September 10, 2006
Scattered Thoughts
So.
A lot of things have been happening around here. Some noteworthy, most not so much. We had, ironically enough, a bee swarm land in our back yard up in a tree accross from the three hives. Seeing as my Dad's out of town and my bee suit's at his house, I did nothing and we watched them fly away 4 days later. I think they may have convinced one of my hives to join them on their field trip, but I'm not sure. As soon as I get my bee suit back, I'll go and check it out.
I don't know if I've mentioned it before or not, but I'm on a bocce team. We like to call it "Debauchery" because there's a lot of drinking, eating and socializing going on. During all that, three bocce games are played. I've made it to about half of the games this year, and they've been going on every Thursday since about the last week of May.
I was playing the last game, and was told right when we started that we would be going to the playoffs if we won it. I wish someone had told me before that it was an important game, or I would've begged off. It's only my second season, and with being gone for half of it, I didn't exactly have a ton of confidence that I would play well.
Suffice it to say that I got the last two game winning points. It was pretty nifty, and very surprising to feel like a star. Not bad at all!
On Friday, my work sent me on a field trip to our Santa Rosa office. They had a new CSR there that had started on Tuesday, and the office manager's daughter was getting married on Saturday, so she wouldn't be there. I was volunteered to go.
All in all it was a nice time-I got to leave at the same time I alsways do for work that's 6 miles away, and about 2 hours later, I arrived at their office. The new guy is really smart and picks up on stuff quickly. Plus, he seems to want to work, which is always a bonus. I showed him a few shortcuts in our system, trained him on some things that his office manager hadn't had a chance to get to yet, and met the other people in the office.
I would up leaving a little later than originally planned, but traffic wasn't too bad, and it generally was fun. It's always nice to get paid for doing something different, especially when it includes driving around for four hours and NOT having to answer the phone.
Today, I'm watching a special that they have on Animal Planet about Steve Irwin. Who would've thought that he would come to such a sudden end by a (relatively) harmless animal?
Hubby and I were watching his show a lot while we were on vacation, as it comes right after Jeff Corwin (my husband just LOVES that show!) and I had mentioned how I thought that Steve kind of manhandled all the animals around him and was well...a spazz.
My opinion changed (strangely enough, only 2 days before his death) when I saw a show that he did in India. He was doing a special on the Gypsy road shows with the cobras. It seems that the gypsies de-fang all of their roadside attraction animals, and Steve was buying all of the ones that hadn't been de-fanged from them so he could release them back in the wild. They also had de-fanged monkeys that they would force to perform tricks by taking their babies from them. If the monkey didn't perform the trick (which was usually a lame one, like carrying a stick over its shoulders) they wouldn't give it back its baby. It was such a shame seeing the monkey scared and shaking while anxiously performing its pointless trick. You could see the sorrow in its eyes.
So, my admiration for the Steve grew tenfold that day for a couple of reasons. Not only was he airing these bad deeds on his show for general awareness, and telling people not to support these shows if they happened on it while traveling, he was spending his energy, money, and time to release the ones that could be saved back into their environment.
When I heard that he had died and left two very young children, I was sad and cried like a baby all day last Sunday.
Steve Irwin really cared about what he was dong, and was a fantastic conservationalist. May we all not only admire what he did, but find a way to carry on his legacy and emulate his passion.
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So, my birthday's a week from today. I've kind of got the blues from it, because whenever it comes up, I always tend to do a "Clipchick's Life in Review". Although selling paperclips isnt' too bad of a job, it was nothing that I wanted to do as a child. I wanted to be a movie star, oceonographer, teacher, and dancer. My high school aptitude tests said that I would be an awesome farmer, minister (!!!!!) and advertising designer.
I'm not doing any of these. Not that I've ever heard of a job description of Paper Clip Pusher, but I think you know where I'm getting at.
Steve Irwin's death was another reminder that life's too short to not give yourself the opportunity to persue your passion. I'm pretty darn happy in my personal life, but it would be nice to persue a passion in my working life and get paid for it to.
Knowing me, I would probably be all consumed in my Perfect Job. It makes me fear that if my job's so perfect, then my personal life might suffer. On the other hand (some people may argue), doesn't your personal life become more enriched because you're doing what you love in your professional life? I don't know the answer to that because I've never done it. I'd like to. Of course, being this old, I've got all these great insecurities I've nutured for so many years that almost paralyze me from taking that chance, taking the necessary steps to even see what's needed in order to even start.
Things I'd like to do now:
Oceanographer, social worker, anything in biology, writer, mother, interior designer, botanist.
I believe strongly that it's important to still want to be things when you grow up.
Just because I'm older, doesn't mean that I've considered myself grown up.
This may work in my favor, or against me. I don't really know which. I don't think that anyone really ever knows. Maybe it's a factor of human nature to remain curious, to always second guess.
Either way, I'm almost ready to take a deep breath, grow some cajones (at least figuratively-literally would probably be uncomfortable) and dive right in.
Almost.
clipchick at 12:57 p.m.
All thoughts, ideas, and musings are � Clipchick. Please don't snipe my stuff!
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