At the ripe old age of 40, I have finally purchased my first air conditioner(s.) While it's true I have had this luxury in my last four vehicles, I never did anything above a set of fans for my home. Those of you in warmer climates may think we New Englander's wouldn't suffer in the summer, but you forget the famous New England humidity. It's like leaving your house and jumping into a hot tub for the day... all day...no matter *where* you are... but I digress. Couple our recent heat/humidity wave with the bulging/herniated disk in my neck... and you have a recipie for a lousy night's sleep. While I'm usually good for four, (maybe four and a half,) hours a night... last night was a miserable example in futility. As tonight is supposed to be more of the same, I decided to get a couple of small units (tee hee hee, I said unit!) for the upstairs bedrooms, and two larger units ( okay, you've had your fun, move along...) to cool the downstairs areas. After going to four different stores in two different towns, I finally got two bedroom-sized devices (there, now I've gone and spoiled everything, I hope you're happy) but the downstairs ones will have to be ordered online, as nobody had any of the larger energy-star ones I wanted in stock. After fighting upstairs with one of the two, I finally got it installed and turned on. Right now my bedroom is currently being "conditioned" down to 70 degrees via "energy-saving" mode. Perhaps tonight my usual 4 (and possibly a half) hours will be returned to me! Come Morpheus! Let's hang out!
So, the latest phase of my mid-life crisis has hit, and it's big. Between the politics at work, and the fact that I can no longer tolerate my manager's immediate boss (who attempts to micro-manage my entire group every second of every day) I don't think I want to stay where I am anymore. Heck, I don't even think I want to stay in the industry! For the past 12 years or so, I have been in the IT field in some capacity or another. I started out doing helpdesk support, and rapidly moved on through the desktop realm and into server/network administration. While I enjoyed solving those problems, my latest leap (in July of 2007) has left me cold. It started out nice, but in December we had a re-org that I have not fully recovered from. Couple that with the failures in my personal life, and I need change... I need big change, and I need it yesterday. Seeing as how I've been pigeonholed in my career for the past decade, I don't fit the bill for any non-IT positions of a lucrative nature. I've already resigned myself to the "money didn't buy happiness" realm, and I'm ready to take a good-sized cut wherever I end up. I recently connected with a few high-school buddies via Facebook, and one of them gave me some information on an opportunity... but it's direct buying marketing of a sort... and I can't be a "salesman" unless I'm making the product, or if I "am" the product (more on that in a bit... and don't get smug, I'm not about to live the life of a craigslist escort!) I think I want to try my hand in the service industry at some level. There's no way I could wait tables (my eidetic memory works in mysterious ways... I don't memorize lists that quickly, but I can whistle the theme song to any cartoon I've seen since I was six...) but I could be a host... or an assistant manager... or a short order cook. All of the cooks I know are telling me not to even think about it, because the job is horrible, but I think I need the exact opposite of what I have now. Sitting around in what appears to be air-conditioned comfort, but silently suffering and being absolutely miserable isn't where I want to be. I'd love to be a chocolatier (or even an assistant candy maker in some semi-popular local shop.) I'm also in the middle of training with VoiceCoaches.com. While I can't necessarily be the "guy next door" voice for advertising... I can do a darned good narrative. I do a lot of crazy voices, celebrity impressions, and I can do a dead-on Don LaFontaine (but so can a lot of people in the business!) I don't know where it will lead me, but I've made the effort, and I'm going to find out. Hmm... perhaps I should re-title this blog... "Mis-adventures of a failure at 40" has a nice ring to it.
