Anacronyms Revisited

I just realized (and today is the day of my annual performance review) that I have no expectation of retiring from this company.

This is glaringly obvious, and yet it is something that I have overlooked until now, perhaps due to the glaring quality of its obviousness¹. Many people in my business think the same way, although few of us talk about it.

For one thing, we have to keep current. For another, companies come and go. I’ve worked in this field since 1993, and in that time I have only worked for one company that hasn’t either ceased to exist or been radically changed, and that one company isn’t a place I’d work again unless I was desperate.

It’s a measure of how much the world has changed in my lifetime. The company I work for right now is a solid, profitable company, but I just don’t see it being around in 15 years, at least not doing what it is doing now. It’s a rather sobering realization.  If I follow the previous pattern, I will have at least five more jobs before I retire, and I don’t want that.

It’s a bit of a puzzle – where do  I go from here? If I settle into what I consider a long-term job, I run the considerable risk of being unemployable if that job should ever disappear. If I keep doing what I have been, I run the risk of being virtually unemployable as a 60 year old competing against 25 year olds.

Maybe I need to start using some of that Grecian formula for facial hair. Discreetly, of course.

1. I think I will name a new particle that is responsible for the flow of obviousness – the obvion. Obvion flux gives an object or concept high obviousity. Obvions are big and make a loud buzzing sound when they move. They have the intriguing property of always being a colour straight across the colour wheel from the background.

2011 went out and 2012 came in with a bang. Or a thud, depending on how you look at it.

I’ve never been much of a New Year’s Eve sort of guy – I dislike being told that I have to have a good time and of all days of the year, New Year’s is the day where you’re supposed to have Fun! and Party! I can count the number of big New Year’s Eve parties I’ve been to on the fingers of one hand. I’d be able to do so even if I’d had a horrible industrial accident. Most New Year’s Eves have been quiet for me – we usually spend it with friends with kids, or at home.

I have never spent a New Year’s Eve like I did this year’s, though.

About 10:30 on New Year’s Eve, Chris, HouseApes 1.0 and 3.0 and I were home. We were in the rec room, doing rec room stuff, when I felt what at first I thought was indigestion. This was no major surprise – we’d had three kinds of fondue for dinner: surf n turf, cheese, and chocolate. I took some antacid.

But the indigestion didn’t go away, and in fact it felt rather higher – not pain, but a pressure like someone was squeezing. I noticed that my palms were sweating, and my hairline was damp.

That scared me, and I told Chris I needed to go the hospital. She took one look at my face and asked whether we needed an ambulance. I said no. It was a strange trip – I was starting to feel ill, and while I was in a definitely altered state, there was a horrible clarity to the thoughts that were running through my head -what about Chris? What about HouseApe 1.0? How would Chris cope if I came out of this incapacitated or dead? What would this mean for HouseApe 1.0 in my custody fight with her mother?

For anyone with doubts about the Canadian medical system: I gave them my medical number. I told them I was having chest distress, and I was in, triaged, and hooked up to an EKG within 10 minutes. I had blood drawn and chest xrays within a half hour. Chris stayed with me for a while – we celebrated New Year’s with a kiss as timed by the heart monitor I was connected to, and then she left to care for our children.

I was released at 5 AM New Year’s Day after a monumentally unrestful night. I had a bed in the ER, and there were head injuries and people wanting a little reassurance and another guy with chest pain and a contentious second or third wife and foul-mouthed daughter in attendance, and further down there was an abusive drunk screaming obscenities.

Both EKGs were clear, and two sets of blood showed no signs of damage. I have a followup set of tests to be scheduled. I assume from the relative leisure of the appointment (within two weeks) that either this was a minor event, or it was nothing, just a little gas from rich food. I chose to walk home, both in an attempt to let Chris get as much sleep as possible, and as recognition that my lifestyle has to change.

Because even if this turns out to have been an attack of gas (and I don’t think it was) the experience in the car, that of really seriously regretting not getting your will changed to protect your oldest daughter is a sobering fucking moment, people.

Happy New Year. Love a lot, people. The world’s got enough envy and shame and greed to go round.