May 1, 2009

• TO BLOG OR NOT TO BLOG, THIS IS THE QUESTION

  I have been away from Xanga for about six months. No, I’m not in jail; no, I’m not in the Federal Witness Protection Program; and no, I haven’t been spending my time flying 747’s over lower Manhattan for photo ops. Instead I’ve been going through some major life changes while seriously trying to determine if blogging about them is a good idea.
  
  To blog, or not to blog, this is the question.
  
  Before I address that ominous question, let’s talk about the changes. Let me begin by saying I don’t do change well. I have underwear older than my son (and my son is 26.) I will use a toothbrush until it is so used up that all I’m doing is scraping a plastic stick across my teeth. I stop so often at the very same convenience store to buy diet Mt. Dews that I have my own parking spot and am the God Parent of many of the clerk’s children. I am the ultimate creature of habit and have been known to stand patiently in line at the bank behind someone attempting to refinance their mortgage at the window just because It’s too much effort to change lines.
  
  For the past 15 years I have worked for a particular firm. I was very successful at that firm. I was the longest tenured salesperson there. In fact, my friggin portrait is even hanging in the friggin lobby. I can’t go into what happened in detail, but I will say that late last fall I was stabbed in the back so hard you could have driven a Volkswagen Beetle through the gaping wound.
  
  I held on a for a few more months because I hate change but the working environment became such a nightmare that I did something I thought I would never do; I waited until everyone left one evening, I cleaned out my office, sent an email with notice of my immediate resignation to the CEO. left my key on the receptionist’s desk, and walked away.
  
  It’s pretty stupid to resign from a job in the middle of a tanking economy and I was scared shitless. I, however, seem to be the most fortunate human being in all the world. I was offered the position of National Sales Manager with a competitor at twice the salary I was making. I have been in my position for two months and things are going well. If things continue to go well there is a very good possibility I will be moved into a VP position in a few more months. In this case, change worked out better than I ever could have dreamed, but it still took me WAY outside my comfort zone.
  
  That’s why I decided in the middle of all of that fiasco that it would be a good idea to sell the house I had been planning to live in until I died. After all, if you’re going to quit your job when the economy is in the toilet doesn’t it make sense to sell your house when the national housing market has collapsed? Of course it does!
  
  I bought the house seven years ago. It sold in 2 1/2 weeks at a 35% profit. If you would like to drive to Oklahoma and touch me for good luck, I only charge $100.00.
  
  My wife, who grew up next to Laura Ingalls in the Little House on the Prairie,  wanted to move back into the country so we began looking for land to build on (My new employer, whose corporate office is in another city, allows me to work out of my home, so I don’t care where we live). We found a nice size waterfront lot on the Lake west of Tulsa and made an offer on it. They accepted the offer yesterday.
  
  Come to think of it, I may need to charge $200.00 to touch me for good luck.
  
  So, I guess change doesn’t always suck, but blogging about it is a different subject.
  
  It had come to my attention that several of my customers had found my blog. You need to remember that I am a bright blue person living in a bright red state. A state where people don’t cotton very well to my baby killin, homo lovin, tree huggin ways. It would be nice to think that people are open minded enough to do business with others who’s political views might be different from their own. If you think that, please put your bong pipe down right now and go take a breath of fresh air. It was suggested to me that I might want to rethink what I put out on the internet. It was also suggested to me that there could be legal repercussions for discussing my job situation in an open forum.
  
  While that irks me beyond belief, it is probably good advice.
  
  You will probably want to point out that I was stupid enough to set up my Xanga account with my real name. If you wanted to do that you would have an excellent point. It makes my silly rantings immediately retrievable with a single search string. Of course, I could delete this account and set up one “incognito” but everything I’ve already posted is out there forever anyway. I could leave this account open and simply post about gardening or the weather but if I did that I would have no choice but to slit my own throat.
  
  I have set up the obligatory Facebook account where I never say anything more controversial than suggesting Adam Lambert on American Idol has more talent in one of his pock marks than all the other contestants combined, but there are a lot of people from high school who have found me on Facebook. I didn’t like them then, why should I want to be friends with them now?
  
  I haven’t decided what to do. What do you think?

  • 2:45 pm
  • 31 Comments