The Luckiest Guy in the World
May. 25th, 2011 11:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jayfurrI'm the luckiest guy in the world.
13 years ago my wife and I said "Okay, let's be honest. We don't want to live in central North Carolina for the rest of our life. We want someplace rural, with four real seasons, a lot of peace and quiet, and yet, a decent enough economic outlook that we'd actually be able to find work." Coincidentally, shortly thereafter I got sent to Massachusetts for a brief training engagement. While I was up in New England, I happened to take a quick drive up to Vermont to visit an aunt on my mom's side that I barely knew. I fell in love with Vermont, a state I'd never visited before, and called my wife that night. "Honey, we're moving to Vermont."
"Okay," she said.
A couple of months later we were residents of Vermont. We both had jobs. We had a nice rental house. We lived in a picture-postcard landscape that people in cities dream of visiting one day. And for us, it was our new home. We'd gone from somewhat unhappy people who hated our morning commute and afternoon commute and the people who lived below us in our apartment building to ... well, our dream come true.
I still have the same job, albeit at a much higher salary. I haven't gone through a single day of unemployment since I met my wife in 1995. Made it through all the downtimes and economic gotchas of the last 13 years unscathed. I feel lucky. Carole's been through more than a few jobs as she's tried to find the absolute right niche for her, but as of a few weeks ago, she is working, working in a job that we think has a lot of potential. We can't complain.
You know the old maxim, "find a job you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life?" I often feel like I did precisely that. My job as a technical trainer for a software firm involves a lot of travel. I've been to 49 states in my life, a lot of them as a result of work, and I love the variety. Travel woes rarely faze me; I know how to cope. And one of the best things about working as a trainer is that each week you start with a clean slate. You're a trainer. You train people. They have to put in all the work week in week out at their site to put it all into effect. I get the fun without the annoying part. It's great. And it helps that I like meeting and working with people. For a natural extrovert, being stuck in an office is hell. Being on the road always dealing with new and exciting experiences -- that's ideal. I'm lucky to have this job.
If I start counting my blessings, I hardly know where to stop. I've got a nice house out in the country with almost three acres of land around it. It's not a palace, but it's pretty darn nice nonetheless. I don't have any kids -- and I frankly miss getting to experience that aspect of life, being a father -- but I am still married after 13 years to a woman who puts up (mostly) with my annoying sense of humor. I've got three cats who sometimes go a whole week without barfing up half a mouse on the living room carpet.
I'm in good shape. I'm in good health. When I turned 40 I decided to take life a bit more seriously and lost 50 pounds. I'm now in the best shape I've been in since college. I'm not overweight. I'm active. I hike and cycle and walk and kayak and once in a while I even scuba dive. Life is good.
But you know, sometimes counting your blessings involves looking around and reminding yourself how good you've really got it. I've often quipped that wherever you live in the USA, you're going to have some sort of natural disaster now and then. In the southeast it's usually hurricanes. In the Midwest, it's tornadoes. In the far west, it's earthquakes, fires, volcanoes (now and then). In the northeast, up where I live in Vermont, we get cold dark winters and sometimes more snow than we'd really like -- but despite all the bitching and complaining I did about the absurd amount of snow that fell this year, I'll take that in a heartbeat over giant twisters touching down in the middle of my town and ripping my loved ones away from me in the blink of an eye.
I still can't get over the photos and videos of the devastation in Tuscaloosa and Joplin. Last night at dinner I read the story from the issue of Sports Illustrated cover-dated May 23, 2011 about the Tuscaloosa devastation. It was hard stuff to read, in general, but when I got to the part of the story about the white dress... well, if you can make it past that without hanging your head and saying "Oh, man" you've got me beat.
My wife and I are very lucky in another respect as well. We have essentially none of the nasty awful things people die from in our heredity. Our families typically live until they're pretty old, and then they just wear out. I actually called my parents in Florida a couple of weeks ago and said "My memory isn't perfect. This may sound strange, but can you remind me of what my grandparents and aunts and uncles have died from?"
To my parents' credit, they weren't fazed by this question. And then they began a recitation. "Lived until very old, then finally, a stroke." "Lived until very very old, then finally, a brain tumor." "Lived until very very old, then finally just sort of wore out." My mom's mother died of a heart attack at a comparatively young age but she lived a hard, hard life. We don't otherwise have a history of that sort of thing. Aunts and uncles have died of various things -- mostly old age and conditions that relate to it. My father's sister Mildred did die of lymphoma. That's about all the cancer we've got on my side.
On my wife's side, her grandparents on her mom's side only just passed away in the last couple of years. Mine passed in the 1970s, but then, my parents waited until late to have kids and my grandparents were already old when I was a kid. Carole doesn't have much more yucky genetic detritus or predisposition toward various syndromes and diseases in her bloodline than I do. One aunt by marriage is a breast cancer survivor (yay, Aunt Debbie!) but that's it. If you look at a list of list of breast cancer risk factors she has about as few as you can have and still be female. And despite that, she's sensibly going in for her first mammogram in a couple of weeks. I'm glad she's not pushing her luck and deciding she's immune. You never know.
I've been active in the walk-to-find-a-cure-for-breast-cancer community for a few years now. And I've wound up with a lot of Facebook friends who have breast cancer as a result of it.
A lot. Seriously.
And this means that just about every day when I log in to Facebook I see updates about chemotherapy. About radiation. About being declared "cancer-free". About getting the bad news that the cancer's come back.
Every. Damn. Day.
And once or twice a month -- sometimes more frequently, sometimes twice or three times in the same week -- I log in and see an updated posted by a Facebook friend that begins with the words "We lost her last night." It's not the friend posting after all. It's a husband. Or a friend. Or some other relative. Logging in and posting one final update for the departed loved one, announcing that the long battle against cancer has come to an end.
A Facebook friend named Julie passed recently after years of fighting cancer. I never knew her well; I believe I only met her in person once, back in 2009 at the Philadelphia 3-Day walk. But she was an inspiration to everyone who knew her; she fought cancer, kept active in the 3-Day community as a walker and crewmember, and kept her spirits high despite the many reverses and the bad news that trips to the doctor would bring. When her family finally lost her, the memorial service held a few days later had hundreds of people in attendance ... and even had some of the trademark pink tents we camp in at the 3-Day. I imagine that if you'd asked each person in attendance they'd have said that they were lucky to have known her. And they were.
Last year at the Twin Cities 3-Day, up in Minnesota, we heard from a fellow 3-Day walker at the camp one evening. She was a Stage IV breast cancer survivor. She'd been battling for years. Whe she told us of all the treatment she'd gone through and the reverses she'd suffered, you could have heard a pin drop in the giant tent full of thousands of walkers and crew. But ended her story with a bit of good news: because the cancer had metastasized to her bones, and not to other possible places, she was likely to live a long full life, provided she continued treatment. She said she considered herself lucky. It could have gone elsewhere. It could have been much worse.
I left the dining tent that night, dazed from what I'd just heard. I called Carole up back home in Vermont and said "Honey, I don't have any problems. None. Next time you hear me complain about life, tell me to shut the hell up."
"Got it," she said.
Do I deserve to have the life I have? Do I deserve to be so damn lucky compared to other people? I don't know. But I've tried to remember how good I really have it. And I say "thank you" to all the people who've served to remind me how lucky I really am.
13 years ago my wife and I said "Okay, let's be honest. We don't want to live in central North Carolina for the rest of our life. We want someplace rural, with four real seasons, a lot of peace and quiet, and yet, a decent enough economic outlook that we'd actually be able to find work." Coincidentally, shortly thereafter I got sent to Massachusetts for a brief training engagement. While I was up in New England, I happened to take a quick drive up to Vermont to visit an aunt on my mom's side that I barely knew. I fell in love with Vermont, a state I'd never visited before, and called my wife that night. "Honey, we're moving to Vermont."
"Okay," she said.
A couple of months later we were residents of Vermont. We both had jobs. We had a nice rental house. We lived in a picture-postcard landscape that people in cities dream of visiting one day. And for us, it was our new home. We'd gone from somewhat unhappy people who hated our morning commute and afternoon commute and the people who lived below us in our apartment building to ... well, our dream come true.
I still have the same job, albeit at a much higher salary. I haven't gone through a single day of unemployment since I met my wife in 1995. Made it through all the downtimes and economic gotchas of the last 13 years unscathed. I feel lucky. Carole's been through more than a few jobs as she's tried to find the absolute right niche for her, but as of a few weeks ago, she is working, working in a job that we think has a lot of potential. We can't complain.
You know the old maxim, "find a job you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life?" I often feel like I did precisely that. My job as a technical trainer for a software firm involves a lot of travel. I've been to 49 states in my life, a lot of them as a result of work, and I love the variety. Travel woes rarely faze me; I know how to cope. And one of the best things about working as a trainer is that each week you start with a clean slate. You're a trainer. You train people. They have to put in all the work week in week out at their site to put it all into effect. I get the fun without the annoying part. It's great. And it helps that I like meeting and working with people. For a natural extrovert, being stuck in an office is hell. Being on the road always dealing with new and exciting experiences -- that's ideal. I'm lucky to have this job.
If I start counting my blessings, I hardly know where to stop. I've got a nice house out in the country with almost three acres of land around it. It's not a palace, but it's pretty darn nice nonetheless. I don't have any kids -- and I frankly miss getting to experience that aspect of life, being a father -- but I am still married after 13 years to a woman who puts up (mostly) with my annoying sense of humor. I've got three cats who sometimes go a whole week without barfing up half a mouse on the living room carpet.
I'm in good shape. I'm in good health. When I turned 40 I decided to take life a bit more seriously and lost 50 pounds. I'm now in the best shape I've been in since college. I'm not overweight. I'm active. I hike and cycle and walk and kayak and once in a while I even scuba dive. Life is good.
But you know, sometimes counting your blessings involves looking around and reminding yourself how good you've really got it. I've often quipped that wherever you live in the USA, you're going to have some sort of natural disaster now and then. In the southeast it's usually hurricanes. In the Midwest, it's tornadoes. In the far west, it's earthquakes, fires, volcanoes (now and then). In the northeast, up where I live in Vermont, we get cold dark winters and sometimes more snow than we'd really like -- but despite all the bitching and complaining I did about the absurd amount of snow that fell this year, I'll take that in a heartbeat over giant twisters touching down in the middle of my town and ripping my loved ones away from me in the blink of an eye.
I still can't get over the photos and videos of the devastation in Tuscaloosa and Joplin. Last night at dinner I read the story from the issue of Sports Illustrated cover-dated May 23, 2011 about the Tuscaloosa devastation. It was hard stuff to read, in general, but when I got to the part of the story about the white dress... well, if you can make it past that without hanging your head and saying "Oh, man" you've got me beat.
My wife and I are very lucky in another respect as well. We have essentially none of the nasty awful things people die from in our heredity. Our families typically live until they're pretty old, and then they just wear out. I actually called my parents in Florida a couple of weeks ago and said "My memory isn't perfect. This may sound strange, but can you remind me of what my grandparents and aunts and uncles have died from?"
To my parents' credit, they weren't fazed by this question. And then they began a recitation. "Lived until very old, then finally, a stroke." "Lived until very very old, then finally, a brain tumor." "Lived until very very old, then finally just sort of wore out." My mom's mother died of a heart attack at a comparatively young age but she lived a hard, hard life. We don't otherwise have a history of that sort of thing. Aunts and uncles have died of various things -- mostly old age and conditions that relate to it. My father's sister Mildred did die of lymphoma. That's about all the cancer we've got on my side.
On my wife's side, her grandparents on her mom's side only just passed away in the last couple of years. Mine passed in the 1970s, but then, my parents waited until late to have kids and my grandparents were already old when I was a kid. Carole doesn't have much more yucky genetic detritus or predisposition toward various syndromes and diseases in her bloodline than I do. One aunt by marriage is a breast cancer survivor (yay, Aunt Debbie!) but that's it. If you look at a list of list of breast cancer risk factors she has about as few as you can have and still be female. And despite that, she's sensibly going in for her first mammogram in a couple of weeks. I'm glad she's not pushing her luck and deciding she's immune. You never know.
I've been active in the walk-to-find-a-cure-for-breast-cancer community for a few years now. And I've wound up with a lot of Facebook friends who have breast cancer as a result of it.
A lot. Seriously.
And this means that just about every day when I log in to Facebook I see updates about chemotherapy. About radiation. About being declared "cancer-free". About getting the bad news that the cancer's come back.
Every. Damn. Day.
And once or twice a month -- sometimes more frequently, sometimes twice or three times in the same week -- I log in and see an updated posted by a Facebook friend that begins with the words "We lost her last night." It's not the friend posting after all. It's a husband. Or a friend. Or some other relative. Logging in and posting one final update for the departed loved one, announcing that the long battle against cancer has come to an end.
A Facebook friend named Julie passed recently after years of fighting cancer. I never knew her well; I believe I only met her in person once, back in 2009 at the Philadelphia 3-Day walk. But she was an inspiration to everyone who knew her; she fought cancer, kept active in the 3-Day community as a walker and crewmember, and kept her spirits high despite the many reverses and the bad news that trips to the doctor would bring. When her family finally lost her, the memorial service held a few days later had hundreds of people in attendance ... and even had some of the trademark pink tents we camp in at the 3-Day. I imagine that if you'd asked each person in attendance they'd have said that they were lucky to have known her. And they were.
Last year at the Twin Cities 3-Day, up in Minnesota, we heard from a fellow 3-Day walker at the camp one evening. She was a Stage IV breast cancer survivor. She'd been battling for years. Whe she told us of all the treatment she'd gone through and the reverses she'd suffered, you could have heard a pin drop in the giant tent full of thousands of walkers and crew. But ended her story with a bit of good news: because the cancer had metastasized to her bones, and not to other possible places, she was likely to live a long full life, provided she continued treatment. She said she considered herself lucky. It could have gone elsewhere. It could have been much worse.
I left the dining tent that night, dazed from what I'd just heard. I called Carole up back home in Vermont and said "Honey, I don't have any problems. None. Next time you hear me complain about life, tell me to shut the hell up."
"Got it," she said.
Do I deserve to have the life I have? Do I deserve to be so damn lucky compared to other people? I don't know. But I've tried to remember how good I really have it. And I say "thank you" to all the people who've served to remind me how lucky I really am.
