I may have retired, Part III

So, I think I have retired…  I have sent a letter to my boss… but nothing is changing… I go to work… I go home…   I continue to get emails calling for budget plans and updates to annual goals…  An appointment for the social media committee…  updates on the union negotiations… 

There is an open question of other opportunities in the city… I am not counting on that… 

Beyond, closer to the retirement, there are some emails and calls… trying to scramble and plan for the “What’s Next”…  I am working harder than before I quit… 

I have some paper work to fill out…  plans to make…   I am looking for a date… a final good bye… farewell date…  Escape is the why… but simply saying “I quit” has not resulted in escape…  I still work on Maggie’s farm… 

There is an undercurrent… is he serious?… does he mean it?… is this real?  Yes.  

I will not work on Maggie’s Farm No More (apologies to Bob Dylan)

I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more.
No, I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more.
Well, I wake in the morning,
Fold my hands and pray for rain.
I got a head full of ideas
That are drivin' me insane.
It's a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor.
I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more.

             Bob Dylan, from Bringing it all Back Home, recorded on January 15, 1965

According to Wikipidia,  "Maggie's Farm" is frequently interpreted as Dylan's declaration of independence from the protest folk movement… for me it is my declaration of independence from the hell which is the farm…  (I still haven’t broken free sufficiently to say the name of said farm… I am still calling it “the farm” or the “damn farm”….)

What ever comes next, the insanity needs to stop, and at some point the farm thing needs to end…  At some point if not defined by consensus or by others I will need to choose a date…   I am getting close to choosing my date… 

Most of my co-workers don’t yet know…  The ones near do…  I need to get a team in place…  I don’t know if the “Them” (see the previous post…) do or don’t…  I don’t care…  My biggest concern, my biggest issue is those left behind…   

I have great hope that by leaving I will take some of the heat off them…  Alternately, a new target will be assigned…  I can’t control that… only THEY can control that… I don’t trust the THEY… you shouldn’t either.  (I am starting to assign blame... not good...)

I am concerned about the house’s and the farm’s docent programs… I don’t want to go out spewing hate… docents, volunteers are emotionally invested…  and can turn to anger easily… While I may be frustrated and angry, I don’t need to leave that legacy behind… 

Park staffs have lurked about…  I am becoming paranoid…   it rises and ebbs…  the “Them” are about…   I hide… mostly off site… running errands that while useful, would  not have been run before… 

So away,  I am gardening…   Growing a bit of sanity…   It is both therapy, and a project…

With new found time, (less of that than expected,)  I  started with weeding and general maintenance, but has moved into the side yard, my vegetable garden… the cucumbers are in… the tomatoes too… there are artichokes both in the side yard and now in the front “flower bed” as foundation plants…. (who says you can’t harvest vegetables from the flower garden?)

The veggie garden is a strip, 4-6’ wide alongside the house… there is a 3’ wide brick path too… There is a high board fence, and a gavel and brick area for the trash and recycling cans, then a low fence… a bed with an artichoke, and room for more plants, not yet assigned or planted, likely sweet corn… then… a bed with potatoes in bags and room for a “Three sisters garden”; corn ( Indian dent corn), beans (rattle snake beans) and pumpkins (sugar pie pumpkin)  all from Renee’s Garden… beyond a bed with  squash (patti-pan, crookneck and one Zuk… (two… I flunked squash buying)) and pole beans… then another bed with tomatoes… and bunching onions… (aka green onions or scallions) then  another bed with cucumbers… and a picket fence… likely with sunflowers…

It is not as neat as suburban gardens are supposed to be… it is more of a hippie garden… but the garden like me is a child of its time…

There will be more sun flowers (started today from seed….)  Lettuce and chard and carrots and radishes in a raised bed… beyond in the back yard… likely some strawberries… some blue berries…  there is a lemon tree in back… the lime in the front yard in a pot… near the orange tree… a blood orange… very trendy but now near 60 years old…

The garden is fast becoming my sanctuary… I need a sanctuary...

With the garden coming together… I am spreading out… into the front and back yard… fences need work… the picket fence needs work…  I need to build another raised bed and install the pavers… there is a tree or two to take down… 

Then there is the house… It needs work, siding, new back doors… paint… another project…

If I file the paperwork all is final... I think I am ready for that...

Good night...  Randy

 

I may have retired… Part II

Originally, 12 years ago,  I thought I had a dream job… running a historic house… a really good dream job…  I was wrong…

Things have turned ugly… It’s (the problem) is not the house, or the job, or employer… it is the others… the “Them”

Then the rules changed… When the crap hit the rotary oscillator at work (the site where I work, not the City) a few years ago, I thought I was playing a game, a game of survivor…  Just like on TV…  with The Farm in place of an island and the game being “who can outlast the back side of the donkey…” aka… “the Them”… the game came with alliances, some obvious, some false, some of opportunity… Some of who I will support in the final vote at tribal council…

I was wrong… again… (not about the people I would vote for, about the game...)

In reality the game is who has the best life boat…  Our ship (the park, not the house which is my cabin on this ill fated ship)  is sinking… metaphorically… water is rising… you (as in me) the passengers need to get off eventually… it isn’t about the ship… that is the straw-man in the game… the false idol…  the real game is getting off without getting wet…  You want to avoid tribal council…

We have a captain, who much like that Italian guy in charge of the Costa Concordia is playing his own games…  There is a band… playing lovely music… while the ship sinks…  All distractions… Its about the life boat…

Now that I understand, I have a strategy…  

The ship is not important… my survival is… so, I need to abandon the ship to survive…  (and the captain who has driven the ship onto the rocks… I don’t care about him… I thought once that he was  a likable bastard, but times have changed, and his actions have led me to believe that I don't have the capacity to care anymore...)

It turns out that I have a life boat waiting… a pretty damn good life boat…  I have a retirement… from the City, my employer of choice, and other retirement funds… some saved by me (and the wife, never forget the wife… women and children get first dibs at the life boats… this is the rule of the sea… a bit chauvinistic… but still the rule…) plus more funds inherited from my parents, which due to IRS rules I must draw upon… so there is city money, planned money, and money thrust upon me by the IRS…   Recently there have been a few consultant gigs, with more in the wings…   

Thanks to the lovely Tina and her job at the god being which is Google  I have health insurance…  In this reality play the lovely Tina is my Molly Brown…  (the real Molly Brown was a passenger on the Titanic, and was a hero, keeping the passengers moral up, singing songs as the ship sank… and so many were lost)

So, the lifeboat is stocked with provisions… this is not a study in starvation…  

I have put out the SOS call… while it is unlikely help may come, at least the call is out…  It didn’t help Titanic, the first ship to use “SOS” either…  (Random historic fact… the last use of SOS was the Holland America Prisindam in 1982, off Alaska… she sank, with no loss of life…  Tina and I like Holland America… I am credited with some 110 days aboard… none of the HAL ships we have sailed on have sunk…)

With a lifeboat waiting, I can take my time, and help friends stranded on the ship… you know who you are… 

Randy

PS… I have a favorite book… one of the 3 or 4 of which I keep extra copies to give away…  ( wrote of this proclivity in a past blog post) One is a work of fiction, “The Iron Trail” written by Rex Beach in 1912… a fictionalize history of the construction of the Copper River and Northwestern Railroad in Alaska… in 1975, a real history, “The Copper Spike” by Laren Jenson connected the fictional names with the real names…  maybe after I leave the city there will be an equivalent post on this blog… the" and the "him"...

I may have retired today….

There is a moment, in a bad situation, when you know you don’t care about the likely consequences of any possible action you might take…  and once you know you can accept that, you are free to act…

Things at work have not been good recently… and came to a head over the last 36 hours… It is unusually complicated… I work for a government agency, on a site my agency owns, but leases to a second government agency.  

My issues are with the other agency… issues known to my agency… but the process of dealing with issues across two agencies are not clear… and complicated…  I trust my agency; I don’t trust the other… 

Over the last two years I have had an employee of the other agency threaten me physically… I have been accused to trying to run one of their managers over with my car (I didn’t, but based on the first paragraph, I now might  if offered the opportunity (that is what is called black humor… I don’t plan on any violent acts))  Along the way, my staff members have been yelled at… a gate may have been locked in the face of guests preventing them from entering the farm… more than once…

There is also the little stuff, which with time, builds to big stuff…  lack of communication,  like failing to tell us about planned events… about weddings… about much of anything…

I am in the middle between “them” and my staff and volunteers,  making excuses for “them” and keeping my head down….  I am pretty much done with that.  

I have filed complaints with them, with my agency, about actions… informal complaints… and formal complaints…  My agency has acknowledged I may be working in a “hostile work environment” but have few options to change anything… The rules of solving problems assume we all work for one employer.

Sadly, I am a volunteer for the “other” agency, (“Them”) with some 27 years and over 6,000 hours of volunteer time…  In theory I am an honored volunteer… 

It does not help that I am expected to generate income my agency… income beyond what is generally generated by a historic house, so have been doing summer camps and such… which require coordination with the “other” agency… (“them”) and raises the tension level…  

Now, I suspect my time at Patterson House is coming to a close…  and I am sadly welcoming the change… but have a concern… for the last 12 years, I have been the house’s custodian…  and the volunteers leader… while leaving I need to assure the house and volunteers are ok… and things go on… all the while raising middle finger high in the direction of the others… (the “them”)

My frustration has been building… but you may have guessed that…

So yesterday, I left the farm on an errand…  and received a phone call from someone suggesting that the other agency was taking a provocative action… I chose to run other unplanned errands… staying away… Sometimes the high ground is outrage rather than confrontation.  But also… you shouldn’t be outraged by things that might happen… only those that have happened...

This morning I got to work, and found that outrage was justified.  I waited until staff and volunteers arrived... made sure there was coverage... then left... went and talked to my boss for a while... to a couple of colleagues, then went home and worked in the garden and took the dogs for a walk...  Spent some time on the computer writing... early on the statement which became the first paragraph popped out, and things got easier...

So, I am done… I can’t work there anymore…  I won’t work there anymore…  but that is ok... We are back to the first paragraph. The moment in a bad situation… 

Randy

Note… there are references above to at least a couple of public agencies… I was intentionally vague… Friends and colleagues know who I am talking about…  In the past I might have been concerned about violating my agencies internet policies and potentially losing my job… but I am past that….  See the first paragraph…

Red shirts, and a new dog... and walks... lots of walks

It has been a long strange week…

All is centered around the new puppy… Abby, a 75lb German Sheppard girl… about a year old… she is boisterous, energetic, and curious… and not yet well behaved… the cats are filing complaints…

Emma (the other dog) is enjoying the extra walks….

A neighbor is a volunteer for Rocket Dog Rescue…. She was picking up a couple of dogs, from foster homes, to take them to an adoption event… she walked by and asked, “would you like to adopt a dog”… we wanted to, and did… and Abby now sleeps under our bed…

I spend a lot of time walking the two dogs… It makes Emma happy… Abby is happy too…

The big event was last Friday with the new Star Trek movie… we (myself, the wife, and the daughter) went to dinner, then to the movie… where we found fans in star trek uniforms ahead of us in line… (in the interest of honesty, I own a Star Trek shirt… gold, for command, from the original series… due to a brain lapse, I was not wearing it… my bad)   We sat one row ahead of the group dresses as the bridge crew… Tina was wearing blue, and a science crew insignia was offered… photos were taken… It turned out that the Asian guy in blue (nominally Sulu) turned out to be the Mayor of San Mateo (David Lim.)  Tina asked why he wasn’t the Captain… He said it was an Asian thing… It made (sad) sense…. Uhura (Linda, in her red dress) turned out to be a blogger… @fangirlblog.com  but mostly blogs about Star Wars….

The movie was good… The company good… all good…  (It is at its core a remake of the second Stat Trek Movie, the Wrath of Kahn… lots of line reused… in a way honoring the original, but this was a different movie….  PS, Kurk dies... get over it… )

I worked Saturday and Sunday, with music boxes at Patterson House… With a book signing event on Sunday after all else was done… As a result I didn’t take much (any) time off…

Now Tuesday… I had the day off… gardening… puttering about… visiting two used book stores… buying carabineers to manage leashes for the baby dog… (ever underestimate the value of a carabieneer (or four) when training a dog...)  The baby dog (aka Abby) now has a Google badge…  She is officially a Doogle… The cats are still angry and do not recognize her officially sanctioned status… they will or will not eventually get over it…  Emma is still enjoying the walks….

At the book stores I ended up with a couple of copies of Desert Solitaire by Edward Abby… It will be my next “give away” book… I keep extra copies of certain books about… and give them to anyone who feints interest…. I still have a couple of copies of “The Iron Trail” by Rex Beach about… a fictionalize account of the construction of a railroad in Alaska…  I may be out of copies of Travels with Charley (a large grey dog) by Steinbeck… but more will be found… So, now Abby is added to the free book selection…  I have a Monkey Wrench Gang tee shirt… some have noticed… I think Abby (author, not the dog)  is possibly the true voice of the western desert…

Now, late Tuesday…

T and I went out for dinner… then home to find the dogs… (Abby (the dog, not the author) and Emma….) Emma wants a walk… Tina is getting ready for bed… I am blogging…  Back to work tomorrow, but I am not looking forward to it… in fact I am dreading it…not for the work, but for the politics… something needs to change… but I am not sure what or how…

Emma is insisting on a walk… goodnight

P.S.   Remember, don't wear a red shirt... they kill the red shirts first... except Uhura... she is special (she has been seen in gold as well... but that is a different story)