Work Work and Need Some Distraction!

Insane I did get! It was balls to the wall overtime with new projects. I should consider myself fortunate, especially when I have friends and neighbors who are laid off or their work schedule decreased. I keep hearing reports that the economy is better and the islands are experiencing unemployment lower than the national level. I say to that “Really?” I would like to see the quality of the jobs that lower statistics than the reality of the underemployed that would really triple or quadruple the unemployment numbers. If I want to discuss politics then I should start another blog that deals with that matter.

Most of my mainland life consisted of living in California and the West Coast including Washington State. As a toddler I lived in Washington DC and grew out of that stage when we returned to Japan in the early 60’s. In California I hardly knew my neighbors, even if we lived in one neighborhood for several years.  The quality of life in Southern California had deteriorated with crime, smog and crowds in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Though San Diego was nowhere near like Los Angeles, Southern California had lost its luster with me. Nearly twenty years since graduating from high school the SoCal lifestyle changed with the times to the worse. The beach had become a haunt for the homeless and gangs harassed passersby’s on the boardwalk. A co-worker had lost her son to drive by shooting and it seemed the negativity was infinite. Rumors flew that there were to be major cutbacks at the place I worked. There were cutbacks and I was affected. To tie me over, I was offered a temporary position doing the same job I did as a permanent employee. I kept my fringe benefits with the exception of time for seniority and retirement. However during the 60-day notice, I received my paperwork for my tenure. How can I get tenure when I received a lay off notice? It was explained to me that it would help out at my next place of employment. At which I was offered a job in Dugway Utah. I accepted and moved the family there three months later.

However, I grew to like California again during the last decade. I returned to San Diego several times while sailing the Ka’imimoana. We had our dockside winter inport at Naval Station San Diego. I had the opportunity to reconnect with people I graduated with from high school and of course visit and spend time with my parents. Took advantage of Padres fan fest at Petco Park, ate good Mexican food and pizza again. Took the trolley with a $5 day pass and hung around Little Italy and Old Town. Just last year I returned to California, this time in the Bay Area. I didn’t mind California at all. However, some tell me that I felt that way because I knew I was not going to stay and return to home in time. But I no longer hold the dislike that I did many years ago. We plan to go back again in August. This time to the Bay Area and if time permits, a jaunt to Seattle to see old friends, hangouts and August in Seattle is gorgeous! Nice plan and good material for daydreaming because you can never tell what will happen in the future. We will see come August.

Utah was a different story! It is renowned for Latter Day Saints and headquarters in Salt Lake City. When telling friends and acquaintances that I was moving, the stereotype of becoming a Mormon set in. Those that been to Utah knew otherwise. They knew of it’s beauty, landmarks, history and lifestyle that you find exclusively in the Intermountain region from Montana to Southern Utah. This is the country where genuine cowboys still lived and worked. These weren’t cowboys depicted by Hollywood or Nashville but like sailors who did their jobs and didn’t relish in the glory manufactured by mass media. I did make attempts fit in immediately upon my arrival. However, I just wasn’t into much of the local culture then. Coming from California, I felt awkward at first. Fortunately co-workers were great and helped me adjust. Many of them I still keep in touch through social media. The neighbors made food and came to visit for support when my son was born. However, that didn’t last long due to other reasons, which I won’t get in to. It wasn’t that we were non-Mormons that the euphoria faded.  I was grateful to my neighbors in the Beehive State and refreshing after years of living in “degree of rudeness” in California. It was energizing to see people care for each other. I did learn quite a bit about social interaction, not the FB and blog type, while living in Utah. In fact when I resigned my position at Dugway, I was regretful about leaving. After turning in the keys to the house we were renting, my daughter and I spent the night at a hotel in Salt Lake and headed towards the Evergreen State next morning. When we crossed the state line between Utah and Idaho I took one more look at the Beehive State and watched it fade in my rear view mirror. That was the last time I saw Utah. I had made it my home for seven years and felt comfortable. When I recollect the 90’s, I always think of Utah. Buzz baseball games, high speed on Skull Valley Road, T-ball, range fires, Baker Lab, Christmas in downtown Salt Lake City, visits to Temple Square, airlift to California for Naval Reserve drills and snowy winters to mention a few. But constant talk about cutbacks, prospects of relocating again, and then developing an ambitious goal of being a businessman with an opportunity on the West Coast extinguished my time there. Unfortunately too, it was my big head thinking that I could make it in the business world when I left Dugway. I couldn’t have been more wrong!

In Washington, the neighbor across the street welcomed me with a bag of apples but only to see him succumb to a heart attack a week later and pass away. Washington life took a little time to get used to, especially the weather! Cloudy and rain, cloudy and rain and rain and cloudy! Things started off bad. We were straddled with a larger mortgage due to requirement of flood insurance. The whole Skagit Valley where we were at was a flood plain. Within a year the business opportunity vanished when we ran out of money and partnership disbanded. Tried odd jobs here and there but I was not cut out to be a salesman. I could probably give good talk on what not to do as my stint as a businessperson was not successful to describe it the best. Then decided to strike out on my own totally! I found myself reading too many success stories and striving to be the next Horatio Alger or Bill Gates that only fueled my ego. However the reality was I tumbling into the abyss of disaster! I felt more like an impostor wearing a suit, carrying business cards and enjoying all the benefits of a CEO such as luncheons and vendor parties at Boeing. But the suit was empty and I was using up my retirement pretending it to be an investment in my “company.” The pressure was felt more by those around me as I lived beyond my illusion and treasured my title as “president.” There were some minor successes with my business but not enough for sustaining it or growth. It all came to a stumbling end in 2001 and the dreadful consequences of a failed business set in.

When I had rejoined the status of bachelorhood, I had been with my present employer a year. While in Alaska I was served with a divorce notice. After all the battles with my soon to be ex, my boss decided that Hawaii would be a good venue for me and take a ship to American Samoa. With all the adversity I went through, he probably thought it would be good dose of medicine to get far away from Seattle as I could. I had moved from Burlington to Edmonds. It was time to clean the slate and start all over. I found a nice one-bedroom condo style apartment with my parents help and made it my home for two years! I didn’t spend much time there but the manager and neighbors were friendly and kept a lookout on my place. I would sail nearly the entire year in the tropics and would return to Seattle shortly before Thanksgiving. Which of course was cold and rain. I would show up to SeaTac in t-shirts and shorts, with long pants and hoodie in the suitcase for a quick change in the men’s room and cab ride home from the airport to Edmonds. However, it was always good to get home and spend time with the kids again. 

My reason for moving to Edmonds was a church that I started to attend when I felt religious was located there. I didn’t know when to stop and got heavily involved with Catholicism. Meantime I burned bridges with people who were my friends at the old church I attended. I did find the Latin Rite church in Edmonds meditative with its Gregorian choir and old style of worship. However, my sailing schedule took me away from attending mass regularly.  In 2004 I went to weekend Easter services. From there, I knew that my interest had evolved when I was lost trying to follow Good Friday services in Latin and made no attempt to catch up and re-follow. A young girl, about four years old, innocently sat at the pew where people were to have their feet washed on Easter Sunday. An usher came by to shoo her off and told her that this seating was for men only. That along with demands from the priest to cancel cable TV subscription because they showed adult movies turned me off about dogma. These Catholics didn’t believe in divorce and despite the fact I had two children, my marriage to my first wife was invalid because it was not in the church so therefore I was a member in good standing. But did their belief make my kids bastards in their eyes? I was divorced regardless of what church I was married in! And I never did tell them that my girlfriend in Samoa, who is now my wife, and I was living together between sailing schedules. Not that the parish or anyone needed to know but I dropped out altogether after I left to sail that year. Gone were the nightly rosary prayers and morning prayers where I couldn’t figure out why I was already a sinner. And what did I do for Jesus to “die for my sins?” Why the anti-Semitism displayed by praying for all the Jews to convert? I started reading books about Eastern Philosophy again and attended festivities when I was in Hawaii. However I did not join a church because that would put me in the same rut of dogma again.

My experience in Washington had definitive peaks and valleys. I brought my current wife to the US in 2008 and after years of wanting her presence before me, the dream had finally come true! But it wasn’t to be smooth as things in dreams are.