cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Lovliness of Plans I have another entry I wrote at work that I need to post and I've skipped over here. Today I set about preparing for the serious road trips that I am undertaking soon. My AC recently crapped out and the CD changed in my car died last week and there is no fucking way that I am driving to Chicago and Florida and back each time in the summer with no AC or music. So I got the requisite materials to charge up my AC and install a new stereo and speakers. Fuck that 6 disc changer in the trunk. The new one is one disc in the dash with 1/4" auxiliary input AND a USB input. I got the AC done and the stereo mostly installed before realizing that they gave me the wrong wiring harness and I have to go back and get the right part tomorrow. Also on my list is a high quality inflatable raft with an electric trolling motor. I need to be able to go out and get on the water in these random places that I'm going and hauling my canoe on the roof for 1,000 miles is not a smart idea in terms of theft and gas mileage. I went out shopping for one today but didn't find the one I wanted. Probably I'll get it online. Trish and I went out last night with friends and she fucking vomited on my shoes and on the pants of a $600 suit. In public. At the patio of a bar I've been going to since I was 15. I sent her off immediately with a friend while I settled up. I tipped the waitress 50% and it still didn't feel like enough. I'm starting a consulting/training business for extra income. In the field that I thought I was leaving. I'm only going to work 5-10 days a month, starting in October. It looks like this will pay really, really well. In fact, even just working 5-10 days a month I will probably make more money at that than I did in salary at my (almost) former job. The trick to this is that what I'll be doing is emergency training. For when a key employee has left and there is nobody else at the business who understands this highly specialized and theoretically profitable thing that I know how to do. I'll fly anywhere in the world and stay there for a week to train someone else how to do this stuff. They pay me $500-$1,000 a day, plus expenses. I'll get to travel a lot, which I like. Nobody else is doing what I'll be doing. There is literally no competition. I'm not expecting the world to be banging down my door or anything, but I think I can get 1 or 2 clients a month and those clients, by definition, are absolutely desperate and will pay me the $500-$1,000 a day I'm looking for. Quitting this job may turn out to be one of the best things I ever did. I don't know how to describe how strange this feels. This job has been constant for the last 11 years. It was expected that I would take over the helm of the company from my father on his retirement. It feels somewhat like a horrible betrayal to be quitting. But I know that this comes as somewhat of a relief to my father as well. When I was 21 years old and had been at the job for less than a year, another very trusted employee and myself were asked by my father if we wanted to gradually buy the company. I agreed that this sounded pretty good. What I didn't fully grasp at the time was what I was really signing up for. I bought stock at the rate of about 2% most years. I realized at some point that I had effectively made a promise to be here at this desk, doing this job, FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. And to stop doing that would mean to totally fuck up this whole stock purchase plan that everyone had gone to tremendous trouble over. At times I was offered other positions. At conventions and university weekends I would impress people and I was offered quite a bit of money to come and manage a larger book of business in NJ or AZ or wherever. Every time I declined. After years of this I grew bitter. I had passed up 6 figure salaries in order to stay loyal to my family and to the promise I had made; yet I was still making less in salary than fresh hires at many other companies. After having children it got worse. The recession hit and there was no money to buy food and I was literally killing things to put food on the table. Prescriptions for medication went unfilled and some nights we had to bundle into sleeping bags to keep from freezing for lack of money to pay for heating oil. I began to hate the fact of my employment. My loyalty and the really stupendous profits I had made for the company were rewarded by being forced to live in abject poverty. Over the past year or so, I gave up. I really stopped even trying. It didn't really matter how good a job I did and I knew it. I wasn't going to be rewarded for it so there was no point in even making the effort. I did a lot of marketing and spent probably 4 or 5 days a month on the road while nobody else bothered, but aside from that I had given up in my heart. It showed. It still shows. I don't give a shit anymore. Some emails I'll respond to, while others I silently give the finger to on account of being either uninterested in what they are talking about or having a deeply held belief that the entire basis for the email is retarded in the first place. I'm just fucking done. I hate all of it and there is no point in forcing myself to do it when it will never result in an extra penny in my pocket. After 11 years I gave my notice abruptly. The idea turned into action within a matter of perhaps and hour or so. I just fucking did it because I could not live like this any more. Its best that it happen this way. Politely and decisively, with no blow-up or shouting about who screwed who over. Officially, I am only doing this in order to devote more time to my writing career. Which is useful for everyone. But the truth is that I'm doing this because I detested pissing away day after day after day of a finite life in front of a desk doing things that don't matter in order to nurse a marginal existence that offered no hope of real reward. 11 years was enough. I belong outside, living the strenuous life. Living the stories that I and then others will tell. Doing things that are really worthwhile. Driving cross-country, paddling the entire length of the J@mes River, getting a Eurail pass for a month with no idea where I'm going, and spending a safari season in Africa volunteering as a tracker, skinner and butcher. September cannot come fast enough. I want to get in the car and go to Florida on Monday morning. What if I did? What would happen? I'd do it, only I don't want to burn any bridges. My parents aren't speaking to my brother (and vice versa) right now as it stands. For the same thing to happen with me would, effectively, end the family. I've just realized that I'll need a heavier fishing rod as well as the one I have. Tomorrow I'm going to get it set up with the coolers, tent, pack, sleeping bag, etc. in a mock-up to see how well this whole kit is going to pack. I got out-bid on Ebay for the cameras I need and I really need to get that squared away soon. 11:04 p.m. - 2010-07-10 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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