Things are looking up. I did hear from one of the folks to whom I dispatched a resume ( Thanks Friend Will!)and I am considerably cheered up by the care and concern of my friends. There used to be a popular jazz/blues song that played on the radio when I lived in Massachusettes "You're Gonna Find Out Who Your True Friends Are." I'm really stunned by how blessed I am with many true friends, people who are really sticking close to me and The Hub in spite of the fact that we are kind of like the entire Kennedy Family except there are only two of us.

With regard to the current job-in-a-box, I can see that it wasn't that great a position anyway. I mean I was just so happy to have a job where people were, mostly, keeping all of their clothing on and I wasn't getting written up for saying "um" too many times in a phone call that I may have lost sight of the bigger picture. In fact, I think I made the same mistake here I have made many many times in the past. When looking for a job I only think two things: 1. Can I meet my bills on the salary and 2. Am I physically and mentally able to do the job?

This is not a good way to evaluate work. I mean, I think there are some things that would give me pause, like, for instance I don't apply to companies who are primarily in the defense industry. I'd have to be darn hungry to market ciggerettes, or handguns.
I'd have trouble working for someplace like Chemlawn, since I once had a huge asthma attack after encountering some recently treated grass. And besides, I'm pro-dandylion. I mean, really, don't you see some of these too-green-chemlawn lawns and think "yikes! looks like indoor outdoor carpeting!"

But, I digress.

The thing is, I'm going to be 40 soon. ( JEEPERS, FREAKING CROW! ARRRGHH! NOW I'M DEPRESSED ALL OVER AGAIN!)Okay, think posative, be factual: I'll be 39 in about two weeks. That seems kind of old for me to be out running around "finding myself". Heck, if I don't "find myself" soon I'll be too old to remember who the hell I was looking for. I know 40 is supposed to be the new 30....but wasn't 30 when you were supposed to settle down?

I feel that I really do have to get a handle on whatever this thing is that gets me into such trouble at work. The thing I keep coming up with is that I seem to have inherited the "wild Elliott gene". I have some Elliotts in my family. Elliotts are Scots-Irish people, "boarder-landers" or "reivers". As a clan they're known to be fiercely independant, or just fierce. Their emblem is an upraised short sword and their motto is "might and virtue". In Scotland, they were big into riding their horses into battle and getting into fights with anything they thought it was fair to fight with. In Ireland they were big into hard work, but they apparently were a tough, won't-back-down, kind of crew. They had a blue and red tartan. Snazzy, if not a little loud.

This was my beloved Grandfather to a tee. He had Opinions, and he wasn't afraid to share them. Everyone was entitled to his opinion! He was like the guy in the Tom Petty song "You can stand me up at the gates of hell and I won't back down". But in the wonderful, wandering stories Grandfather used to tell, it was always someone else who was the moral hero. Grandfather always made himself out to be the hapless guy with big feet who only by sheer good luck or the grace of God was able to help the hero out. Or they were stories where "the person got what they deserved in the end", good or bad, but mostly funny. The riotous story he used to tell of a wacky car trip to Washington hid the seriousness of the fact that he was going before Congress to testify about fraud in one of his work places, in the days when people's knee caps literally got broken for such things. I think I told you once before about how he quit a good job because the foreman would send one of the crew off to some distant place and then sleep with the guy's wife. It didn't have anything to do with Grandfather. But he just couldn't stand it. He was going to Say Something. It was going to pop out. "Ya speak a lot of truth, for all the good it does you." his friends would say to him, shaking their heads.

Grandfather didn't get what he deserved in the end, of course. He was very clear with me, from the very beginning of my memory, "life is not fair". If it had been fair, he would have wound up in a mansion with an easy life for all the risks he took on behalf of other people just because it was the right thing to do. As it was he died of emphazema in a hot little house in Brooklyn when he was only 63. Some Christians would say he got his mansion in heaven, but I bet if he was offered one he'd have said, "Ah let some other poor soul have it and I'll sit out in the garden."

Well, maybe he's looking down on my brother and me and smiling and punching the air with his fist. After all, my brother is out of work because he reported fraud in HIS last work place.

But, the thing is, I don't really think I'm anything like Grandfather at all. In some ways I'd like to be, but in other ways, not. Sure he was often right, and very principled, but he would argue with anybody whom he thought was up to the challenge. I've always put people before ideas,or, at least, I try to. Sometimes, I admit, it's a very thin line - there are things I'll argue about, and then regret it. But Grandfather lost many relationships and wore others somewhat thin by virtue of his constant table pounding.

Early in life I realized that I was never going to be great because I would never push an idea, ideal, or dream over the well being of others. And that was okay with me. Thankfully, not caring about being great and not running over people with principles tend to go hand in hand in human personalities. It's just that every once in awhile the "wild Elliott" comes out in me and then you could stand ME up at the gates of hell and I won't back down!

Great. Now I'm blaming genetics for my problems - "it all stems from the reign of James I". So much for personal responsibility!