in the realm of the fictionman

Um, But...

On a jar of Reduced Fat Jif Creamy Peanut Butter:

"25% less fat than peanut butter"

?

An Ominous First Day

Summer began with thunderstorms. This is the sky that heralded it yesterday morning as I got to work:

Summer

Today marks the Summer Solstice. Today marks the first day of summer. The longest day of the year, the sun rises and sets as far north on the horizon as it gets, and gets the highest in the sky.

Summer Solstice was traditionally celebrated with bonfires. Part of the idea was to encourage the sun to stay warm and bright long enough to ensure a good harvest. It's a day to consolidate strength and clear out negativity. Not a day for making new goals, but for rededicating yourself to the ones you already have. It's a time to be joyful for the warmth and energy of life, yet mindful that the light starts waning at this point.

Appropriately enough, yesterday I talked to one of the guys I know at a rival dealership (who used to work there when I was hired). He told me about their pay scale which, unless he benefits somehow from lying about it, is much better than where I'm at. He's talking about leaving in the fall to go start a business with a friend of his (something in another field that fits his passions better anyway), leaving me potentially in prime position to take his spot.

Which means there are a couple of possible combination solutions: Get better at what I do (and possibly demand a raise in the process) and stay where I am, or get better at it and go to a place that'll pay better.

I have a reason to redouble my efforts. How much strength and energy and determination and commitment can I find within myself? These have not been strong points before, but I need things to change.

With the lightning outside, I have a hunch I should get this posted quick.

Happy summer!

Goals, Lack Thereof, and Failure.

Looking back, I've never really had goals, and as such, never really accomplished much. About the only proper goal I've wver worked with was finishing the first draft on a book. That I even set a deadline for. That I accomplished.

But that's about it, though. I went to college with no plans, no goals, and didn't finish. I joined the Army, knowing I needed change. But still I had no direction, no path, and I didn't stay with it. Then I went from temp job to temp job. No plan, no goal, no future.

Now, I find myself suffering for that lack of planning in my life. I started at the dealership but I didn't map out where I wanted to be. With no stated goal, no destination to reach, I stagnated. I didn't push myself. Not to learn, not to excel.

Now that I'm finally realizing all this it's too late. We can't afford it any more. I didn't make enough over the winter to keep up, an by the time I am making enough to get ahead it'll already be too late. Unless I can really push myself. But basically I failed. I can accept that, I think. I failed Amy, and that part hurts.

So now I have to get a job. I know the amount I need to make to make ends meet and pay off the little bit of accumulated debt. It's at the upper end of Admin pay. Difficult to find, but possible.

Now it's going to be Amy's turn, although I doubt she'll be happy about that. I should be able to get another office job. But I'm not qualified for any office job that'll go anywhere in the long run. The best case scenario keeps us out of debt, and keeps up with cost of living. Saving for retirement? Saving for the kids college? No, that part'll have to come from Amy's jewelry. Nope. The only things I've ever been good at I can't get paid to do.

I had my chance to build the future I wanted them to have. I know where I could be with RV sales. I've seen it, but too late. I could have been making twice what I've ever made before by now. But I squandered it. I threw it away by taking the opportunity for granted.

"I just need to get through the learning curve," I told myself (and Amy). But that wasn't the truth. I needed to work through the learning curve, not just let it happen. It isn't something that was just going to come with time. I had to work for it. In the last couple of months I've seen the kind of improvement and progress I should have seen last fall. I've seen where I could be next spring, but unless I can do it right now, we won't make it long enough to get there.

So that's it. That's what's been eating me up inside all day. Early in the morning I looked at my progress so far, and projected where it was taking me. All I can do now is learn from it, and make some changes. Unfortunately, I've already too often said I'd change. I'm not sure even I believe it any more.

There. I've said it. I guess tomorrow decides everything. Either I'll commit to making a drastic change in my life, or nothing will change. I guess we'll see.

Like So Many Other Things...

...I keep meaning to blog.

I even have web pages open in Opera (thankfully one can have many pages up at once with Opera...) that I intend on posting commentary about.

But by the time I've got the right kind of free moment--not enough brain left.

The points in my day when I have both time and sufficient brain? Those moments I use in other ways. If Amy's gone to bed and Kayla's working on drifting off on my arm I have one hand free for the mouse. Not good enough for blogging. If I have any brain left in me, then I watch online sales training videos. If I don't have enough brain for that then it's Spider Solitare. Which I play far too much of, I know.

But, see, most nights there's anywhere from one to two hours of Kayla not quite drifting off to sleep. Some of that time is her being fairly unhappy. Sometimes she's crying because she's hungry, but she gets too upset about it to take a bottle. So then I have to calm her down enough to drink. Then, after a mix of that and burping her and pacifiering her...Then she'll drift off.

It seems like she needs a good five, sometimes ten minutes of that before she's out enough to transfer into her bed. Most nights that happens somewhere between 11 and midnight. 11:45 seems to be a very common time, give or take five minutes. At that point I'm just not up to being up later than necessary.

Now, tonight Kayla fell asleep early. Early as in before Jareth did, so about 9-9:15. So Amy just finished up pumping (since that final breastfeeding got skipped) and I suspect we'll be calling it a night any minute now.

So that's all for tonight.

The Freedom Itch

The dealership sponsors a camping club. Their first trip of this season was Memorial Day weekend. So I borrowed a used motor home from stock and we went. Amy got to get back into a motor home not too dissimilar from what we had back then. Jareth got to experience camping--which he loved totally. Kayla got a lot of outside fresh air, which she seemed to like.

A good time all around, but there was some sadness to it. It was great fun and very relaxing. The stress went away, but it was back before we had finished unpacking when we got home. It also reminded us how much we miss it.

There's a feeling of freedom about a motor home. You can just decide to go somewhere...and go. There's no hooking up a trailer, there's no setting up a camper when you get there. You don't end up driving to get to a destination. The vacation, the journey, starts as soon as you leave the driveway.

We want to keep camping with that group. We want to do some of our own trips. And we don't want to have to borrow something to do it. So now we're shopping for a class C motor home of our own. We've got it partly narrowed down to brands we do and don't like, based partly on the height from the floor up to the bed over the cab. That's going to be Jareth's bed, and he has to be able to get up and down on his own. There's about a full foot of difference from brand to brand.

We pretty much know what we need in a floorplan. We still need to know what kind of budget we're really looking at, which I think I can have figured out by next week. Then it's just a matter of finding one. The owner at the dealership is in a group of 20 dealers that get together and compare notes. They're from all over the country so that they're never in competition with each other, and can help each other out. Once we know what we're looking for, he'll contact those other dealers and see if any of them have one. He'll get them from the other dealer, probably at cost plus any involved freight, then I pay something along the lines of that new cost plus probably about $500. Now that's an employee discount. :-)