Evolution

So, my department meeting yesterday kicked ass. We timed it, executed it, mulled it over, elaborated on it. We did business. Of course it's not like we were a team of multi-millionaire executives negotiating billions of dollars worth of loans. Just the front desk staff, on a rainy day, in a little meeting room, with Faygo and expired chips. Just right for me. First off, a good soaking makes a nice setting for a meeting. No thunder or lightning.... some people get skittish about those kinds of things. But a nice rain on an overcast day makes for a wonderful time to make plans and think about how to be better customer service people. By the way, I don't think I've ever told you my philosophy about rain. that will come later, or perhaps on another day.

The most comforting aspect of my job is that I have known everyone I work with day to day for at least a year, most for several. This makes for a very laid back, relaxed atmosphere. And I don't want to talk about specifics of the job, but I will say that I have had opportunities to leave, have even been encouraged at times to do so. I can't really explain rationally why I've stayed at a place so long for relatively little pay and odd work hours. Only that I felt I needed to follow through on something and then have the humility and diligence to maintain it. If I had left even a year ago, I would have felt that my time here was an absolute waste. And I do NOT waste ANYTHING as far as my time. Not anymore. So, I stayed, and I have reaped the rewards. In the last year, I have had the privilege of working with an amazing new boss, I have gotten a promotion, I have earned respect, I have received an award. I still know that at any time I could slip and lose what I've gained, so I have learned that humility really can pay off, that I had better not start getting too full of myself or I'll lose all that I've won. It's not an easy thing to grasp.

So, while I sat there there in our little meeting, these thoughts rumbling around in my head, I became so excited, I'm sure it was visible. I was watching everyone go back and forth, arguing, conversing, laughing, and it just felt like home. I know I've said before how blessed I am to be in this situation, but I don't like to NOT think about it, because I know that not every job I have will be like this. Not by a long shot. It's nice to be able to walk through the doors and know who I'm dealing with. Personalities, likes, dislikes, wants and needs, at least in the work atmosphere. It's really a dream.

Alas, I know it cannot last forever. I would not want to stay here forever, not unless I owned it and could remove it from the ground and transport it to the side of a large body of water. No, but when I leave, I will do so with gratitude in my heart. I'll wish them well and carry on and not look back. The building itself really doesn't mean anything to me. Once I leave, and the people I know are gone, I will have no urge to go back. Very similar to how I feel about the house I grew up in. Or my house in Hoffman Estates, IL. Or my apartment in Heritage Hill in Grand Rapids. Or the little studio I rented while going to Wayne State. I don't even bother going to any of those neighborhoods anymore. It just seems all wrong. The wrong faces, the wrong vibe. It's surreal. I'm not actually going back to my past when I go there. I am going to something completely different, somehow hollow. There is no way I can get emotionally what I would expect, so why go? Don't get me wrong, though. I cherish my memories. But I leave them where they ought to be, in a faraway place in the past.

The same thought occurred to me the other day when I celebrated our balmy sixty degree weather by going for a run in Dodge Park along the Clinton River. What an amazingly beautiful day, by the way. You cannot know how great sixty degrees can be unless you deal with nothing but cold for three months straight. I didn't even wear a jacket. I threw on one of those inside-out looking sweatshirts which, being a corny shade of light blue, must have made me look like a giant blueberry. But it is soooooooo comfortable! My mom bought it for me for Christmas and I think I'm going to wear it out this spring. Hopefully, it will no longer fit by the time fall rolls around and my rolls are long gone (hehe).

Anyways, I felt a little strange at the park. Everyone there was walking something - a dog, a stroller, a human. I was just kind of striding along by myself. There were animals everywhere (considering this is Detroit, that's saying something). They all came to bathe in the now free-flowing water. The river was as high as I have ever seen it. One could almost float a canoe down it! Little plucky duckies gathered together to take turns diving into the water from shelves of ice. There were hundreds of them! They looked like fat Roman Senators lounging around in a public bathhouse.

On the other side of the river lies a meandering row of houses, some new, some old. You can tell they were built during a time before the advent of the huge housing development, back when houses were built one at a time, back when you didn't need to know the address to find the damn place. Sure. My house is the red one with the big covered porch. And you would know this is the correct house because there wouldn't be BE any other red houses with big covered porches! Oh, for simplicity. Anyways, it's not hard to see how things must have been thirty or forty years ago before all the big roads and stop lights were put in. There was probably just a little tree-laden road stretching along the river. If you were travelling by canoe, you might as well have been rowing down some little used patch of river in the upper peninsula. But then, it's not anymore. There are huge colonial style houses of recent construction. There are parks and highways and paved pathways. It is now Clinton River, 2009, not Clinton River, 1959.

Have you ever noticed that when talking to a friend from some distant part of your past, the first thing brought up is the Update. What's going on with so and so? Remember how we broke the window on that one guy's house? Spare me. You might as well be asking me to remember the Alamo. It's history. I don't go to reunions.I wouldn't want to see my friends wearing the same clothes, having the same hair, saying the same things they used to say. If I had it my way, I would know all of them in the present. They would all be here with me, all gathered around in a lovely little community - a community made up of all the people who shine lights on my life. I want to look forward not back. I encourage growth and change. I don't want to see you in the same place you were five or ten years ago. Everyone could have a room in my hotel on the ocean. We could all just come and go, living our lives, for years at a time, and then come back home. There would be, what, fifty or sixty of us, plus families and anyone else we pick up along the way, not to mention all the people that shine a light on their lives. I guess I'd have to have a pretty big hotel! So, I guess I am saying this: all of you that are spread far and wide across the country, away from me, COME BACK! What the fuck?! I miss you like crazy! Haha, for simplicity, yes?

Be sure to come back Saturday for my first annual Valentine's Special! Some years you will get Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Other years you will get Cupid on Crack! Which will it be?