Category Archives: Days in My Life

I don’t just sit around and watch TV.

“Funnies” from My Files

Posted on by
4

Cleaning out files and boxes often yields treasures.

I’ve been going through boxes and drawer full of old files lately in preparation for my move later this spring. What I’m finding is an amazing collection of paper that I thought worth saving — and a bunch of stuff I can only classify as junk.

Cartoons

Beekman CartoonWhat I want to share today is what I found in folder labeled “funnies.” They were mostly the kind of jokes that get distributed by email these days. But back in the 1980s, there wasn’t any email — at least not to speak of. Instead, we used copy machines to share the humor with other friends throughout the office. This cartoon is a good example. Someone — maybe even me — whited out the caption and typed in one more appropriate for the workplace. I was a Field Supervisor and I had several whiney people working for me. Beekman was the nearest hospital.

Work ArtOne of the guys I worked with was a bit of an artist and he would sketch out cartoon characters and scenes of coworkers and workplaces. I found a legal sized sheet of paper covered with his doodles. I recognize Larry, Jim, Seymour, and Frank (the big boss) on this sheet. Can’t remember the names of the others.

Also in that folder were a series of cartoons I created when I worked at ADP as an internal auditor in the late 1980s. I started creating these cartoons when we were out on an audit in Mt. Laurel, NJ. There were four of us assigned — twice the usual number. It was too far to drive every day, so we all stayed in the Mt. Laurel Hilton, which was a pit. Joe was our boss. Most of us had nicknames; mine was Spike, because of my hair. The office we were auditing was so screwed up that we couldn’t look at anything without finding problems. After a while, we were worn out and simply didn’t want to keep at it. These two cartoons illustrate the situation. They’re full of inside jokes I can barely remember.

Joe Sent Me

Fishing with Spike

The last cartoon of the series was done a while later, when members of the audit staff were getting jobs elsewhere faster than they could be replaced. It documents the first two to depart.

Joe Sent Me, 2

I wound up going to a different part of the company, where I worked as a financial analyst until I resigned to become a freelance writer. I found my resignation letter, too.

Junk

DiskettesA box in the garage was full of outdated computer media, including complete installation diskette sets for Microsoft Word 6 for Mac, Microsoft Office 4.2 for Mac, and Microsoft Office 95 for Windows. I also found (and discarded about 20 100MB ZIP disks, countless diskettes, and even a SCSI cable for an old PowerBook computer. I threw 95% of it away; I just saved a box of data diskettes on the off chance that I can find a device that can read them.

As George Carlin says, “Your house is a pile stuff with a cover on it.”

Throwing away junk is good. It means I’ll have less to unpack when I set up my new home. It also means it’ll be cheaper to move.

I just can’t believe how much stuff I saved — and forgot about — over the years.

A[nother] Trip to Quartzsite

Posted on by
3

A quick trip to Quartzsite — perhaps my last ever.

I flew to Quartzsite, AZ on Tuesday with Penny the Tiny Dog. I wanted to visit one of my favorite weird desert destinations one more time before I move north to my new home in Washington State.

Quartzsite, in case you don’t know, is a tiny community in the desert right on I-10 a bit east of the California border. During the summer months, it has a population of about 3,600 people. In the winter, especially during the big RV show week in January, the area population grows to at least 50,000. Most of the winter visitors are RVers who live in trailers and motorhomes out in the desert on BLM land. They come there for the warm climate, but also for the continuous string of shows and swap meets in the area.

I’ve been going to Quartzsite for years. I really like going for a few days and staying in an RV out in the desert, but it was often difficult to arrange, given my soon-to-be ex-husband’s schedule. I bought my fifth wheel RV (the “Mobile Mansion“) there back in 2010 and that was the last time we stayed there overnight. Almost every year I managed to get at least one visit in. Last year, I visited for the day; my friend Janet was living there, selling her artwork at one of the Tyson Wells shows.

This year, a Twitter friend was staying in the area and I used that as an excuse to go out there during the RV show week. (I don’t know why I need an excuse these days; my life is finally my own to do as I please. But old habits die hard.) I didn’t feel like driving — it’s about 100 miles each way. So I went out to the airport, dragged the helicopter out, preflighted, fired it up, and took off with Penny on board in the passenger seat beside me.

It was an uneventful flight. A typically perfect Arizona winter day with temperatures forecasted to get into the high 70s, no wind, and no clouds. I had a bit of a problem with my door on takeoff — I’d lifted off with the door unlatched — and had to land in the desert about 4 miles west of town to close it properly. But then we were on our way, zipping across the desert about 500 feet up at 120 knots ground speed. Foreflight on my iPad told me we’d get there at 9:23 AM.

My landing zone (LZ) was a crapshoot. I honestly didn’t know for sure where I’d land. Quartzsite is surrounded by BLM land and I am allowed to land there, provided I don’t have paying passengers on board. But I wanted to get as close to Tyson Wells and the RV show across the street as possible. I thought I might try an empty lot south of I-10, but when I got near there, I saw a few trailers parked nearby and a man walking across the lot. Too much going on. So instead, I found a nice LZ a bit south of there. It was probably about a half mile from the traffic light just east of Tyson Wells.

Quartzsite Helicopter Parking

I shut down, put Penny on her leash, and locked up the helicopter. We walked over to the RV show. It was still early — only about 9:30 AM — and things were just waking up. That’s one of the things I like about getting to Quartzsite early; you get a real feel for the “behind the scenes” life of the vendors. Along the way, I got a text from my friend Jim in Idaho and decided to give him a call. We chatted while I walked around outside the big RV show tent.

By the time we finished, I was in the vendor area nearby, just outside a pet supply booth. I made my first purchase of the day: a new harness/collar for Penny. Finally she can stop wearing that kitten collar!

Artisan Village
One of the weirder vendor RVs at Tyson Wells.

We walked Tyson Wells next. The show was not nearly as big as it had been in past years — hell, Quartzsite has come a long way down since its glory years. There was still plenty to see and buy, including the usual collection of junk of interest to RVers. There were also quite a few bible and prayer booths. As I walked past one of them, a guy outside asked me if I wanted to participate in a “bible survey.” I said, “You don’t want to hear what I have to say,” and laughed as I walked away.

I looked at jewelry. I’m still trying to replace a pair of earrings I aways wore that my husband gave me. I simply can’t bear to look at them anymore. But I didn’t see anything better than the pair I’d already bought that were slightly too big for everyday use.

Forkman
Wouldn’t this be a great way for a caterer to display his business cards at events?

I bought a business card stand made out of flatware for a friend of mine who owns a catering company. I figured it would be a neat thing to put out at events to display his business cards.

I also bought an excellent, right-out-of-the-oven cinnamon roll without all that icky icing Cinnabon uses. Delicious!

In the meantime, Penny was trying to say hello to all the other dogs she saw — and there were a lot of them. Sadly, a lot of the smaller dogs were confined in dog strollers — if you can believe that — or being carried. Why won’t people let their dogs be dogs?

Finished with Tyson Wells, we walked back to the RV show. I wanted to buy a sign.

Last year, when I’d gone to the show, I’d bought five wooden signs designed to hang one under the other. The top one said “Mobile Mansion” and the bottom ones each had names: “Maria,” “Mike,” “Charlie,” and “Alex.” You see, my husband was supposed to join me on the road in the RV and I thought it would be fun to have these signs hanging outside to show who was in residence. It’s an RVer thing. I had them with me in Washington last summer and was having a sign stand made so I could hang them outside the RV. Of course, when my husband told me he wanted a divorce, I sent the “Mike” and “Charlie” signs back to him. Although I aways hoped I could get Charlie back, it doesn’t seem as if my husband will give him up. But I do have Penny so I wanted to have a sign made for her. I’ll hang the remaining signs when I go back to Washington and set up the RV again.

I found the wooden sign guy and placed my order. I paid him $15 and he told me to be back in an hour.

I put Penny in my tote bag with her head popping out. I didn’t want to carry her, but I knew that walking her though the big tent on a leash was not a wise idea. With her safely tucked away under my arm, we went inside.

Teeth Whitening at Quartzsite
For some reason, I found the teeth whitening booth disturbing.

Plug and Play Solar
Someone’s version of my husband’s idea: plug and play solar.

Inside the tent was a zoo: crazy crowded. Vendors were selling RV timeshares and providing travel information about various destinations. They were selling cooking appliances and utensils. They were offering massages and pain relief and teeth whitening. They were selling solar panels — including the “Plug and Play” systems my soon-to-be ex-husband had wanted to design but never moved forward on. They were selling clothes and cell phone cases and solutions to clean RVs. The whole place reeked of RV septic system fluid — like someone had dumped a case of the stuff on the floor. It was crowded with retirees shuffling from one booth to the next, making unexpected stops. I was very glad Penny was safely tucked away — she would have either been trampled or her leash would have tripped an old guy.

I looked at a cell phone case, but left without one when I realized they wanted $19.95 for the same thing I could buy at Tyson Wells for $6.

Turkey Leg
Smoked turkey legs, anyone?

Loaded Baked Potato
I call this lunch.

We exited back into the fresh air on the west side of the tent, right outside the smoked turkey leg booth. I took Penny out of the bag, set her on the ground, and got on line. My husband never left Quartzsite without a smoked turkey leg — he loved them. In fact, last year when I went without him, I brought a few back for him. I liked them, too, of course, although it was too much food for lunch. So I ordered one wrapped to go (which I’d eat for dinner over the next two days — they really are huge) and got a fully loaded smoked baked potato for lunch. Penny and I retreated back toward the outside of the tent, where we sat on a flattened cardboard box to eat in the sun. By this time, I’d stripped off most of my layers of clothing and was very comfortable in a tank top and jeans. (Yes, in January.)

Penny's Sign
The style and color of the sign is different, but last year’s sign man wasn’t around. The “Maria” and “Alex” signs are in my RV.

With lunch finished, we walked around the outside of the RV show tent again, eventually winding up at the sign guy. The sign was ready, although he had run out of the spray stuff he uses to protect it. I told him I didn’t want to wait for his companion to arrive with some, confirmed that the paint was dry, and stuffed it in my bag of goodies.

We were done and it was time to go home.

Dog Ice Cream Cone
How cool is this? An ice cream cone for dogs! It was about 3-4 inches total, including the ice cream on top.

I did want ice cream, but I didn’t want to wait on the very long line for the ice cream vendor outside the big tent. And I certainly wasn’t going to pay the other guy on the way out of the area $7 for an ice cream cone. But we did find an ice cream place not far from the corner with the traffic light. I got a huge 2-1/2 scoop serving on a waffle cone. And when they saw that I was with a dog, they gave me a tiny vanilla cone just for her.

We walked back to the helicopter. I did a quick preflight, added a half quart of oil — which I managed to spill quite a bit of — and climbed on board. A while later, we were airborne over the town. I managed to take one photo of the RV show and Tyson Wells area before turning east toward Wickenburg.

Aerial Quartzsite

We were back on the ground at Wickenburg Airport 40 minutes later.

It had been a nice day out — and possibly the last time I’d ever go to Quartzsite. I’d miss it.

A Visit with Grandma

Posted on by
Comment

Real life turned to fiction from my files.

The following is a “short story” I wrote back in 1989. My sister might remember it; I’m pretty sure she read it back then. It’s a fictionalized account of a typical visit to my grandmother’s house in New Jersey. Out of all the things I wrote back then, this was one of my favorites. I found it earlier this month while cleaning out and packing up the papers in a closet.

My grandmother died about 11 years ago at the age of 89. Even on her death bed in the hospital she was looking ahead — “I’m going to be 90,” she said proudly to one of her visitors when asked how old she was. She was a hard-working woman who had a tough life. One of nine children, she began working in a garment factory in the Bronx when she was 15, lived through the Depression, bore two children eight years apart, had an alcoholic husband who later was paralyzed by a stroke, and worked until she was in her 70s. She was a simple woman with a minimal education who could do all kinds of mathematical calculations in her head.

I have her to thank for my work ethic, which has always convinced me that people who work hard (and smart) are rewarded for their efforts.

This is her birthday. She would have been 101 years old today.

I’m typing the 2,700 words of this story into my blog to help archive it in a safe place and share it with blog readers. I hope you enjoy it.

– = o = –

A Visit with Grandma

by M. L. Langer

The house sits on the right side of the street, beside the others it has been sitting with for the past forty-five years. It is a small, squat ranch, with a concrete terrace out front. There are five others on the street that looked exactly like it when they were new, but years of landscaping and home improvements make them look more like cousins now than the siblings they once were. This house has a dark green awning over the terrace — the stoop, your grandfather used to call it — and bright white aluminum siding. The driveway is straight and short; a rectangular piece of concrete with an irregular texture left on it from the sweeping broom that smoothed it down before it was left to harden. The grass is rich green and perfectly trimmed and, although it is the height of autumn and there are a number of trees in the yard, very few leave litter the lawn. Instead, they are piled neatly at the curb, waiting for the noisy vacuum truck to come by during the week and take them away.

You park on the street and start down the driveway, walking past the three-year-old Buick parked on the pavement. You remember the car before this one: another Buick, a pale green Skylark that had been bought the same year your brother was born. You remember seeing your grandmother maneuver it to the curb in front of your house when she was taking driving lessons and you remember hitting your head on the metal frame around the back window when, years later, it was rear-ended on the highway while she was driving you and your sister to visit your grandfather in his nursing home. For years your grandmother had said she was going to replace it, but it wasn’t until your brother was in his last year of high school that you finally dragged her to the Buick dealer and made sure she left a deposit on a new one. She still talked about the old one, and how faithful it had been all those years.

The garage door is open and you go inside, right up to the door in the back. You knock loudly, then open it, then shout into the house so as not to startle the woman you know is inside. The television on the kitchen counter is on, showing a commercial for a series of home improvement books; the announcer’s voice is blaring into the empty room. As you turn down the volume, your shout is answered by a voice coming from back toward the bedrooms. You wait, pulling off your gloves and jacket, and your grandmother appears, talking a mile a minute about how she was just getting ready to do some work in the yard.

You kiss her hello and ask why her house is so cold. Don’t you have the heat on? you want to know.

It’s on low, she tells you. Are you cold? I can turn it up.

But then she goes to the television and turns up the volume a little and starts telling you about how much trouble she had getting her neighbor to start her lawn mower for her the day before. In the middle of a sentence, she stops suddenly and asks you if you want tea. You say that would be nice and she goes over to the stove where a kettle is waiting. She fills it at the sink, now talking about a birthday party she is going to later on for one of the girls at work. You watch her put the pot on the stove, then turn on the gas beneath it. The automatic lighter clicks twice before the gas comes to life. She stops talking long enough to concentrate on lowering the flame, then starts up again, now about your mother and how she called just the night before. You sit down at the kitchen table and listen with one ear; you know that if you miss something important, you’ll get a chance to catch it later on.

While she talks and busies herself with a ceramic tea pot, you look at her carefully. She is a very short, stout woman, with an almost barrel shape to her. She is wearing one of her sweatsuits, this one black. The pants are too long and bag up around her ankles, the top is comfortably loose around her big chest and stomach. She has short blonde hair with silver gray roots. Her nose is long and hooked at the end; if it were green and had a wart, it would look just like the one on a witch. When you look at the face around it, the cliché wrinkled with age comes to mind. You remember all the times she told you she was going to get a face lift and how, each time, she’d pull the skin up and away from her face with her fingertips. It had always amazed you just how much younger she would look. But although she could well afford the expense, you knew she’d never do it.

From the sink, she asks you if you heard from your father lately. You tell her you haven’t. She tells you that she drove past his house a week ago and saw that he’d cut down another tree. Then she starts talking about one of the trees in her yard and about how many leaves come off it each fall. She tells you that she’s thinking of cutting it cut down. She asks you if you know who she can call about it and you tell her you don’t. You tell her to keep the tree, that it shades a quarter of the yard in the summertime. You tell her that if she needs help in the yard, you can come by with the blower. She tells you that one of her neighbors has a blower, then comes to the table with two cups and spoons and starts talking about the new menus they got at work and how much the price of a hot dog has gone up to. She tells you she doesn’t understand why people eat there because it’s so expensive.

You watch her go over to the cabinet under the television set and open it, talking the whole time. She bends over to get out some napkins, then asks if you want some cookies. You tell her you don’t, that you’re really not hungry, and watch her come back to the table with a package of Peek Freans anyway, now talking about how she went to pick up a few things at the supermarket earlier that morning. She tells you that she bought two bags of Halloween candy for the kids in the neighborhood and would you like to take some home with you? Before you can tell her you wouldn’t, she starts telling you about the time when your mother came to the elementary school to watch you and your sister in the Halloween parade and a man from the newspaper took a picture of her and your baby brother, who was wearing a Mighty Mouse costume. On Wednesday, when the paper came out, the picture was right on the front page. You remember the event well; you were about ten years old when it happened. You remember how your mother had drawn whiskers on his face with her eyebrow pencil. You remember the little mouse ears she’d sewn onto a sweatshirt hood. You just don’t remember what your costume had been that year.

Restless, you get up and walk over to the stove to turn up the flame under the tea kettle. Your grandmother is bending over the cabinet again, looking for something else while she tells you about the birthday party she’s going to later that night. It’s a surprise party, she tells you, and the birthday girl’s roommate is throwing it. She’s going to be twenty-two. She straightens from the cabinet with a package of the same brand of raisin cookies you’d been eating at her house for years and tells you about how the girl graduated from college in May but couldn’t find a job as a teacher so she still works at the store. She tells you that she doesn’t understand why girls go to school to be teachers when there isn’t enough jobs for them and the pay is bad anyway. She tells you that she tells all her friends at work about you and about how you’re a CPA. She pronounces the three letters clearly and separately, giving each equal importance. You try again to tell her that you’re not a CPA, that you’re just an accountant, but she’s not listening. She’s telling you how she told her friend Sally Connelly about your promotion and about the time she came to see your office.

She puts the package of cookies on a plate and sets it on the table while you walk over to the television and turn down the volume. Then you tell her you’ll be right back and you head down the hall to the bathroom, past the confused collection of valuable antiques and worthless nicknacks that sit side by side on tabletops and in glass-fronted cabinets all over the dining room and living room. On the way, you check the thermostat and find it set to fifty-five degrees. You turn it up to seventy, catching bits and pieces of her voice as she talks to you about your sister and her new apartment. Then silence as you close the bathroom door behind you.

When you come out, the tea kettle is whistling loudly and your grandmother is talking away, now about how she wants to have her bedroom repainted. As you come into the kitchen, she turns off the flame and removes the screaming kettle from the stove. She pours the water into the carefully prepared tea pot, telling you about how her mother used to dry out the tea bags so she could use them again. You open the refrigerator and retrieve a half gallon container of skim milk. You see the other things in there: cans of Shop Rite soda and eggs and blackened bananas. You ask her why she has beer in the refrigerator. She tells you she keeps it for when Sally Connelly and her boyfriend come over. Her boyfriend John likes beer. Then she starts telling you about what your mother had to say on the phone when she called the night before.

You sit down at the table, putting the milk down on the plastic tablecloth beside a tin tray of Sara Lee pound cake that she must have pulled out of the freezer and sliced while you were in the bathroom. She comes over with the tea pot, which is now wearing a crocheted sweater your mother calls a tea cozy. You look at her hands as she pours your tea, telling you the whole time about the trouble your mother and stepfather are having with the roof and how much money the men want to fix it. Her hands are small but broad, with short, crooked, big-knuckled fingers. Hands that have done a lifetime of work. Real work, not the writing and punching of calculator keys that your hands do. These hands helped raise sisters and brothers. They went to work in the sweater factory at age fifteen and didn’t retire from that work until they were age sixty two. They raised two children and kept a spotless house for a husband. They tended to that husband when he got ill, bathing and feeding him until the task of lifting him out of bed every morning became too much for them to handle and was turned over to more experienced, less loving hands. Now, five days a week, they go to work in the restaurant where they scrub tables and seat customers. They take care of the house and the lawn, they scoop leaves out of the gutters and pull down the heavy, dark green awning every year. They make tea for you when you visit and, when you leave, they take the dishes out of the dishwasher and wash them by hand.

She puts the pot down on the table, now telling you that she gave your brother fifty dollars before he went back to school because he needed a new pair of sneakers. She walks over to the sink to rinse off a knife that she used to cut the pound cake, talking about how big your brother is getting. You tell her to come sit down, that her tea is getting cold. Then you get up and look in the cabinet on the right of the stove for the sugar bowl. She opens the cabinet on the left and removes a jar filled with sugar packets from the restaurant, then comes back to the table with you.

You sit there drinking your tea, eating Peek Freans and partially frozen Sara Lee pound cake. She sits on the edge of the chair across from yours, a piece of pound cake in her gnarled fingers, telling you about your cousin in the Marines and how beautiful his two sons are. She tells you that she spoke to the older son last week while she was at your aunt’s house and that he told her he missed her and wanted her to come to North Carolina to visit him. You listen with one ear again, thinking about the chores you’ve got to do at home and wondering what you’re going to make for dinner.

When your second cup of tea is gone and she starts telling you about your mother’s phone call for the third time, you realize that it’s time to go. You rise and start clearing plates and cups from the table, putting them in the dishwasher. She tells you not to worry about it, that she’ll take care of it, that it’s no bother. Then she helps you, telling you about her boss and how much he thinks of her because she helps clear the tables when other hostesses don’t. She tells you that he gave her a raise and you wonder if it’s another raise or the same raise she told you about last time you visited. Then she starts telling you about your uncle and how he came by the store one day last week while she was working. You listen politely, pulling on your jacket and gloves. Then you thank her for the tea and bend down to give her a kiss on the cheek. The kiss comes with a hug and you hug her back, feeling how small and warm and soft she is and remembering, for a minute, all the times you slept over her house when you were younger and how she made farina and tea with lots of milk in it for you in the morning. You remember your grandfather, now long gone, and how he used to call you skinny melinks. You remember how you and your sister used to get into the old, green Buick with them on autumn days like today and go to the farm stand where you’d get apples and pumpkins.

Then the hug is over and you stand up straight again, telling her that you’ll invite her over for dinner soon. You go out the door and she follows you, talking about what nights she works and what nights it’s best for her to come. It’s cold out and she’s wearing only her sweatsuit and slippers. You can see wisps of vapor by her mouth when she talks. You tell her to go back inside, that it’s too cold to be out without a coat on, but she follows you down the driveway anyway, right to the end where your car is parked. As you get into the car, she bends down to collect a few leaves that lay on the grass near the curb, then points up to the tree in the side year, saying something that you can’t hear through the closed windows of the car. You start the engine and toot the horn once, then wave and drive away.

THE END

I Love My Life

Posted on by
10

Why I love my life — and how you can love your life, too.

I love my life.

That’s the thought that struck me last Saturday afternoon, as I walked across the transient parking area at Lake Havasu Municipal Airport, from the FBO office to my helicopter, swinging a plastic bag full of BBQ takeout.

I love my life.

The sudden thought amazed and exhilarated me. It put a skip to my step and made me smile.

I love my life.

This was near the end of a busy day when I’d spent 2-1/2 hours flying an aerial photographer and videographer over six different target vehicles in the 2013 Parker 250 off-road race. It had been hard, challenging flying, sometimes dangerously close to the ground, performing maneuvers that pushed the helicopter’s capabilities as much as — if not more than — I’d ever pushed them before.

This was the same day I’d been up at 5 AM and had gone out with just a half a cup of coffee and some oatmeal in my belly on a 31°F morning. The same day I’d preflighted my helicopter and pulled off its doors in the predawn gloom with just a Mini Maglite to light the way.

This was the day after I’d spent the night in a houseful of strangers — all men — sleeping in a bed on sheets that someone else had slept in the night before.

And it was only 24 hours — almost to the minute — after being offered the aerial photo gig 80 miles across the desert from my home.

It had been a most unusual and challenging 24 hours.

And I had enjoyed every minute of it.

I love my life.

I realized, as I walked across the airport ramp, smelling the aroma of my BBQ dinner and looking forward to the fried okra I’d nibble in flight on the way home, that I needed to blog about this sudden realization, I needed to document how and why I felt the way I did. I needed to capture the moment in my blog to remember it forever, just in case the feeling should fade due to events in the days or weeks or months to come. I needed to share it with others who may also love their lives but not really know it. And to share it with the folks who are missing the point of life — the meaning of life, if you will — in an effort to help them understand and set a course that would enable them to love their lives, too.

What I Love about My Life

In thinking hard about this, I think what I love most about my life can be broken down into several things: freedom, time, variety, travel, challenge, and friends. Bear with me while I address how each of these affect my life and personal philosophy.

Freedom.
Because I don’t have a “regular job” and I don’t have kids or a husband to answer to, I have the freedom to do pretty much whatever I want. If I feel like getting up at dawn to photograph first light over the desert, fine. If I feel like eating leftover Chinese food for breakfast, great! If I feel like hopping in the car with my dog and spending the night in Prescott after a pot-luck dinner with friends there, wonderful! Anything goes. My only limits are time (see below) and money.

Time.
Not having a “regular job,” kids, or a husband also means I can make my own hours and do things when I want to do them. Obviously I’m not completely free — I still have work to do and appointments to keep — but my time is extraordinarily flexible. For the most part, I make up my day and week and month as I go along. If something I’m doing needs more time, I take it. The only time of year when my time (and freedom) are restricted is when I’m on contract for agricultural work — but that’s only 11 weeks out of the year. (I don’t know too many people who would find that a hardship.)

Variety.
Back in 1987 (or thereabouts), I took a job as an auditor with a large residential developer. I did construction project audits. Every single audit took about two weeks to complete and was exactly the same. After two months, I started looking for another job. The lack of variety in my work was driving me insane.

I feel the same today — I thrive on variety. I like the fact that every day of my life is different. I wake up at different times, I do different things, I see different people, I eat different things, I go to different places, I go to bed at different times. Unless I’m elbow-deep in a book project that consumes 10 hours a day, no two days are the same. And that’s very nice.

Travel.
One of the benefits of time and freedom is the ability to travel. I love to travel, to get out and see different places. When things get dull — when I feel as if I’m slipping into a rut at home — I shake things up with a trip. I’ve been home in Arizona since September and have managed to take at least one trip every single month since I’ve been back: Washington (twice), Las Vegas, California, Florida, and Lake Powell (by helicopter). That doesn’t count the day trips and overnight trips I’ve squeezed in on a whim: Prescott, Phoenix, Winslow, Parker, and Tucson. And I already have my next three trips planned out.

I don’t travel as a tourist, ticking off items on a list of things to see. I travel to experience the places like someone who lives there. It’s a much better (and usually cheaper) way to experience the world.

Challenge.
What can I say about challenge? Simply put, a life without challenges is simply not a life worth living. I need goals — realistic and achievable goals — and I need to be able to work toward them.

My entire life has been a series of challenges and achievements, some minor, like learning to ride a motorcycle or horse, and some major, like building a successful career as a freelance writer or building a profitable helicopter charter business from the ground up. I’ve always got a handful of goals in my back pocket and am always working toward achieving the ones that mean most to me at the moment.

I’m fortunate to have a good brain and good work ethic — two prerequisites for success. I’m also fortunate to have good health, which makes everything else a lot easier. But I know plenty of people who have all these things and still don’t challenge themselves. They skate through life, doing the least they can do to get by comfortably, never challenging themselves to go the next step. I simply couldn’t live like that.

The best part of always having challenges and goals to work toward? I never get bored.

Friends.
It wasn’t until this year, when my marriage fell apart, that I realized how much my friends mean to me.

When I was married, living with my husband in Wickenburg or Phoenix, I didn’t have many good friends. I couldn’t. There was no room in my life to build and maintain friendships.

But when I went away to Washington for my summer work, my husband stayed behind. I began building strong friendships with some of the people I met. I also kept in touch with other friends from all over the world by phone, email, Twitter, and Facebook. This network of friends was amazingly helpful and supportive when my husband called me on my birthday in June and asked for a divorce. And they were even more supportive when I discovered, in August, the lies and the woman he’d been sleeping with. The pain of his betrayal is sharp, but my friends help ease that pain.

Even now that I’m home, dealing with harassment from my husband or his lawyer on an almost weekly basis, my friends have been extremely helpful, showering me with invitations to get out and do things together, offering me their homes as destinations for trips, or simply sharing words of encouragement and support. They not only take the edge off my divorce ordeal, but give me a great outlook on life.

Without good friends, no one can truly love their life.

How I Got Here

I got where I am the way most people get where they are in life — but with an abrupt turn and an important realization along the way.

The abrupt turn: career change
Raised in a lower middle class family, divorced parents, stepdad that brought us all up a notch and offered my family the financial security we never really had. High school, college. 9 to 5 job with a good employer and good benefits. A new job that wasn’t a good match (see above) followed by a better job with a Fortune 100 corporation. Things seemed pretty sunny for me.

But they weren’t. I wasn’t happy. I didn’t like the work I was doing. I didn’t like the way the hour-long commute — each way — was eating away at my life. I didn’t like corporate politics and game-playing. I was good at my job, I made good money, I kept getting raises and promotions, but I dreaded getting up in the morning.

Been there? I bet you have. Many people have.

Trouble was, I made a bad decision back in my college days. I always wanted to be a writer, but I was convinced by my family that I needed a better career path. I was the first in the history of my family to go to college, so it was a big deal. I was good with numbers and math so we figured accounting was a good course of study. I ended up with two scholarships in a great business school, Hofstra University on Long Island. But in my junior year, at the age of 19 — did I mention I started college at 17? –I began realizing that I really didn’t want to be an accountant. I wanted to be a writer. I called home and told my mother I wanted to change my major to journalism. She had a fit and told me I was crazy. That I’d never get a job. That I’d be giving up a great future. I listened to her. I was 20 when I got my BBA degree with “highest honors” in accounting.

I’ve always regretted listening to my mother that day. Indeed, that was the last time I took her advice on any important life decision.

I always wrote — I kept journals and wrote novels and short stories that were never published or seen by others. And I always remembered my dream of becoming a writer. So in 1990, when the Institute of Internal Auditors was looking for someone to author a 4-1/2 day course about using “microcomputers” (primarily 20-pound “laptops”) for auditing and there was a $10,500 price tag attached to it, I sent them a proposal and got the project. I asked my boss for a leave of absence to do the work but was turned down. So I quit.

And that’s when I began my freelance career.

Believe me, leaving a job that paid me $45K/year plus benefits (in 1990) at the age of 28 was not an easy decision. As you might imagine, my mother absolutely freaked out.

Looking back at it now, this abrupt turn in my career path marks the day I stopped skating through life and started challenging myself to do better.

And I did. I had some rough patches along the way — the first full year freelancing was pretty tough — but I worked hard and smart and picked up momentum, mostly by working multiple jobs as a per diem contractor while writing articles and books. By 1998 I had my first best-selling computer book; the second came the following year. By then, money was not a problem — I finally made more money than I needed to live comfortably. I saved, I invested, I put money away for retirement.

And I used my excess time and money to challenge myself again: to learn how to fly helicopters.

By 2001, I’d bought my first helicopter and was trying to start a business with it. In 2005, I took that to the next level with a new, larger helicopter and FAA Part 135 certificate. In 2008, I found the niche market — agricultural work in Washington State — that finally enabled me to turn a profit. As publishing began its death spiral, I was already prepared with a third career that could support me.

People say I’m lucky. I disagree. The only thing I’m lucky about is having a good brain and good health — and even that’s something that I work at. It’s my work ethic — my deep-rooted philosophy that the only way to get ahead is to work hard and smart — that made everything possible. I truly believe that if you have a reasonable goal and you work hard and smart, you can achieve it.

Being able to make a living doing what I really love to do — writing and flying helicopters — makes it possible for me to love my life.

The important realization: the meaning of life
On my journey through life, I also made an important realization that changed everything: I discovered the meaning of life.

No, it isn’t 42.

As far as I’m concerned, there is no meaning to life. Life just is. But there are some undeniable facts about life and careful consideration of those facts should guide you to get the most of your life.

I guess I can sum it up my realizations about this in a few bullet points:

  • Life is short — and your life might be even shorter than you expect.
  • You only have one life. (I don’t believe in an “afterlife” or something like reincarnation.)
  • You should live your life as if you’re going to die tomorrow. That means not putting off until tomorrow what you can do today. It also means skipping the “bucket list” and doing what you want as soon as you can. And, by simple logic, it also means not waiting until you reach retirement age to start doing all the things you’ve wanted to do. You might never reach that age.

I think the light bulb came on back in 2008. When my friend Erik got sick and died unexpectedly at age 56, I realized that life can be taken from you at any time. I decided that I wanted to live life now — not when I turned the standard retirement age of 65. I realized that I never wanted to retire — that I wanted to do some kind of income producing work for the rest of my life. But I also knew that I didn’t want to be a slave to my work, now or ever.

I realized that in order to really enjoy life, I had to ensure my current and future financial security. That meant shedding assets I didn’t need and the debt that went with them. That meant paying off debt on important assets I’d always need, like a roof over my head. That meant building my business while paying off debt on its assets so that the business could support me without taking over my life.

And I’ve done all that. My house was paid off last February; I made the last payment on my helicopter earlier this month. I haven’t bought a new car since 2003 so I have no car loans or personal loans. Everything I buy now is by cash or credit card and, if by credit card, it’s paid off in full at the end of the billing cycle. I live within my means. I have no debt.

Do you know how cheaply you can live when you’ve got a paid-for roof over your head and no debt?

Go back to my discussions above about freedom and time. I mentioned that I don’t have a “regular job.” I’m proud of that fact. I worked hard to become debt free so I’d never have to get a regular job. Being debt-free gives me time and freedom.

Being debt-free makes it possible for me to love my life.

Don’t Get Me Wrong — My Life is Not Perfect

I don’t want you to come away from this blog post thinking that my life is perfect and that nothing ever goes wrong. That’s simply not true. My life might be good and I might love it, but it’s far from perfect. It’s worth taking a look at what’s not quite right.

Personal failures
I mentioned above that I need challenge to enjoy life. You might think that I always succeed at what I try. The truth is, although I have a pretty good track record, I don’t always succeed in what I set out to do. Sometimes it’s my fault, sometimes it’s the fault of others I trusted or relied on — which is ultimately my fault for trusting or relying on them. Sometimes it’s just the fact that what I was trying to achieve wasn’t really possible for me to achieve.

One example is my stint as a landlord. Back when I starting making good money, I started investing in rental properties. At one point, I owned a condo, a house, and a 4-unit apartment building. The idea was to run these as a business that generated enough revenue to pay the mortgages and possibly a little extra. But try as I might, I simply could not succeed in keeping the units full with tenants who paid the rent on time and respected my property or their neighbors. There was never enough revenue to cover all the expenses. There were headaches with complaints and repairs and cleanup. It was a miserable ordeal that I hated. I wound up selling my properties before the housing market tanked. One of them resulted in enough of a profit to put a healthy down payment on my second helicopter, so I guess I can’t complain. But as a landlord, I was a complete and utter failure.

Then there were the aerial video projects I attempted back in 2008. I hooked up with a video production company based in the San Diego area. I’d worked with the owner and liked his work. He came up with a proposal and I signed up, giving him a chunk of money. I then spent at least another $10K on flying and related expenses to gather footage. And paid another chunk of money for him to start turning it into something. Then I saw the footage and what he was trying to pass off as a “trailer.” I realized that he was simply not capable of creating the products he had contracted with me to produce. I threw another $2500 at a lawyer, trying to get some of my money back, but the video guy was unreachable and I soon got tired of throwing good money after bad. Finally tally of money lost: about $40K. Ouch. That was an expensive lesson.

I’ve also had failures getting contracts for book ideas and books that simply didn’t sell very well. I’ve failed to get certain writing or flying or web creation jobs I wanted. I’ve made bad (or at least regrettable) decisions on purchases of RVs, vehicles, and property. I’ve trusted people I shouldn’t have trusted and said things I shouldn’t have said. I’ve dropped the ball when it was my turn to play it, thus making a successful outcome impossible. And I’ve even let other people down when they expected or needed my help. I’m not proud of any of these things, but I can’t pretend they didn’t happen.

There are two things I need to say about personal failures and bad decisions:

  • There’s no reward without risk. If you don’t take chances, you will never achieve anything. This all goes back to the idea of skating through life. People who skate do so on a flat surface, never moving up or down. Nothing ventured, nothing gained (or lost). People who take risks can either climb or fall — by taking measured risks and putting the right effort into achieving goals, they’re more likely to climb.
  • We must all take personal responsibility for our own decisions and their outcomes. While others might advise you based on their own experiences or agendas, it’s up to you to make the final decision. Once made, you must take and keep ownership of the decision. Yes, I’ve made some bad decisions in my life that have led to disappointment or failure, but I alone am responsible for them. And I can live with that.

Life partner
And that brings up the second big thing that’s not perfect in my life: I don’t have a life partner.

I did — or I thought I did — for 29 years. We met in 1983 and hit it off almost immediately. We began living together only six months after we met. He liked to use the word “partner” to describe our relationship, but the partnership began to get tenuous not long after we got married 6 years ago.

It took me a long time to realize this. For years I think we were life partners, a real team that shared the same interests, dreams, and goals. But as time went on, that changed. The man who had been my leader became my follower and then my ball and chain. It happened slowly over time — so slowly that I didn’t even realize it was happening. And even when I began to realize it, I couldn’t believe it and remained in denial. I loved him too much. I didn’t want to believe it. Even today I’m having trouble believing that the man I’m in the process of divorcing is the same man I fell in love with and began sharing my life with 29 years ago.

I think part of the change had to do with our outlook on the future. Where I wanted to shed unneeded financial burdens to gain freedom and live my life now, my husband didn’t share either goal or philosophy. His purchase of a second home in Phoenix put a huge financial burden on him, but he refused to sell it. (And I won’t even go into how his living there with a roommate four days every week drove a wedge between us.) His worries about saving up for retirement and paying his bills put him in a string of dead-end jobs with employers who didn’t appreciate his skill set or compensate him properly. He’d become a slave, working primarily to satisfy his huge financial responsibilities and refusing to take steps to improve his situation. He was frustrated and miserable — and, in hindsight, probably jealous of my freedom. He took it out on me, with a never-ending string of put-downs and arguments and “the silent treatment” that wore away at my self-esteem and made me bitter and angry.

Even after visiting a marriage counselor (at his request), when I went back to Washington for my summer work last May, he immediately began to look for my replacement. He found one on a dating website: a typical desperate, middle-aged woman who would do or say (or share photos of) almost anything to snare a man who could ensure her financial future in exchange for sex and ego-stroking. His birthday call to me included the announcement that he wanted a divorce and a series of lies I honestly didn’t think he was capable of.

The transformation of life partner to vindictive and hateful enemy was complete.

And while the pain of his betrayal is probably — hopefully — the worst pain I’ll experience in my life, it does free me from the only thing still preventing me from loving my life: him.

But it also leaves a void in my life, an empty space I thought I had filled. While I enjoy my life, I think I would enjoy it even more if I could share it with someone. Still, I know I’ll be very careful about who I invite to share it with me; I’d rather go through the rest of my life alone than to trust and rely on the wrong man.

Been there, done that. Ouch.

I Love My Life

But as I walked across the tarmac at Lake Havasu Airport last week, swinging my bag of BBQ takeout, I wasn’t thinking about the things that kept my life from being perfect. Indeed, thoughts of such things never entered my mind. Instead, I felt a surge of happiness — exhilarating and exciting — that overwhelmed me when I suddenly realized that I love my life for what it is.

Sure, I have some rough patches ahead of me. My financial situation will take a bit of a hit when I lose half the house and have no place else to live. But I still have my brains and my good work ethic and my health. And I have the business I worked so hard to build over the past ten years. And I have my imagination to think up new ideas and new challenges. And my willingness to take risks to move forward and up — and accept the consequences of my decisions and actions. And I have all those other things: freedom, time, variety, travel, challenge, and friends.

My life is ahead of me — not behind me. And I embrace it because I love it.

Found: Journal from the Past

Posted on by
2

I find a handwritten journal with entries from 1991 through 1993 that brings back memories and foreshadows the future.

I’ve been packing on and off for my upcoming move. I’ve been in this house for 15 years and, in that time, have accumulated a lot of stuff. As anyone who has moved can tell you, it’s best to weed out the junk before packing to minimize what you pack. That’s what I’ve been doing since I returned home in September.

Along the way, I’ve been finding all kinds of lost treasures.

The Journal

Journal Cover
The journal I found in my closet on Tuesday.

While cleaning out my “stationery closet” — a closet in the room I used as on office on and off over the past 15 years — I stumbled upon a hard-cover “blank book” that wasn’t blank. I opened it up to discover a journal I had begun back in 1991 that had entries spanning through 1993. It was basically my blog, before blogs existed — a journal of what was going on in my life when I found time to write about it.

I didn’t have much time to look through it — I was leaving shortly to meet some friends for dinner — but I did read enough to realize that I’d found something special: a look into my past life. And, as evidenced on the very first paragraph of the first page’s entry, dated September 10, 1991, it hinted at the difficulties I was already having with the man I’d later marry:

Yet another in a long line of “Nothing” Books. When I bought this in Williamsburg last Saturday, Mike told the people we were with that I’d never write in it. So begins my efforts to prove him wrong.

Open Journal Page
The first page in my journal, dated September 10, 1991.

Yes, I really wrote that more than 21 years ago. Even then, Mike was putting me down.

One of my biggest gripes with him over the years was his habit of putting me down — almost gleefully — in front of family and friends. It usually came out of the blue, totally unexpected, usually on a day when we were getting along just fine. We’d be with other people and he’d say something about me to point out one of my weaknesses or something dumb I’d said or done while alone with him. Something I thought he’d be smart — or kind — enough to keep to himself. It was belittling and embarrassing and the cause of more than a few arguments over the years. It was one of the reasons I didn’t marry him until much, much later, when I thought — mistakenly, it seems — that we were really life partners forever and that I could trust him.

(Yes, I’m an idiot. I’m sure he’s pointing out my stupidity for trusting him to his girlfriend and his friends regularly, even to this day. Love is apparently not just blind, but stupid.)

I remember why I called it a “Nothing” book. Back in the 1980’s I got my first blank book, which was actually titled “The Nothing Book.” (I’m sure I have it around somewhere; I don’t throw anything like that away.) I don’t think I wrote much in it at all.

But this book was more than half filled. A gold mine or stories, full of accounts of traveling for work and pleasure, camping and motorcycle trips, and my freelance career. It’s a diary where I documented what was going on in my life in occasional entries over a two-year period when I was in my early thirties and just beginning to realize what life was all about.

It will make interesting reading and fodder for future blog posts.