know how true that is, though I guess I can see the interesting persons that have been in my life – or some of them, but I do know that sometimes relying upon the observations of friends and relatives to get a better handle of a situation has some wisdom in it.

One of things that have happened to me is that I have become a little melancholy toward the loss of so many good friends. I left them all behind because I knew that it was time for me to move. That knowledge hasn’t change, though my internal time-frame isn’t the same as a realistic time-frame I guess, but I miss my family and I miss my friends. I can call them. That’s true. But what I want is to be able to jump in a car and drive to a house and just hang out. That’s not been a reality since getting here. I don’t own a car and just the other day it occurred to me that one of the best solutions to malaise was to put on clothes, grab my backpack, and walk to the store. The store, just so you know, is about four or five miles away. So, I walked to the store. It felt great until I was about halfway back to the house I am living in with Andy and Debbie and their two girls, then my legs started to rebel and the sickness that had kept me at home the day before started to flair up and the result was that I started to feel the change all around me.

Not feeling well is definitely not one of those things you want to have happen when everything else around you is in a rapid state of flux. And I have not been feeling all that well. Different parts of my life feel as though they have been ripped from my hands and that is never a positive feeling. It’s a rather negative one. Yet, as I contemplate and fight the temptation to give into impulse and the ease of returning to what is comfortable, I find there is an amount of comfort in knowing that I made this decision for the right reasons. The changes that take place, they take place after the move. I grow, after the move. I meet new people, after the move. Everything that is happening to me, right now, is happening after the move. And it will continue to do so.

Real Heroes Fly ]]> http://www.johnhattaway.com/2004/08/before-and-after-the-move/feed/ 0