Getting Up Early

Seven months have passed since my last post.

Seven months ago my wife and I were managing a self-storage business, living on-site, in a small town in eastern Oregon. The work was interesting (for awhile), frustrating (often), but it provided for our living. Sharing the work with my wife allowed me several days off each week. I connected with a fishing buddy, learned to fish for salmon and sturgeon. I caught two salmon, a couple bass, and one huge monster of a sturgeon (a 7-foot long sturgeon is a monster in my book).

We had deep connections there with family and friends, but felt cut off from our grown children and our one grandchild, who all lived in southwestern Idaho. Many applications for work in Idaho returned unanswered, but we decided in early May to buy a camp trailer, move to our daughter's farmhouse in Meridian, Idaho, and see what might develop.

We submitted our resignation from the self-storage business, began packing and saying our goodbyes. On the very day on which we left town, I got a phone call from a company to which I'd sent an application many weeks prior. I scheduled an interview with the hiring manager for the next day. The meeting went well and they offered me the job immediately. I started work the next day as a door finisher for a building supply business in Boise.

A week later we found a house that fit our needs: within 20-30 minutes driving distance from our granddaughter, friendly and safe neighborhood, a garage (euphemism for wood shop), and within our budget. We closed the purchase and moved in a month later.

The work I do at the building supply business is identical with that which I did in my parent's business from 1990 to 1996. My parents began a building supply business in Ontario, Oregon in the early 70's, and all of us five kids worked there at different times, in different capacities. When I left in 1996 to work as a school administrator, I didn't think I'd ever return to the door-building business.

But I have.

The work is tough physically, and there is a stressful pressure each day to work fast without error. I'm unable to do either thing consistently. But I enjoy working with wood, and my experience allows me to work on non-typical, non-standard doors. The management is anxious to develop written procedures to standardize the work, and I absolutely thrive on that kind of project.

I now have much less time off, however. I must leave the house at 6:30 a.m. for work, and I'm completely exhausted when I return 9-10 hours later. I've been unable to write much, or play guitar, or go geocaching or putter in my garage/workshop.

And that discourages me frequently.

But this morning I did something different. Right now it's a Saturday morning, about 7:30 a.m. I've been up since 5:00 a.m. I finished up the writing of four posts to a Bible study blog (Isaiah Chapter Eleven, broken into four parts), and I'm writing a post to this blog for the first time in seven months.

Feels good.

Normally I'd sleep in on Saturday, finally getting dressed and ready to do something worthwhile by 10:30 or 11:00 a.m. But we all know how home chores, to-do-lists, meals and cleaning, and necessary obligations can eat up a day.

Writing must be pretty important to me, because when I'm able to post something coherent, even if no one else reads it, I feel good about the time spent doing it. I don't get that same feeling when I mow the lawn or fix the car or repair the broken chair. But the lawn, car and chair are still important. I want to do those things, but I also want the delight of writing.

Getting up early is probably the key.

photo credit: johnb/Derbys/UK. via photopin cc, image modified by cropping