June 3: Kind of Northing, New Chapter, Friendship

A kind of northing is what I wish to accomplish, a single-minded trek toward that place where any shutter left open to the zenith at night will record the wheeling of all the sky's stars as a pattern of perfect concentric circles.  I seek a reduction, a shedding, a sloughing off.

I chose this passage from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek not because it contains any specific wisdom that I feel pertains to my life this evening.  I chose it because it's lovely, poetic.  And it's about night, reduction, shedding, sloughing off the skin of day.

Today was my last full day at the cardiology office.  On Monday, I begin a new chapter, or an old chapter, depending on how you look at it.  I'm returning to the job I held for close to 17 years.  I will be working with one of my best friends of close to 25 years.  Of course, I'm leaving a job where I've made some really good friends, as well.  So, tonight is both happy and sad, like most situations in life.

After work, I went out for drinks with a couple of my friends from the cardiology office.  One is a young woman with whom I've worked five days a week for the past two years.  I will miss her a great deal.  She's a young, single mother, and she got me.  Laughed at my jokes.  Read books I gave her.  Let me read her poetry.  And she saw me through one of the most difficult times of my life--my sister's death.

So, I leave friends behind, and I return to friends.

Saint Marty has been blessed with friendship his whole life.

My best friend at the cardiology office thought this was hilarious . . .

May 14: White Wednesday, Blowing Away, A Way to Live,

...Despite this and other setbacks, [White] kept scribbling and typing.  Distilling his experience into words on a page was the only way he could find to prevent his daily life from blowing away like clouds.

That's a pretty common feeling with most writers, I think.  The impulse to write is inextricably connected to the impulse to preserve memory and experience.  Even as a young man, E. B. White knew this.  That's why he took up pen and paper and typewriter at such a young age.


In the last couple years, things have changed for me quite a bit.  Hell, in the last couple weeks things have changed for me quite a bit.  I've had no control over these changes.  Winds have simply blown into my daily life and swept some clouds away, as Michael Sims says in the passage above.

Tomorrow, I begin a new chapter in my professional life.  A new job.  I will be learning new procedures, new tasks, new computer programs, new people.  That's a lot of "new" for a person who likes the "old."  Old job, old procedures, old tasks, old computer programs, old coworkers.  I would be lying if I didn't admit that I'm more than a little apprehensive about tomorrow.  In fact, the thought of walking into that office in the morning makes me a little nauseous.

I have to remind myself that it's just a job.  A way to pay the bills, keep a roof overhead, food in our bellies, and a health insurance card in my wallet.  That's all.  I can't invest myself in what I'm going to be doing.  I did that with my last medical office job, and, in the end, it really didn't make a difference.  I will do what I need to do to keep this new position.  Perform to the best of my abilities.  Then, I will come home and focus on what's really important--my family.  And I won't think about that new job again until I punch the time clock the following morning.

Working is a way to live.  Living isn't a way to work.

That's Saint Marty's mantra for tomorrow.

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind