Tag: Personal
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Mom Grey on my mind
Please enjoy this story again, which I first told 11 October 2010. Everyone in the family called her Mom. She was my father’s father’s mother, my great grandmother, and her time overlapped mine by a handful of years. Filet-O-Fish sandwiches will always make me think of her. She was born in the West Virginia hills…
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The butterfly effect: how we can’t always know the importance of our choices as we make them
My job search continues. I’m a week into a four-week part-time consulting job, and a couple opportunities for which I’ve interviewed look very promising. I don’t want to count my chickens before they hatch, but best case, I could be back to work in a few weeks. Meanwhile, here’s a rewrite of this post from 2009 that tells…
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Welcome to Thorntown
State Road 47 is a winding and lovely drive in western Indiana. It begins in the wild terrain around Turkey Run State Park. As it heads east, those steep hills become the rolling terrain of quiet farmland. The road curves frequently around old farm boundaries and around terrain challenges. But the fun ends at Thorntown…
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Monopoly money
I was feeling pretty good about my financial situation as I headed into the summer. I was paying down debt pretty powerfully and had built up some savings. But then August was unexpectedly expensive. I replaced my car’s transmission, rented a car for two weeks, bought a new refrigerator, and had some medical and veterinary bills. Bam! Within…
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What the ice storm could have taught me about myself
What a great day, walking through the park with my camera after the ice storm! It was 1990. I was 23 and didn’t know myself yet. Who does at 23? College was about a year behind me; I had gone to work. Trying to figure out what it meant to be an adult, I mimicked what I saw growing…
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Singing to soothe my sons
I have three sons — a stepson pushing 30 and two teens. I’ve been thinking back on their lives as one of my sons turns 18 today and is making transitions toward his adult life. I was there when the younger two boys entered the world. I did my best to be a good dad to…
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My watchwords for 2015
I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions, but I do like to have a set of words that represent the growth I want to experience in each new year. My 2014 words were anger, serenity, and faith. This is normally where I tell you how I did with all of my words. Unfortunately, the only word that really…
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Getting fired was the best thing that ever happened to me
This is the last in a short series about the most difficult time of my life, ten years ago right now. I told this story in January of 2011, but rewrote it for today. I knew I didn’t fit, but I took the job anyway — I had been laid off, and I wasn’t able to pay the mortgage. I stayed…
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The Christmas bellwether
This is the third in a short series of stories from 10 years ago. A sad story for Christmas Eve, but with a hopeful ending. Just one more story to go after this, next week. It seemed like a good idea at the time, having Christmas as a family. It was our last. I couldn’t see,…
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Three hundred square feet
This is the second in a short series about the most difficult time of my life, ten years ago right now. I told this story once before, in November of 2009, but rewrote it for today. She wanted me out, just for a month, just to clear our heads. Ten days later, the double-cross: don’t come back.…
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A place to start
This happened 25 years ago. I’ve told this story here twice before: in 2007 and 2011, but I rewrote it this time. Only the rough neighborhoods fit my budget. I’d just graduated from engineering school in Terre Haute and had landed a job in town, but times were tough and the pay was poor. On the…
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Balloon Day
The balloons filled the air, hundreds and hundreds of them squirming around each other in the wind. The sky turned red, yellow, blue, and green as they raced away. A cross current soon caught them, drawing them across the sky on their way to who knows where. Six hundred children gathered on the school’s back…