Damage Counseling Integration

     I like to sit in my office and fish. I don’t always catch something, but when I do, I get cheers.

     I could go all day and not catch a thing. But that’s just the way it works sometimes.

     And fish hate to admit that they’ll get caught sometimes. They may dodge that hook for a while, but eventually, another in hip-waders will catch’em.

     I’ll attempt to make the bait as attractive as possible—I’ll spike a nice, fat worm on the line, so the occasion is less severe. 

     I’ve never caught a whale; they’re just too big, sometimes. But I’ve caught Golden Trout, a Striped Marlin, an Alligator Gar, a Bowfin, and a Largemouth Bass. 

     The upside is that I can tack on fishing to my résumé’s ‘Skills & Qualifications’ listing. Who knew? And, my most unusual day of fishing was when I fished for a fish that was already fishing. 

     You’re scratching your head, right?

     My fish was in a boat in a Louisiana swamp, but still within cell service, when he responded to my ploink. It was also the reason he bypassed my lure.

     But I do hope to catch that whale, someday. 

Nous sommes avec Paris!

Korea Fear

I’ll be the first to agree that employment is a fickle thing. If a company is small, then perhaps nine and a half months of employment isn’t something to sniff at, before one is laid off.

It’s just frustrating when the small company is gobbled up by a larger company that suddenly finds itself unable to justify continued production of multiple in-stock parts. Therein lies the rub.

I’m glad I had the good sense to take advantage of a ‘two-for-one’ sale at a local vision/optics store; my previous specs were ten years old—hardly heirloom-worthy. And, for a time I got to be the auntie that spoils her little brother’s kids. (When Mom and Dad say ‘no,’ Auntie will say ‘yes.’)

For the first time in years, I had the kind of employment that didn’t require me to work a bloody holiday. That’s impossible in the medical community that was my prior career. Be it emergency services, hospitals, or nursing facilities, they’re all 24/7, 365 days a year. Shift managers will either flip a coin, or draw names from a bedpan to see who gets only one of three of the crucial holidays off.

Don’t even get me started on casinos, either. The week of X-mas through New Year’s Day, all bets are off. (In a manner of speaking) It’s the busiest time of the year in a casino-resort town that employs forty percent of its population. So if your normal day-off falls on X-mas day, or New Year’s Eve, show up or accept your walking-papers. I missed one of my brother’s weddings simply because he and his fiancée chose to tie the knot two days after X-mas.

So, despite the minor commuting, (which was only horrid going home during spring and summer) I felt the recent job was working out.

I don’t know if I feel so desperate for employment that I’d commute even further. Though it’d be great if I could find something in my own ‘backyard.’ Here to the next town t’ain’t bad, either.

But the other thing is, just not having anything truly productive to do—other than obsessive amounts of house-work—can bore the hell out of a Gemini. Anyone and everyone needs some sense of task-oriented stimulation. (A salary to go with it ain’t bad, either!)

So, if any H.R. directors happen upon this flogging blog, detail-oriented labor is merely the cherry on top of my hidden savvy. Where I lack in in-demand, geek-worthy computer skills, I make up for in editing/proofreading expertise after a term of publishing my college’s lit mags. It works up my grammar-n-spelling-Nazi ire to read a badly written, badly spelled, online article.

(Ah…as for the deliberately bad grammar above, that’s just for spice of dialect. Though, imagine my spit-take confusion when my brother’s Kiwi fiancée asked me about the recent Korea Fear I attended a while back. Talk about WTH...until I deduced she meant Career Fair.)