This and That

It has been almost a month since I blogged. Long enough that friends not on facebook have contacted me to make sure I am still alive. I am. But time has been very precious in the last two months and blogging fell down the priority ladder. Today I am taking advantage of a snow day. All those other priorities are almost caught up, and now at almost four o'clock, I have a few minutes. I'm going to sum up what has been going through my mind with four pieces: Juggling, Joy, Social Media, and Stan Rogers.

On Juggling
The biggest challenge has been juggling. Not balls or knives, but jobs. For going on five years now I have been a corporate manager for a large locally-based international moulding company, a job that has been very rewarding and interesting for me. But about a year ago, re-shuffling and re-structuring meant that the two key projects most near and dear to my heart - the environment program, and marketing - began to slip away, be pulled into an abyss of apathy or outsourcing.

At the same time, the freelance editing I have done for 20 years began to deliver new opportunities, and a part-time teaching position for a communications professor at the local college opened up. This was September. By November it was obvious the college gig was going to expand, and the editing was taking on a life of its own: exciting, immediate and so rewarding.

I had to make a decision, and I gave notice at my regular job. But until next week, I am still working there, and so I continue to work, to teach, to edit. Juggle, juggle, juggle.

On Stan Rogers
We're home today in the snow and I have Stan songs running through my head. This one in particular seems appropriate:

I used to love these lazy winter afternoons;

Starting out too late giving up too soon;
Coming home to coffee and a trashy book;
Never paying any mind if things were never done on time

Time was when a fella could just let time slip away;
No worries car or telephone just rent and food to pay;
And every night with single buddies boozing at the bar,
Living for the minute, taking every hour in it!
But now there's just too much to do in any given day;
The car phone the kiddies shoes too many bills to pay;
Running from the crack of dawn 'til Knowlton reads the news,
And falling into bed too wiped to even kiss the wife good night.

The baby's in the Swingomatic, singing Rock and Roll;
My Sweetie's in the kitchen, whipping up my favourite casserole.
I knocked off work at ten o'clock, the kids are still at school.
The coffee pot is perking...to hell with bloody working.

Oh, it sure is sweet to sit at home and let time slip away,
Through tomorrow I'll be scratching through another working day;
But when I start to come apart from all the things to do,
I know that I'll be taking soon another lazy winter afternoon.
Oh, oh, oh...just another working Joe!