Good Trade

This marks my lucky number thirteenth blog entry. One of the things I have learned about creating and writing a blog is that each one is imperfect.

In my view, if I could have eight hours each day to write, each entry would be perfect. Every syllable, every comma would be in the right place. The syntax would be incredible. The words would jump out of the computer and land on your head and do a little dance.

As it is, I do not have eight hours each day for writing. I’m lucky to have one hour to pound the keys. My previously spoken goal was to have three or four (preferably four) entries each week. My unspoken goal was to have an entry each day.

Three and maybe four a week has been closer.

Part of the problem is that I get wordy. I am not satisfied with writing three good paragraphs. I have to write a page and a half. That’s part of my “words dancing on your head” challenge.

Another problem is that life sometimes interrupts your life’s work. You can plan to have the time to be creative and have an idea worked out in your head, but sometimes the boss comes along with a project that needs your attention. Sometimes you need to shuttle family members one direction or another. Sometime you simply need to spend time with your family.

Sometime you just need to rest.

Other times life comes along and deals a blow that slows you down. Last week was one of those weeks.

There were two deaths last week. Each deserved my attention. One was a family member. Not a close family member, but they were family. Someone I had not gotten to know well, but they were a good father and uncle, etc. They had a good, loving family. It was good to see them and spend too short an amount of time with them.

It brought back memories of similar situations with closer family members. It also brings worries of those times yet to come.

Then, just as we were getting over the shock of one, I got word of more startling news.

My workplace is home to 350 to 400 workers. I have been employed there for over five years and hope to be there many more.

One morning I came to work and received word that we lost one of our workers. This is only the second person I am aware of to pass away while employed with our company. Not to scare anyone, but both have been team members of mine in the past.

This particular co-worker was just a little over a year older than I. They were hired prior to myself, but never pursued management as I did. We discussed it before, but they were content with the hours they worked and knew that a promotion would mean later hours and weekends. Any extra money was not worth the loss of time with their family.

They were the perfect team member. They came to work each day. They followed the rules. They helped our customers. They worked well with their team members.

They were good family people. They doted on their grand-daughter. Each Monday morning came with stories of what their grand-daughter said or did, or clothes or toys that they found at bargain-basement prices. When other team members were having children, our friend always had encouraging words of wisdom and ideas for any problems that were of concern.

If you had to build a prototype of what you would like in a co-worker, this is what you would design.

Now they are gone.

The company will survive. We have 350 to 400 other people. They do good work too.

Those who knew our team member…our friend…will survive too. But we will miss them.

So last week my Dimm world is missing two fine people. I lost the time I could have put to use writing something interesting for you to read. That time was spent, in part, saying goodbye.

As someone I knew years ago used to say: “Good trade.”