Today: Dream Job

Looking east from John's house in Winter.

One of the aspects I enjoy most about my current work is the opportunity to meet and interact with people from all over the United States. After working with more than 80 corporations scattered across three countries and 30 different states, you develop an appreciation for the sheer breadth and variety of experience in this world. In part because of this experience, I have come to believe that everyone has a story worth telling, everyone.

Four years in this current, and at times unsatisfying, position has taught me a great deal about what matters to me in a career. Ironically, had this job stretched me more than it has, I might never have asked the questions that have lead to these realizations. Chalk that up for silver linings. In terms of revelations, it turns out that meeting and getting to know people, the act of discovering or unearthing their “story,” really motivates me.

Today: The Happy Place

Way back during our Austin days, Rachael and I took a journey to the Gulf Coast. We camped on Mustang Island with some friends. In spite of infernal heat, a woeful lack of basic camping gear, and an incessant wind that scoured our car, our kids, and our faces with fine beach sand, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. For one, we learned something invaluable about Rachael.

We learned that she has what we have come to refer to as a “happy place.” Which I take to mean, a place where she feels so completely carefree as to cause her to momentarily drop the baggage of life at the door and enjoy herself . . . for a while. As luck would have it, this illusive “happy place” is far more ubiquitous that you might think. All she needs is a little sand, some water, and copious amounts of sun. Put all those things together, add kids and a camera, and Rachael can live off the happy memories for a year.

A Revisionist's History: French Town Pond

This is French Town pond looking West.

My father, a wise man, realized the importance of building a relationship with his son before teenage dementia set in. To do this, about the time I turned ten, he brought home a couple of five-gallon buckets full of motorcycle parts. Then for a winter, I would stand beside him shivering in the garage as he pieced together the parts to resurrect a late 70’s two-stroke mini-bike.

Dad continued to nurture this hobby and our relationship by establishing a few traditions. Most prominent among those was our own version of March Madness. Every March my dad would take me out of school for a week and we would travel 800 miles south to the Moab and San Rafael Swell regions of Southern Utah. Four or five months later, we would also travel to the Sawtooth Mountains in Central Idaho and ride dirt bikes for another week among lodge-pole pine.

A Revisionist's History: Painter Hayes

This morning while driving to seminary, I was thinking about an acquaintance in the ward here that commutes daily all the way to Everett. He told me yesterday that the drive doesn’t take too long in the morning before traffic, but that it can stretch out into two hours in the evening. Fortunately, for Rob Harvey, he and his wife just closed on a home in Lake Stevens, which is where this story begins.

Years ago, while living outside of Seattle during my early teen years, a difficult and pivotal era for many reasons, I met a man named Jim Hayes. Jim became one of my earliest employers painting homes in the Lake Stevens region. As I remembered Jim on my drive this morning, I realized in retrospect that he also figures prominently among the cast of mentors from those formative years.