Monday Smiles – 2/23/2015
Here it is, almost 4:30 p.m. and I have not been out of the house, which means … since I mostly work at home … that I have not been out of the office. The office, of course, at this stage of my life is wherever I am working. After breakfast and spending some time catching up on the news on my tablet. I dragged my trusty laptop (still preferable to my tablet for real work) to the kitchen table and spent the morning reviewing material for a legal case on which I am employed as an expert. It is the nature of that business that there are long breaks as attorneys negotiate or await the results of mediation, long breaks during which I forget some of the details of the case. Now, mediation has failed and the case will go to trial, so I am rereading statements I wrote months ago to remind me of what I knew back then. I spent the afternoon doing the same thing in my office. There are thousands of pages of documents and even more information online to be considered. I am missing a beautiful sunny Socal day. This case has come back to life just as the largest job my partner and I have ever won is starting. I am likely to be working more hours than I planned. I never expected to be working this much as I navigate the second half of my seventieth year, and my age also means that I am required to withdraw money from my IRA this year. I could get hammered on my taxes.
Last week, when I was talking to my friend and sponsor, Ralph, he laughed and said, You’re breaking my heart, Bud. You have Quality Problems. In all my years in big industry, if management said we had quality problems, that was not a good thing. It meant our products were not meeting our customer’s standards. That’s not what Ralph meant … he meant that my life was basically good and I was complaining about details. Before I started working the 12 Steps I thought all my problems were just problems. But I have work and it’s interesting work and I am healthy enough to be gainfully employed at seventy and I have an IRA and getting hammered on my taxes means I am making more money that I planned on making this year. That is the very definition of a Quality Problem. It’s Monday … I’m smiling.
Tags: 12 Steps, feeling older, friends, humor, Monday smiles, postaday, working
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Older Eyes 
February 23, 2015 at 5:56 pm
Good for you! Monday usually makes me do the opposite of smiling.