Thankfully, I'm still here

I’ve long neglected my blog due to a move, then another move, then another move, then 3 other jobs, now this new job with a very busy schedule. But I decided I have something worth sharing now. A lot has happened since my last entry here and many, many of my perspectives have totally changed too. I’m not going to try to catch you up on all that’s happened in my life. I guess we’ll just have to fast-forward to now. Maybe someday I’ll take time try to fill in the gaps. Or maybe not.

Today’s blog has to do with 3 issues relevant to me today.

Death

Health Insurance

My current employment

I read Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell a while ago. (BTW, he did a good job. The spell for me has now been utterly shattered and I'm better for it.) He points out that our common awareness of death is what gives us our desire for the emotional out that religion and the arts give us. We need that out because life is hard, but dealing with the death of loved ones is the pits. Religion and the arts help us cope with what we really can’t change.

Intellectually I got that, but I guess I didn't really grasp the necessity for an awareness of death for myself (having spent my life deluding myself that there is a whole other world and life after it) until a few months ago. One night, after I'd gone to bed, my heart started racing like it would jump right out of my chest, without any overexertion on my part. This has happened several times over the years, but this time it just kept it up. After a few minutes it calmed down, and later it started up again. This went on several times over about an hour or so. The next day I was fine, and it hasn't been a problem since, but it scared me.

Without health insurance (or money) I couldn't afford to go anywhere to get checked out. (BTW, I just saw Michael Moore’s SICKO movie and have a whole new perspective on that. Go see it. YOU’LL have a whole new perspective too.) Anyway health insurance was not my intended subject for this blog, but since I brought it up, you should know that the best I could do at the time was just to stay calm, meditate, and hang on. Thankfully I survived and as a result you have this nice blog to read.

(BTW, I WAS able to get checked out a few weeks later, only because I had been volunteering for a cardiac research program for some years. They already had a history on me and were able to do some tests, so they could assure me with confidence that it was stress-related and not something more serious, and probably due to my being in between jobs at the time. That made sense to me and I’m glad to have an explanation. But as I said, at the time, it scared me and there was little I could do about it.)

Anyway, it kind of brought into focus what Dennett was saying in his book. Not that my life flashed before my eyes and I started praying or painting or anything like that, but it did leave an impression. And I begin to understand where he’s coming from.

And this experience helped me come to a totally different decision about my employment. I decided not to go back to selling major appliances at Sears (although I had enjoyed that). Instead, I decided to get a job having fun.

I happened to go bowling one day. I signed up for a bowling class and asked if they were hiring. Next thing I knew I'm now their Youth Director. I'm visiting schools and encouraging kids to sign up for bowling class and junior leagues, and I’m coaching. And the best part is that I get to bowl! And in fact, they WANT me to bowl and get good so I'll be a good example for the kiddos.

AND the work is full time without the uncertainty of commission work. Oh, yea, and a lot less stressful. YaY!!

I'm glad all of these subjects came up, and I came to the realization that our days are limited, and we need to cherish the time we have, and do something valuable and fun in the mean time. Also we need to get this health insurance business worked out in the United States. People are dying everyday because our health care system is so lousy. And I might well have been one of them.

So, if your HMO is letting you down and you’ve already written to your congressman and don't know what else to do, I suggest you get a job that is a little less stressful doing something you love. We really have no idea how long we’ll be around to enjoy the good times.