I talked to the recruiter today about the opportunity in Oklahoma. He encouraged me to talk further with the president. He thought he could get me the salary I want. Later this morning, he called back and related that they would meet my minimum requirements, so, surprise! Iay have to seriously consider this job offer. Ignoring bonuses, the income increase is about 37% over my current gross. After taxes, I expect to net $36,000 additional annual income. After housing costs to get a close to equivalent home, I’ll net $24,000. So… that’s the financial side.
Not much I can say about the job because it’s too niche an employer. I’m already really exposed to doxxing.
My wife is game, but she’s getting lots of resistance from her friends and the daughter. I think kiddo’s worried about the extra distance to grandma & grandpa for her daughter. Given my childhood distant from relatives, it’s difficult to empathize, but I do comprehend the anxiety. She’d be alone with her husband and his (unreliable) family.
I need to accomplish tasks tonight (expense submittal for interview, project history for another interview), but I feel like a night idle while the wife’s away would do me good. She’s doing grandma stuff. The girls will come to the house this weekend, so “resting” may be confined to tonight.
The boss worked from home today, so I absorbed the brunt of random questions all day. In one instance, I endured three separate visits regarding the same topic: the type of catenary loads from coiling doors, ultimate or service. So, I “enjoyed” explaining building code evolution versus structural steel code evolution, the interaction of the two, and how a designer could ignore the consequences of ignorance regarding the provided load type and deliver a conservative design.
And there were other conversations and tasks as well.
In other news, the wife started going to bed topless, so that’s nice. I’m doing my best to encourage this restored habit. I need to reward toplessness around the house. As I read what I’ve written, I realize that the way I’m wording this implies my marriage is egalitarian. It isn’t. But I’m not an insistent man, and I’ve discovered after 30+ years that the wife responds better to positive reinforcement and encouragement than orders and commands. “Thank you for doing ‘X’, that helps me get through the day,” makes a world of difference regarding whether I must ask for something any particular day, or if she helps me because she loves me. For example, I RARELY cook, and that’s not just dividing labor, though that happens, too, but instead I encourage her to cook for me in many small ways. Call it manipulation or call it appreciation; it works either way, and I eat homemade quiche prepared from scratch and set aside most weeks.
After decades, you might think a relationship doesn’t change, but it does change because it has changed before. All relationships, especially the erotic ones, and more especially the sexual ones, ebb and flow according to unexpected and anticipated developments. A baby is born, or isn’t, a grandparent dies, a close relative moves away, or moves closer, a job gets better, or worse, or changes in a way nobody could predict. Somebody gets fat, or skinny, or ill, or muscular. Something always happens.
The huge change in my life was a “crisis of faith.” I put that in quotes because several events in my life foreshadowed it, many trivial or petty. But there came a culmination whereafter I couldn’t tolerate any but the most formal Christian eucharist, and then only very occasionally. There’s something about charismatic services which evoke hypocrisy or fraud. There’s such an emphasis on connection to something spiritual that the entire assembly must experience, but cannot, and from ubiquitous anecdotes, does not. Repeated exposure to this juxtaposition of ideals with lies makes a man question all those “believers” around him. Since then religion and faith dreaned from me.
Which left me with the world we share, what is real. That transition was easier than I anticipated, but not particularly helpful for interpersonal relationships. People, in my experience, aren’t satisfied with reality, and certainly not their own reality. They want more (or less) of their personal experience, and instead something fantastic, in the literal sense of “a fantasy.” I find myself there very often.
The “real world” is a tough place to live. There are grand adventures to be hae, sure, but they come at great cost, invariably. At the least, no person can be in two places at once: the great anecdote you share with a friend comes with your absence from the person with whom you share that experience. Even the quiet solitude of a contemplative evening alone comes with the loss of some unfinished task. We make these little choices every single moment we live. Some small, inconsequential decision could be the difference between life and death.
I once delayed briefly departing DFW metro to find a retail store (pre GPS mapping software). Unsuccessful, I drove home. East of Texarkana, a wheel tore loose from a car at a dirt race track alongside the interstate highway and struck my car as I passed. If I’d been a moment earlier or later, then the wheel would have killed me. If I’d passed half an hour earlier or later, then the wheel would harmlessly roll into the median. Life is very strange like that. I might have attended college in a different city and never met my wife, or stayed near Chicago after college for work & career, or any number of other decisions.
This open-ended expanse of possibilities, I think, is what troubles me most about the opportunity in Oklahoma. Is it really an opportunity, or is it an adventure that takes me from other, better adventures in this one life? That’s what makes it so “real” in a way this recent move from one house to another isn’t. I think this – or another job change – has consequences I can’t anticipate. Like my time in Scotland, I worry that the consequences are greater than I foresee.
A Life Un-Lived 