Posted by Its raining and that matches my sort of gloomy mood today. I like certain types of rain. I like a good thunderstorm although once you have a tree drop on your house, there’s always a little fear associated with them. I like warm spring rains. I hate cold rains like today. There is nothing worse than being wet and cold.
The rain probably kept several vendors from the market so we didn’t get to say good bye to several of them. I know they had planned a little trick or treat thing and we saw one kid in his costume stomping through the rain. That’s the problem with scheduling outdoor events – you never know when you are going to lose the weather lottery.
My brother sent us several digital photos of old slides. I’m wondering how many people even know what those are. In today’s world, everyone has a phone with a camera and it is so easy to capture every detail of your life. In the old days, cameras came with film which had to be developed and the most common result was slides.
So when you wanted to look back at stuff, you had to wait until it was dark and either have a screen or a wall to use for the display. The screen was cool but getting it up and down was a problem. Then you had the slide projector and various carousels of slides. Invariably, one or two would be backwards or upside down. Of course, the slide show was a way for my parents to embarrass all of us as we got older and brought significant others into the house.
When you are young, it seems like you are indestructible. I think back to the summer watching kids run for a couple of hours in hot weather. Now, running is clearly not fun but back then it was. I guess when you had unlimited energy, you didn’t see it as exercise.
Then you grow up and things start catching up with you. I sit here typing this with my braces on both hands because the cold, damp weather is seriously messing the arthritis in my thumb. I mention it from time to time here (maybe more than time to time) but I really don’t like to dwell on it. I guess I’ve got some of the childish optimism because as a kid you just got over stuff.
But on wet and gloomy days, I realize this isn’t “going away”. I’m going to spend the next however many years I’ve got left dealing with good days and bad days. Days where I have to seriously focus on gripping things when I unload the dishwater so I don’t accidentally drop something. Days where it will hurt if I move the thumb in a certain direction or if someone grabs it the wrong way.
I’ve heard you can now get a thumb replacement so maybe that will be my future. I don’t know. But even then, there are other joints that hurt that can’t be as easily replaced. What eventually did my Mom in was blod clots as a complication of the broken hip. But, even before that, she had been in a lot of pain from the arthritis. No, I’m not there yet but I can kind of see how this turns out and it isn’t real pleasant to think about. Which is why I mostly try to block it out. Except on gloomy, wet days when it acts up just to make sure I never forget what is going on inside my hands.
The really bad part about all this is that every joint they’ve x-rayed always comes back with the same statement. That this isn’t really severe. To be honest, that scares me because I have no idea how bad the aching can get. Will it be worse as there is further damage to the joints? As I said, this is not something I like thinking about.
I got a text from someone I used to work with the other day. We worked on a couple of major projects together and we had a real synergy (see how I can use those buzzwords). He was very collaborative even when he was in a position where he didn’t have to be. It kind of made him stand out among people like that at work. As expected, he got a lot of attention from the higher ups and is sitting in a relatively high position.
But he’s considering leaving and wanted to use me as a reference. I am an out of work ex middle manager so I’m not sure I’m that impressive given all the powerful people he’s interacted with over the course of his career. I guess though the problem with asking for references from people still working at the company is that they will know you might be looking to leave. In an enlightened work world, people would want everyone to be in the best position – even if that position is in another company. We live in a Dilbert world though so if you talk about leaving, you get branded.
What it comes down to for him is quality of life which is kind of in short supply in his current position. Its the downside to wanting to hop on that corporate ladder. If your life priorities change, it can be hard to get off. I hope things work out for him though. Funny how what seems like a great plan at one point in your life can turn out to be the wrong path after a few years.
I suppose I should stop and go find something else that doesn’t require me to spend a lot of time in my introspective mode. On a day like today, that’s probably not the place to be.
Facing Diagonal Wall 