Here, Here Again

Well, I am back to retirement after an interesting journey through the post-retirement job world. After retiring from the FAA at the end of 2006 I taught a management course for new TSA supervisors for a bit, edited some ATC curriculum materials part-time, worked in a college testing center for a couple of years part-time, joined a national company who had just gotten the FAA training contract, and a big consulting firm working on a variety of FAA initiatives.

That took four years, almost precisely — December 2006 through October 2010. I stopped my blog because I was no longer retired. But I am again even if it is a bit unwillingly.

I left the testing job to work full-time in ATC (air traffic control) training. But the job I applied for was not the job for which I interviewed and the job I actually practiced was not the job I interviewed for. My manager endlessly reminded me that the job was not his idea but rather HIS boss’ idea and the FAA was constantly hounding him to justify my job. He said I had to justify the job to the FAA.  I told him that seemed like reverse reasoning — don’t you create a job because of the value THE EMPLOYER thinks it will add. But he approached it from the other way — now that I’ve hired you for a job I haven’t spent a moment thinking about YOU justify why this job should be there. I did what I thought I was supposed to do and what needed to be done but I never received any meaningful guidance from my manager and I was never sure anyone other than the trainers in the field valued the work. Very uncomfortable.

Beyond that I was working 10 or 12 hours a day and traveling constantly. Once the novelty of jumping on airplanes with short notice wore off this travel became tedious. In any given week I’d get a call on Sunday to be in Albuquerque or Chicago on Monday morning, or get a call while in Chicago with a ticket back home to be in Denver on Friday morning and expect to stay over the weekend for meetings on Monday.

So I left this company for a consulting firm promising me little travel tons of contract work (“I’m working 12 hours a day to keep up and I need you to get this workload down,” I was told by the fellow who offered me the job). Four months into this job the contracts dried up and I was without work.

Quite an experience. I know it was crazy to quit the training job but I truly hated it and with my FAA pension I didn’t need it to live comfortably.  With the job I got to live more comfortably.  Now I’m back to being far more cognizant of what I spend.

Taking stock: still married with our 35th anniversary here on January 17th; a cancer survivor who went through chemo in 2010; 61 years old; otherwise in general good health but with an increasing number of aches and pains and small inconveniences; a house paid off this month; health insurance; intellectual projects at hand to keep me mentally active and a routine to keep me physically active.  Not so bad.

Anyway, I’m back again. And I’ll work to avoid Edward Thomas’ bleak vision of aging.  Here, Here Again and not Gone, Gone Again.

Gone, Gone Again

BY EDWARD THOMAS

Gone, gone again,

May, June, July,

And August gone,

Again gone by,

 

Not memorable

Save that I saw them go,

As past the empty quays

The rivers flow.

 

And now again,

In the harvest rain,

The Blenheim oranges

Fall grubby from the trees,

 

As when I was young—

And when the lost one was here—

And when the war began

To turn young men to dung.

 

Look at the old house,

Outmoded, dignified,

Dark and untenanted,

With grass growing instead

 

Of the footsteps of life,

The friendliness, the strife;

In its beds have lain

Youth, love, age, and pain:

 

I am something like that;

Only I am not dead,

Still breathing and interested

In the house that is not dark:—

 

I am something like that:

Not one pane to reflect the sun,

For the schoolboys to throw at—

They have broken every one.

——–Source: Poems (1917)

Advertisement