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.