A Sunday

It's a Sunday morning, a rare time for writing.  L is on call and not feeling too well, so I'm trying to give her a bit of time to sleep before slipping off to a later church service.  It's a far cry from the Sundays of a few years ago, where I would hit first and come home to Mom and Dad's to listen to a few songs while entering receipts.  Today it's coffee and a bit of writing.

The past months have been reflective ones.  In a couple of weeks, I'll reach my seven-year anniversary at work.  M hit his in March, and lately decided to go into business for himself—a sort of change that has sparked him on new and more creative endeavors, I think.  For my part, I don't expect to do anything of the sort, but there's been some interest in the mostly-passive job search I've been conducting.  An interview with Amazon went awry thanks to some miscommunication between the recruiters and the company, but a phone screen with a more local firm has gone well.  I'm very well treated on the job, but my role is very clearly defined and unlikely to change:  the odds of developing professionally are getting slimmer while my paycheck grows, a deadly combination for getting a new job later.  I'm trying to be patient with a mostly unfamiliar process.

Work has otherwise been a bit stressful.  E's mother passed away a month or so ago, and that has taken a toll on him.  He is usually a bit gruff and taciturn, but the environment has been downright ugly for our "new" sales associate.  To be fair, she takes a fair bit of getting used to as well.  Neither one really cares much for the other, I think, and the rest of us are trying to figure out how to deal with it.  It will be a blow when—and not if—she goes, since she has spent the past year-plus trying to address systemic problems in our sales / marketing "infrastructure."  Letting D go was probably one of the biggest mistakes E ever made; he should've fired me instead.

L and I are trying to manage our schedule and only partially succeeding.  To be fair, her work demands a great deal of her time and flexibility; and I'm still teaching and occasionally competing.  This was the first weekend in awhile where we protected our schedule well enough to afford any sort of blogging time—and even this is borrowed.  We're still going through a veritable mountain of stuff, and the coming Spring (even if in fits and starts) has required a bit of maintenance on the yard.  Yesterday was its first mow, and I did a bit of seeding and weed'n'feed.  I'm hoping to spread some mulch today and maybe start to seed some flowers.

The months ahead are karate-busy, too:  I'm certifying with AC for his Universal system along with MC, E, D, and J.  This comes in a week—less, really.  I'm less interested in the ranking than I am in AC's considerable knowledge and the hopes that I can remember some of it.  D has learned an entire system of forms—and mostly black belt material—in the past year.  The following month is a return to tournamenting.  This particular tournament has been really good to me:  it was the one where AC offered to teach me his form (with which I've since won gold), and where I got my first (and probably only) 10.0, while simultaneously helping us punch a ticket to Korea in 2014.  I don't know that I can really do much more this year, except hope for a better showing with weapons.  For that, I need to buy a new staff!  A week later, MC is certifying in front of the Koreans, and I'll serve as his second.

In the midst of it all, L and I are trying to plan for the future. Keeping perspective here can be hard, since we both suffer from tunnel vision at times.  My reading has been in the Psalms lately, where I'm reminded that God literally owns the whole universe; I'm grateful he's given me what he has, and I hope I do well with it.  Reflecting on M's experience in grad school gives such a perspective on the distance we've come:  it's a far cry from the days of skipping meals.

Gram's decline continues, but the descent is slowing a little, I think.  Seeing K yesterday at the neighbors reminded me of her.  At six months, she gets frustrated at being unable to communicate, and it is similar for Gram, I think.  At the back end, of course, it's worse:  you know that there should be something there and there isn't.   K's growing hair; seeing her in profile reminded me of Gram's new "do" that she dislikes so much, and made me wonder how similar the two situations really are.  Even the curve of their spines seemed similar—although I suspect the plasticity of the baby's is much preferable to Gram's.

It's been two cups of coffee and a resumé edit, and I'm running out of things to say.  Perhaps sometime soon I'll be able to get a year in review in photos, but it takes a bit of time to do the processing and memory retrieval.