The Anti-Call and How It Led Me Here

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It really is quite a view. As I write these words, I’m looking out an office window down a snow-covered stretch in to the city of Burlington, out over Lake Champlain, and over to the Adirondacks beyond. It’s the kind of scene that makes you wish you had a camera, or glad you don’t as taking a snapshot would somehow take away from the uniqueness; or, possibly, you feel both ways at once.

A year ago, I was in Baltimore; a frustrated business analyst at an unrewarding job on a career path I wanted no part of.

My wife and my family and my friends were (and continue to be) great, but I was feeling a growing dissatisfaction with the size and the speed of the city and an ever-increasing realization that the job I was going to every day was not what I was supposed to be doing.

It’s hard to explain. Some people feel called to a certain profession, a certain vocation. They just know that they’re supposed to fill their time be doing something, it could be a priest, a teacher, a doctor…whatever. I was the opposite. Every day I showed up at work, I was receiving the anti-call. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing but I knew that I wasn’t supposed to be doing this.

So I thought about it. A lot. I received encouragement from my wife. A lot. Many people have life changing moments, but I was given the luxury of choosing what mine would be and when it would happen.

So I chose.

I wanted to work in a field I felt called to. To do that, I needed a little background knowledge. And so, I’d be going back to school.

In the summer of ’07, we quit our jobs. In August we sold our house. We rented a truck and pointed it North. On August 27th 2007 I started the next great chapter of my life; I started working towards a Master’s of Science in Historic Preservation.

Perhaps in a later entry, I’ll go in to why preservation matters to me. For now though, it’s enough to say that I’m living a fairly different life than I was a year ago and I have absolutely no doubt that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

It’s a great feeling.

So, for now, that’s who I am. I’m 30 years old, with one career behind me and back in school with the goal of getting my foot in the door of a second. I’m not making much money and am incurring debt at a staggering pace. But I have a great wife, I live in a beautiful part of the country, and am happy.

In later posts, I’ll babble on about Historic Preservation, about my impressions of Vermont so far, etc etc etc…

But now I have to go crawl around a library and paw through hundred-year-old issues of journals with names like “Railroad Gazette” and “Van Nostrand’s Eclectic Engineering”.

How great is that?

pre-reboot

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Although I readily admit to not being a farmer (the only thing I grow is a pile of laundromat-destined clothes), I have read a thing or two about the subject. When growing crops, it’s important to remember the periodic need for a field to lay fallow; that is to let it not grow crops for a season or seasons, to let it simply lay still and be. This way, vital nutirients are re-introduced and the field can return to a state of healthy agricultural production.

I think a mind works in the same way.

I love to read. I almost aloways have a book that I’m working my way through; not because I have to, but for pleasure’s sake. That said, if I go through a cycle of finishonestartanewone,latherrinserepeat, I get to a point where I can’t read anything at all. My mind won’t absorb. I find I need to take a break of a week or so; watch bad TV, go on long walks, drink too much beer – anything at all I can do to let it all sink in, to let my mind become fertile again.

That happened here too.

It was bad timing, sure, but I was getting a little oversaturated with this here nerdhut at just the same time that I shook everything up like I was playing a life-scaled game of yahtzee (yhatzee?) or something. I had to go away, had to readjust my brain a little bit, had to settle in to a new place, a new set of activities, a new me.

That took about six months.

But I feel mentally good again. I want to write again. And so I shall.

Remember how Batman Begins was a “reboot” to the franchise? Well, next time I post, I’ll pretend that I have readers other than Nick, Kate, Ben, and possibly Pete, and “reboot” my own franchise, if you will. (That sounded tremendously dirty) Tacky and cliched introductory posts will follow, but for now let me set the ground rules:

I will post at least once a week. This post may come earlier, but at the latest it will come on Friday sometime between 12:30 and 2:30pm as these are the hours I’m contractually obligated to be in front of a computer.

This is my place. It is an iron-fisted democracy, not anything else. For any friends and family may come here and read, please understand that this is where I come to unwind, to vent, to be honest, to be me. I will never ever purposely offend anyone, but if you don’t like frequent uses of the F-word, unapologetic bathroom humor, occaisional screeds along my admittedly-confusing hybridized political belief lines, and the unholy (ha!) marriage of deep respect for/deep cynicism of organized religion, then I respectfully recommend you get off this trolley at the next stop.

Alot had changed, and really not much has changed. All that will be explained next time.

For now, let me just say hi. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad I’m here.

Let’s do something fun.

Soon

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Holy Crap.

I’ve been away for so long.

I’ve been away for so long that my life is a hell of alot different than it was when I last posted.

I’m going to start writing here again, but not tonight. Tonight it’s late and I’m tired, so sleep is just about all I’m concerned with.

But rest assured, even though my life is good, I’m really far away from all but one of the people that are important to me. I need to write here to keep the connections a little closer.

I’ll be back.

Soon.