Hello, and thank you for visiting.
This introduction is not required reading,
and it’s not as exciting as what I have planned for the rest of my blog
entries, but you might want to know a little about me, just as I hope to learn
about you.
My name is Daryl. Although I now live in
Southern California, I grew up in southwestern Michigan, on a small lake in
farm country among Amish buggies, snow, deerflies, and mosquitoes. I’m nearly 56
years old now, a too-young grandfather of two adorable girls, and father to the
best daughter in the world (you will dispute this if you have your own, I know).
I am happily snuggled into an 18-year
marriage (my second), and am freshly retired from a 32-year career in
engineering. My passions include my family and friends - human and otherwise,
photography, nature, and a good story.
Feel free to stop there if you like. The
rest, below, is merely expansion upon a theme for those who might want to know
a little more. While you decide, I’m going to work on the next entry.
One of the questions I dreaded most as a
teenager was, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
I was good at math and fascinated by
science, but there was more to life than those things. I loved to read. I spent
my summers fishing, stargazing, and studying bugs, snakes, and spiders. There seemed
to be, simultaneously, both too many options and too few. I couldn’t imagine myself
locked into any one path for the rest of my life.
In college, after fumbling my way through majors
in astronomy and physics, I settled on mechanical engineering. It seemed a good
compromise at the time. I could study physics and math, and come out of school
with a reasonably good chance of being employable. That clearly was not going
to happen for me in astronomy. Despite my lack of true love for engineering,
which showed in my grades, I did find a job after graduation, and I managed to
stay mostly continuously employed through some tough and turbulent times.
That journey began 32 years ago. Like
anyone else, I had good jobs, and bad ones. Among the good ones, I count calibrating
airbag systems for cars, and contributing to the inertial reference unit that
took the Cassini spacecraft to Saturn.
I also watched engineering go from being a
respected, valued skill, to being a barely-tolerated, necessary evil on the way
to selling a product. The bean counters took over, and they sucked away any joy
that might have once been present in doing a job. Innovation and the value of
learning died under the wheels of profiteering and instantaneous shareholder
value.
In a huge stroke of luck, after two years
of thinking that I could not face another day behind the corporate desk, I was
able to take early retirement -- which brings me here, full circle, back to the
question, “What do I want to be when I grow up?”
I think I can finally give an answer: “Me.”
That sounds simplistic and flippant, doesn’t
it? Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. It’s merely honest, and it seems like the
one and only thing that I can do that nobody else can.
The thing is, now that I’ve given up
engineering, I don’t know if I have a single other marketable skill. That’s
scary, and as I write this, I’m facing that demon head-on: circumstances may
soon require me to find a part-time job.
I don’t mind working, but if I do work for
someone else again, I want it to only be a job, nothing more. I want to put in
my hours, do my best while I’m there, and leave it all at the door when I come
home.
I’m nearly 56 years old, and I know people
younger than that who have already passed away. None of us knows how long we’ll
be in this world. Halfway through my fifth decade, time now feels far more
precious than gold, goals, or achievements.
If you’ve stuck with me through that
meandering introduction, thank you. If not, I won’t hold it against you, and I
hope you will come back anyway.
: )
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