Last night, it snowed… about 10 inches. Last night I also got sick (at least, began feeling the effects of getting sick). Today I woke up a little before noon because my body needed the rest. I’m still tired and sore and doing my best to keep my head in one piece. I’m also recovering from blowing the snow off the driveway and scraping the car.
Why didn’t I call in sick? Why am I still going to work tonight? Because a coworker has called in sick every day for the last week. I’ve seen how it effects everyone else’s schedules… how people need to be called and shifted around, how this person is asked to stay longer, how management is suddenly on the hook for people not willing to come in. When a monkey-wrench is thrown into a well-oiled machine, things tend to go downhill fast.
I was also informed that my girlfriend was able to have a discussion with her kids about the phrase, “What am I doing with my life?”, and how we’re really asking, “Where is my life going?” In her discussion, she mentioned that it was a good idea to have a good picture of where you’d like to be going, then do things that pull you in that direction. It doesn’t mean that we have to be constantly working toward it at all times, it just means that we should be able to end ‘executive time’ and do the work.
For me, that means pulling a part-time shift at a craft store to earn money. It also means that I get to show my son the work ethic I would like him to have. It shows my girlfriend that I’ll do what it takes, even during the most difficult challenges, to head in a direction I’d like to go… even if that means I’m taking DayQuil™ before I head out so I don’t snap at customers.
So… I went to work. It was dead (as I fully expected it to be), but I was able to get some real work done that’s not usually possible when it’s busy. We were able to do recovery and put away all of the go-backs hours faster than when the store has people pulling items from the shelves and dropping them off wherever they happen to be standing when the kids break something made of glass.
We were able to almost completely stock an Easter drive-aisle display… which is weird. Pulling out squishy bunnies and wind-up chicks as the snow begins to fall outside again, is odd. It also gave me the ability to disconnect enough to think about where I was heading in my life (at least short-time).
Since I seem to be stalled on the final rewrite of the last chapter of Razing Hell (formerly, Praising Kane), I’ve been working on putting together a book of short stories. I’ve got eight stories packed into approximately 72K words of book, so I believe it’ll be well worth the price (I’m thinking $4 for the e-book and $8 for the paperback (depending on cost to P.O.D.)).
Once that’s out there, I can focus on finishing RH, and publish it. That way, I’ll have three full-length novels, three short stories (that’ll still be sold separately, but also included in the collection) and a collection of shorts all available on Amazon. THEN I can focus on marketing and getting my name out there (and hopefully a few more reviews).
So, it’s a plan. It’s pretty short term, with a vague direction, but it’s a plan. And when the snow hits, I’ll adjust accordingly, do what it takes, and keep pushing on… because I like the destination I’ve set for myself, even if it seems further away than I could possibly see.
How do you deal with snow that hits you? Karli, living in Florida, doesn’t really have to deal with snow, but she’s also got hurricanes that we don’t. Do you set goals? Do you prepare for the future? How so? Let me know in the comments… I’d really like to hear from you.
I like the idea of answering “What am I doing with my life?” with “Where is my life going?”, but I don’t know that the latter is always what the former means. Sometimes it’s “What have I done with my life?”, and sometimes it’s literally “Why am I doing what I’m doing this very moment?” I suppose that’s the bliss of the grammatical ambiguity of ‘doing’, or ‘doing with’… usually, when that question comes to mind for me, it’s not about those long-term goals one might have in mind, but how does my year, month, week, day, break down — all the way down to the hour-by-hour, really. And the inverse, all the way from the present out to an ethereal maybe-one-day, is my hierarchy of importance: The present we have, the future we might never.
Love the comment. I really do find that moment that I’m asking “What am I doing with my life?” to be the times where I’m quite brain-dead from watching youtube videos… or licking the salt from my fingers after polishing off a bag of chips. It seems to be the lack of awareness… and getting that awareness back, that sets off the question.
I’ve been one of the people covering for people who don’t come in. I remember one person didn’t set her alarm because it was supposed to snow. It didn’t. She didn’t lose her job. She’s lucky I wasn’t her supervisor. I would have fired her.