sometimes life doesn’t happen

Weird week. Got word Monday that one of my neighbors had died from cancer, as we had feared. He’d lost a lot of weight and his hair a few months ago. When we politely inquired about his health, he always said something dismissive like “getting by.” A very nice old Polish guy, always ready to lend a hand, the sort that moved to America because he was American at heart. Ran his own business out of his home, never a personal complaint, always thoughtful. The sort of guy that when the power to his house went out in the middle of winter for a week, he just shrugged and said it was like camping, but with a more comfortable bed.

Then on Tuesday I heard that a teaching job I’d applied for, and interviewed for, and the principal wanted me for, got flushed because HR had an issue. My application was fine, computer said it was “complete,” but someone decided that my references were “old,” and I needed new ones or to have them resubmitted, even if it was the same people saying the same things, a new form had to be filled out. Like being unemployed / stay-at-home parent would give me newer references. So, I missed a job for the second time because HR did something screwy. Spent part of the day trying to figure THAT one out. Then we got word that my neighbor’s mass would be Wednesday. We’ve been neighbors for nearly two decades, so I had to go and show my support for the still living widow.

I’ve never sat through a whole formal Catholic mass for the recently deceased, complete with communion and all. Particularly not one in Polish. It was well-attended; at least sixty people on a Wednesday afternoon. Good folks. Got home, found out the DSL modem had died, too. Dug up a spare (a few years old but new to me, still in the unopened box), but even after spending a long time with tech support, I couldn’t get it going that night. Frontier said they’d send me a new one. Then I got a call today from them, wanting to try a few more things before they sent one out. I spent another hour or more with them, and finally got one computer to see the world, but it could no longer see my internal network or printer. Another couple of hours and I finally got THAT working, without killing anything that worked before.

Then I get word that my brother in law is in the hospital, perhaps appendix, perhaps kidney stones, but in any case the pain meds are seriously called for, and the mother in law was also already in the hospital. And, of course, it’s at this time that the cold season is hitting, and my phone is ringing off the hook with teaching substitute requests. Just when I’m starting a part-time writing gig that should be taking 10-15 hours a week, the editing on the novel is starting to move faster, and I’m making progress on getting cover art made, and I had started making progress on the next novel.

Sometimes, life and death get in each others way, and you just have to keep on keep’n on. Do what you have to, do what you can, don’t worry about what you have no control over, and give the kids an extra hug.

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4 thoughts on “sometimes life doesn’t happen

  1. “Sometimes, life and death get in each others way, and you just have to keep on keep’n on. Do what you have to, do what you can, don’t worry about what you have no control over, and give the kids an extra hug.”

    That’s pretty much it. IOW; run on objectivity, not emotion, or we could call it DC verses AC– direct current, which is steady, constant, verses alternating current which is up and down shifting directions all the time and is easily converted into something different from how it originated.

  2. HR exists to say “no”. They worked to turn their position into a gateway, to try to force everything to go through them. That is the only real power they have in the corporate world. It is a dead end off-shoot, in that employees in that area seldom are allowed to transfer to the regular management track. When job hunting, always try to find a work-around to having to go through them to apply for a position. Best is to figure out who the actual manager is for the position desired, and talk to that person directly, outside of the view of HR. Having that person going to HR and telling them that “this is who I want for this position, and don’t give me any shit about it”, generally works best. It then should be a rubber-stamp type of process for them, mostly.

      • In my father’s case, this was exactly how he got in. He knew the head of a Vo-Tech school, and that got him the position. Unfortunately, when the guy retired, my dad was forced out, since he no longer had someone to run interference for him. I guess it might have been a bit more political in that school system than normal (So NJ). Not sure. He went off and helped RCA set up a technical school in Egypt after that. He had offers to work at a few schools here in the US afterwards, but declined. Don’t know why. He loved teaching.

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