Tag Archives: life stages

Career changes and lasting relationships

Posted on by

If I were a carpenter, and you were a Lady…. If you listen to old country music, or happen to be a Johnny Cash fan, you know this song was sung by Johnny Cash back in the day. If you are not familiar with the song, the song is questions asking the woman different trades and if she would still love him.

What I enjoy about the song, is the different ways the man asks the same question. If I were a carpenter, tinsmith, so on and so forth will she still love him? It may seem that the man is not sure that the woman would love him and be with him, so he keeps asking to make sure the answer stay the same.

And of course the answers are the same throughout the song. June Carter sings that, yes, she would still love him and support him at whatever he does. That is a pretty strong bond the man and woman have between them, and her validation that she will and would love him no matter what came down the pipeline shows how sure they are of their relationship.

I think this song has a lot of relevance today with our world as it is. For some of us, this is our second, third, or maybe fourth major career change in the making between the job we were going to do the rest of our lives and today. For others the track record is the same in the relationship department. It seems many of those truths we were given as children are no longer true. Rarely is there a one lifetime job, or a lifetime long relationship.

Where is the balance in our lives? How do we as individuals meld our personal values, wants, and needs into something that fits our life, where not everything is forever any more? How can we go through a lifetime full of ups and downs, where the downside brings up stressors and pressures that ripple out and back, rocking our personal values, wants, and needs to there very core?

Most of us follow some variation of two main methods. One group tries to maintain order in their life, and the other group takes life as it happens. The key of course is balance. If a healthy balance is maintained between being a control freak, and letting life take you this way and that, it is possible to live a happy contented life most of the time.

In the song, what the man does for a living is not important. The relationship between the man and the woman has nothing to do with his past, present, or future career(s). The relationship is not centered on money. The relationship does not revolve around what they have or do not have. The relationship does not center on how they look, or how witty they are. The relationship is centered on the love each has for the other. As long as love is the center of their relationship, nothing else matters.

Nothing else matters to the couple in the song. They know what is important for them and why. They know that not compromising what is most important to them by life’s other distractions brings them the most happiness possible. Letting yourself be distracted away from what is most important to you is the second biggest cause of unhappiness. The biggest cause of discontent and unhappiness is not knowing what is most important in your life until after you have given it away, or otherwise compromised it.

Take time at the end of each day before you fall asleep and review at what you are doing with your life. Is what you are doing bringing you closer or farther from what you truly want? Is what you are doing making you happy, or does it tug on you, stealing a little of your happiness away every day? Decide what is most important to you each night, and start each day trying to make it happen. Before you know it, you will wake up and realize you are there!

Share

Easy side of life

Posted on by

When I became old enough to legally drive I bought a motorcycle. Life was pretty good. When weekends rolled around, and I was not working, it was a simple thing to grab my sleeping bag and fishing rod and head out to the lake for the weekend.

Weather was my biggest concern I did not have a tent so any rain meant I had to find a dry spot to sleep, or as dry as one could find at the lake. If I caught fish I had something to eat. If I did not catch any fish, a day or two without food was sufferable.

After I was asked not to return for another year of college, I went out and found a job and new friends because college was in another town in another state. Some of my friends were just like me. We had little to nothing except a job and a vehicle that would get us from one place to another – most of the time. Life was still pretty simple, pay the rent, have fun.

Of course about his time we start to get swept up in what every one around us is doing. It became important to find a better job, drive a better car, be a little more responsible. Before I knew it, all my single friends were getting married and settling down. I followed suit.

Suddenly life starts becoming more complicated; the easy days of only having to worry about myself were sliding into the past, as were casual days of camping by the lake, and generally lazing around having fun. I had to expand my focus from myself to my family. Taking a weekend off to go fishing became a luxury, not just another weekend. Fixing the car, buying furniture, clothes, baby food, and diapers became more important than me.

Nothing stays the same of course, but it did not seem like it at the time. The future looked like an unending need for diapers, baby food and kids clothes. Occasionally I would eke out a few hours for me, but those times were rare.

Of course those times went away, and slowly but surely I was not needed so much. In fact the biggest thing that was needed from me was an income. I started feeling like an ATM. I would look into the future and see years of working for a paycheck to have it disappear moments after it was cashed, only to start the process all over again.

This too went away, and my life became mostly mine again. Of course by this time, much of what I used to do was now something that young people do. Hanging out at the local bar did not have the same appeal it did years ago. Other hobbies were also left by the wayside for the same reasons. Other things like going to the lake for the weekend are now more involved because of all the things we need for going to the lake. What was once a two minute stuff a sleeping bag and one change of underwear into a rucksack is now a load the truck with everything process.

I wonder if this planning and packing is a form of ritual such as Thanksgiving or Easter, or is it something else. I find myself trying to simplify everything, but for some reason it is not an easy task to simplify. The line between what I need in my life and everything in my life is grey and convoluted. What once was clear and simple, now takes a little planning.

I was reading a few web sites about being homeless a few weeks ago, and it almost sounded pleasant to me. Not many cares with all the programs out there that would take care of me. All I would need is a safe place to sleep each night – and most of everything I have in my life at present.

Maybe being homeless is not as simple I perceive it to be. I imagine for now, I will be happy I can go to the lake, and not care about the three hours it takes to get ready to go. Being grateful enters my thoughts at moments like this.

Share

Polished by life

Posted on by

Some people see life as painful process where they go through each day, each year, and each decade feeling like little pieces of themselves are torn off and cast aside. Every struggle, conflict, and tribulation no matter how small tears off a little piece of them.

As their life goes on they start to feel and look tired and a little worn out. As they grow older the effects of life pulling and tugging at them away each day becomes more obvious. If live to be very old they feel like a hollow shell where everything has been drained out of them.

They remember being young and having energy and fight, and strength, taking on the worst life can throw their way, but over the years it becomes to much. Life starts draining them, sapping their strength, and quelling their love of life. They are not sure where exactly it all happened, they remember the big issues, death, divorce, and financial struggles. They seldom remember the little things that really drained them. The day to day grind that their life turned out to be.

I share some part of me with people who feel like this. I have my days when I feel like life is trying to grind me into the ground and turn me into a dust cloud to be blown away by the wind. Everyone normal has these days or days like them. I think I am lucky though because for me these days are few and far between.

I love the change and challenge my life, and the sometime unique ways everything turns out for the best no matter what my efforts were. Problems and challenges are a part of life, we can not escape them normally. If we do escape problems that happen in every day life, it is time to acknowledge we may have a bigger problem starting with denial.

I had a though that prompted me to write about this. One that sort of puts life and the challenges we face in perspective. I saw myself in my minds eye as a rough and jagged rock. It did not look like much, just a big rock. As I watched, little chips were taken out of the rock, some so small they were hardly noticeable. Other times, larger pieces of the rock were broken all at once.

As I watched this movie play in my head, I made the connection that the rock was me. Over the years, little pieces have been chipped away from me. During those somber serious life events, larger pieces of me were broken off and cast aside. While parts of me are being chipped away over the years and decades something else was happening too.

I have been taking on a form or shape, becoming defined. My jagged outside was becoming polished, and taking on a little shine. Things that used to take little chips out of me, now polish me a little bit.

Maybe if I live long enough, one day I will look into my minds eye and see a shiny stone where the rough jagged rock once stood.

Share

Life cycles up and life cycles down

Posted on by

There was a time in my life when I was sure that something was trying to keep me from succeeding. I would start something, usually a new job, and everything would be well for a while. The problems would slowly start creeping into my life. When that happened I would think, oh no, here I go again….

Some problems would be big problems, such as a major theft at my place of employment. Once there was a woman I worked with who was dating a Policeman. His patrol car had been vandalized. Of course I was initially part of the suspects who could have committed the theft and later vehicle damage.

Other times it might be problems with the Boss and I not getting along, or having different viewpoints on how something should be done, or not done. At any rate, it always appeared that when life was starting to go in the direction I thought it should, something would happen to slow things down, or create a temporary roadblock.

If it was not work, it would be car problems. My car would break down during those times when I had the least amount of money to fix it. If not my car, something else would break in the house. A window would get broken, the heater would have problems. It was always something that was going wrong and stopping the nice smooth path I thought I was on.

Over time I started to see a pattern, and I was in the middle of it. I had some areas that I needed to work on and I did. After I had myself in order, I noticed problems still occasionally happened. My car still would break down, or there would be a leaking faucet where I lived that of course would cost money to repair.

I also noticed another pattern in my life. Well, not just in my life, but in everyone’s life. Just like all the planets and the moon run on a cycle of sorts, so do we. I don’t mean we run on a set cycle of so many good days, followed by so many bad days. Our lives do run on a cycle of sorts, and it is a completely natural occurrence.

All life has upward cycles, and our life has downward cycles. If you are familiar with alternating current of household electricity, or a sine wave in math or physics, it is the same principle. We start on an upward cycle, and eventually hit the peak, then we start a downward cycle approaching the bottom.

It is how we manage these cycles that determine how successful we are in our lives. Knowing there are ups and downs in our lives, and expecting them to occur, we find out they are not as tragic as we thought they were. These cycles add balance to our lives.

We need balance in our lives. Without balance we would have no reference point to judge how we are doing. Knowing we have cycles in our lives, we learn to start planning for the times when everything is not going our way.

Share

Rental body, new owner and now

Posted on by

Sometimes I feel like I am in a rented body. I have no idea what I paid for it, but I know eventually the lease is going to run out and I will be on the street with no place to live.

I do not remember the price I paid for this rental, but it must have been very large. From the time I was a small child, into my early thirties, a lot of my time was directed towards making it break. There were the childhood things like jumping, diving, flying, and other things that these bodies were not designed to do, at least not originally.

In my teens, it was poor diet, over exertion, stress, contact sports, fights, and various forms of exploratory poisoning. Some of these things I continued doing, others I left when I decided there was no pay off and I stopped them after the first time.

Then it was on to the military, spending cold wet nights in above ground foxholes, eating cold food, or no food at all, over stressing certain areas of life where some people should not try to do. Mix that up with family and call ahead a decade or so.

Somewhere along the line, I traded off more of the things I was doing for better options. I started taking more risks, like bicycling in city traffic, and floating around big lakes in small inner tubes in the name of fishing. Then it was kayaking, and now making full circle, I want to wander around the wilderness again exploring. There is always so much to see and things I have never done waiting for me.

Although I do not have the flexibility and resistance I did when I was younger, I have more than made up for it in experience. I really do not need to jump across, and down ten feet to a ledge just to get a better view. Then realizing when I was done, getting up again was not going to be as easy as jumping down. The view where I am at will be perfectly adequate. I also don’t need to hike in ten miles to get away from people, because I never really did find a place, where someone was not there before me already. I also won’t need to climb trees just to see the tops of other trees in a quest for a really good view.

Now, when I get the chance to wander like I did when I was young, I will have more time to look around and enjoy what is right there rather than looking to the next hill and wondering what is on the other side. If I manage to get lost like I did when was young, I won’t be walking a long way in the direction I think I need to go in. This time around I will have at least a compass, and common sense enough to sit down and figure out where I should be at before I start walking. That is an advantage of older feet, they take you everywhere you need to go, but they can complain loudly if they think you are abusing them.

All in all, this body has been pretty amazing. Whatever it cost me to rent, I know I have the better end of the deal. I this body were machinery made by the best machinists in the world at the time, it never would of held up like it has. Everything still works almost as well as it did when it was new, but of course a few parts are a little worn. But nothing a few aspirin can’t fix most of the time.

I know by the time the lease expires, I will have received full use on my rental body. I just hope the place where I am going is a good place to be, and the things I love to do are not too far away.

Share