Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you. – Isaiah 46:4
“You can’t lead anyone else further than you have gone yourself.” – Peter Drucker
It’s hard to believe that so much time has passed in what seems like the blink of an eye, but it has officially been six years and four months since I last posted anything in this blog. I’ve hardly forgotten about it, though. In fact, I think all the time about how much my life has changed since I was unemployed and living in Connecticut, when I found the time to write every post preceding this one. Man, I had the blues back then. It seems like a past life, looking back on it now from where I sit today, gainfully employed and back on my feet here in my home state of Colorado. Life is so incredibly short.
I moved from Southern California to New England back in the spring of 1999, and started out living on a lake in New Hampshire with my young family for a little over a year. The scenery and atmosphere did not escape me, but I was miserable with homesickness. The transition from West Coast to East was far from easy, but that had more to do with the fact that I was married to someone who was married more to her father than to me. I gave up a career I loved in a last ditch effort to make her happy and bring peace to our marriage, but that only backfired. I abdicated my role as the head of my own household, and my then father-in-law called the shots from that time forward, right up to and including my divorce when his daughter left me to reconnect with her high school sweetheart. Does this sound familiar to anyone?
After moving from New Hampshire to Connecticut, I worked for ten years at a job I absolutely detested, where I was kept indoors working in a cubicle for a huge conglomerate corporation, performing technical writing assignments that I found meaningless and mind-numbingly boring. Prior to that, I had worked for 22 years in the SCUBA industry, of all things, where I started out in my youth as a dive bum schlepping air tanks and guiding eco-tourism trips down in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez. From there, I eventually ended up working for the industry’s largest manufacturer, founded by none other than Captain Jacques Yves Cousteau. I worked with the US Navy, and special operations dive teams for law enforcement agencies around the country. I led our engineering team on dives at Catalina Island, to put new product designs to the test in open ocean conditions. Shortly before they began the shooting of Titanic, I met with James Cameron’s brother Mike to demonstrate an early model of a wireless underwater communications mask that is widely used by underwater filmmakers today, and can be seen in almost every episode of the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. A couple of months later, I demonstrated that same mask for Jacques himself, from the bottom of a test pool. For most of my life, up until my early 40’s, my career path was anything but boring. I followed my passion back then, and not just a paycheck.
Fast forward 12 years. As mentioned in earlier posts, I found myself unemployed in 2010 as the recession worsened and my division of United Technologies downsized. I struggled for the next two years to find a job that paid enough to support me, let alone allow me to pay child support. I didn’t have the luxury of being selective, but I craved more than anything a job and a career that would once again reward me with a sense of purpose. I thought back often to my most rewarding achievement during my last two years in the diving industry. I had managed a project for the design, development and delivery of a self-rescue system for U.S. Navy helicopter aircrew to be used in over-water ditch landings. It is known today by the acronym HABD – Helicopter Aircrew Breathing Device, and it has helped save the lives of several dozen servicemen.
When a helicopter sets down in water, it is a violent event in the best of circumstances – and only slightly less catastrophic than a crash landing on dry land. Even with the engines cut, the rotor keeps turning, causing the blades to shear off as they hit the waves. The aircraft invariably flips, and proceeds to sink very quickly, pulled down by the massive weight of the rotor spindle. The pilot and anyone else still inside at that point have only seconds to get out before they are dragged down to a depth that is essentially below the point of no return. A fast and efficient egress is the key to survival, and even then is only made possible by having enough breathing air to swim up to the surface.
Years later, I discovered this to be the best metaphor I could possibly find for describing the spiritual and emotional malaise of divorce, speaking from experience – and also by witnessing what hundreds of other men have gone through themselves. We get dragged down by our refusal to let go of things we have no hope of holding onto, and no control over losing. The only path to survival is to move forward (or upward), and break free of the past. This is much easier said than done when there are children involved, and even harder yet for any fool hearted sot who is still in love with the woman who has just shoved a knife in his heart.
I knew that the only way forward was to reinvent myself, but first and more importantly, I had to find myself. My dream has always been to make my living as a writer – and more specifically, a well published author. My top priority had to be to earn a paycheck that would support myself and my kids, but I knew I had to find something more meaningful than waiting tables that would suit my personal definition of success. It was too late in life to start over as an EMT, Firefighter, Policeman, or Soldier, but I knew that I had to find work that would make a difference in the lives of others. There was no way I could ever top the HABD project, but if I could just come close…
My prayers were answered when I was called up for an interview for one of the hundreds of jobs I had applied for online – an entry level position in the fire protection industry. I was rescued – there is no other word for it. Although the pay was small at first, it put me on the fast track toward learning a trade that is not taught in any trade school – special hazards fire suppression. I had no way of knowing it then, but this would lead me to the job I have today as a Territory Manager (manufacturer’s rep) for the world’s largest manufacturer of fire suppression systems.
Among others, one of these systems protects large mining vehicles, including massive haul trucks that tower up to three stories high above the ground. When they catch fire (which they sometimes tend to do, with diesel fuel,
hydraulic fluids, and turbos that heat up to 1800 degrees F), the only prayer of survival for the operator way up in the cab is the early extinguishment (suppression) of flames that would otherwise roast him or her alive before they have a chance to egress and safely make their way down to the ground.
It wasn’t hard to see the thread that I’d been searching for ever since I ran the HABD project. I was back in the business of saving lives. There was just one hitch, though: this job required me to relocate from Connecticut to landlocked Colorado, my home state where my family and many high school friends still live. And oh darn, it would require me to also travel the Rocky Mountain states of Utah, Wyoming, and Montana. At last, my cubicle office days were behind me.
Anxious to prove myself in an industry where most everyone else has been working for most of their lives, I worked my ass off to make up for lost time. Hard work paid off, and I was awarded Special Hazards Salesman of the Year in 2017.
In spite of Covid and the current administration’s war on fossil fuels, I may be on track to win that same prize for 2021. (Newsflash for environmentalists – if you think oil drilling and coal mining are destructive and dirty, wait until you see what lithium mining does to our planet…)
No question about it, I have found my niche as far as gainful employment is concerned. Success doesn’t come without a price, however, and the hard work and travel that territory sales management requires leaves very little time for pursuing other ambitions.
I knew this going into it, so when I landed this job back in December of 2014 and had 30 days to wait around for the moving truck to arrive, I got busy writing. In record time, I cranked out four solid chapters for a new and completely different novel than the three I already had in mothballs, and although it has been like pulling teeth in between road trips, I’ve managed to write four more since then. The story has grown legs and is gaining traction, however, and I now have the whole thing outlined. The time has come to get it finished, and if it sells, my hope is that it will sell well enough to buy me enough time to finish the others.
Being a traveling salesman doesn’t leave much time or opportunity for pursuing a relationship, either, but I managed to meet a flight attendant going on four years ago, and we get each other’s work schedules and lifestyles. More than that, we respect and trust each other – in addition to being deeply and securely in love. She’s a Major Dudette in her own right. We will unquestionably tie the knot at some point, but only when nobody present will be required to wear a silly mask. It’s a formality at this point, anyway. After being locked down with each other for three months, we can honestly say we’ve gotten to see all sides of each other. Amazingly, she still loves me and believes in me, and I adore her like nobody I’ve ever known before.
I still find it impossible to accept the fact that I’m turning sixty in ten months, but after all these years since I was first divorced way back in 2006, I guess you could say I’m finally able to call myself a Major Dude…
Dudes@Midlife 