Why write? Why work?

At three AM I awoke, widely awake.  I had dreamed that my daughter fell backwards hitting her head on the dresser, could not stand up and said her legs were hurting and tingling.  In the dream she was five or six.  She's thirty.  

Yesterday afternoon I was walking behind a young man who looked my son, wore the same self-made haircut and had a similar gait.  Five minutes later my son called from Denmark at an unusual time.  It had the forbearing of bad news but it was all good.

This morning I'm at the car dealer getting some maintenance done of the 2004 F-150.  With a somewhat heated workshop and a few additional tools it's work I could do.  I'm not very good at that sort of thing, not bad, just not very good and it's all stressful.  So alternately I'll sit in the "guest lounge" and attempt to do the work I can be good at.  Fox news is playing a bit loud and my headphones seem to be offering an odd blend of background and podcast music.  
The cubicle is full of distractions.  It's not clear how long it's been since Iused a phone book.  Now when they show up at our door they're about 3/4" thick and I walk them out back to the recycling without even a passing look.  This one is interesting.  The ad on the cover is from a guy who's been doing bankruptcy cases in the Twin Cities for decades.  I thought he was certainly dead.  The building on the cover is the Minnesota State Capital.  Designed by famed architect Cass Gilbert it's certainly one of the most beautiful capital buildings in the U.S.  

Out of the picture about 250 yards from the front entrance is a statue of Floyd B. Olson.  Considered to be one of the greatest Minnesota governors he was a prominent populist politician of his day and was considered as a presidential candidate.  The statue is next to a bus stop.  I'm certain most of the people don't know anything about Governor Olson, a founder of the MN Farmer Labor Party which became the Demcratic Farmer Labor (DFL) party.  This is not Washington D.C.  There are not a lot of statues here.  People should pay attention.  Many years ago I attended an ERA rally on the capital mall.  A then somewhat unknown college professor gave loud rallying speech.  Senator Paul Wellstone later died in a plane accident near Hibbing, MN.  I remember standing with my camera, the image of Governor Olson in the foreground and behind a sea of change enthusiasts Paul Wellstone, arms in the air talking about what could be.  That would have been a great image.  Actually it was.





This phone book (Yellow Pages) is from 2007.  At some point a young person is going to look at this and comment "they printed out the internet."

The service representative just came out to tell me other things wrong with my vehicle.  This dealership has gone down the route of impending doom diagnostics.  Whatever you bring it in for they find another issue which is always "something you should take care of" and it's always another $1500.  I've also caught them twice recommending maintenance (e.g. fluid changes) that they've already done).  This all makes me ready to change dealerships.  My favorite service guy who was good at filtering all these issue left a few months ago.  It makes no sense that I'm even here today.  During the 27-year gig one of the corporate mantras was "honesty and integrity."  The car dealership is honest about things that might be leaking but there is a question of integrity; is this really something we need to deal with?  When I look at all the fluids on the parking lots and roadways the world should be filled with dead cars.  Now that I'm effectively not working I need to shop maintenance issues going ala carte rather than relying on a resource of questionable honesty and integrity.

The honesty and integrity issue brought the 27-year gig to a point of decision.  Continuing was not an option.  Left or right on a similar path in a similar vehicle or mode of working was and still is an option.  The better option seems to be getting out of the truck (which the dealership would indicate is about to collapse in a heap) put on my boots and snowshoes, go around the sign and continue with a direction that seems natural.

Somewhere about my age people begin to "downsize."  Currently I feel encumbered by a number of things, all nice to have, but all "needing some work."  There's not enough time in the day or my remaining time to deal with all of that so it's time to prioritize.  I'm losing interest in jobs like those I used to have or at least working at them like I did . 

Our past and coupons have the tendency to keep us on the same tracks.  This is been a long period of putting the past out of mind but it's happening.  Next I'm going to start throwing away all the coupons, as soon as I recover from waking at 3:00 AM.