Over the course of the last few weeks, I feel like I've had very little time to decompress. And for the most part that is true. The rain has kept me from riding, work and transitioning to a new position has filled the tank to a maximum level of stress, and the future state of my family’s residence have kept me in a sullen state of confusion and left me with no time to formulate any synthesized thought about the aforementioned topics.

So I’ve been hoping at least one thing would settle in my reality so that a slight bit of normalcy, or whatever my altered state of reality defines as normalcy, would return and I can substantiate something of some interest to scribble in the electronic byte-like walls of this blog.

You ask and you shall receive. Well, maybe it’s not so cut and dry. But what I’ve found over the most formative years of my life is that I don’t like making single life making decisions. They seem meaningless and trivial. I like having everything completely in disarray and fucked up so that I can ultimately stress out about the manic convergence of life changing decisions on top of me at that moment. I perform best when everything is on the line. Never have I been risk averse.

So now my family joins me on the quest to discover where my professional career will take me. Philosophical questions like “What do I want to be when I grow up?” they are now entertaining. At work I have come to the realization that I am no longer challenged intellectually so I am shaking every tree to see what fruit of opportunity drop. But we don’t stop there. Son #1 is rapidly growing up and just graduated pre-school. Now this isn’t a miracle so to speak. But given the fact that his father was kicked out of his pre-school graduation, it concerns that father that no good can come of this. Needless to say, he graduated but not without drama. That is an entry in and of itself.

With his graduation, we launch in to the next educational phase of his existence. The public school system. We are in the precarious position of deciding where we want him to go to school. The neighborhood we live in sucks balls. So we decided a few months ago that we would sell this house and move into a better school district where we felt that Son #1 had a chance to be taught by real teachers who give a shit. We decided to sell our current home out right and risk living out of a box until we found our next residence. That would give me the greatest financial leverage to negotiate rather than navigate the murky uncharted waters of contingencies.

Those are the two marquee situations that we are currently evaluating. But as I said, I have a penchant for making all of my life changing decision all at the same time.


In my current professional role, my technical aptitude has been buried and I was continually being passed over for new opportunities. In the recent past, there has been the old cliché of when it rains it pours. I am in the fortunately unfortunate position of having multiple interviews for new intellectually challenging positions and will be able to choose my course. In the next week, I will begin my new challenge as a product manager for the work horse and best seller of our product offerings. It has the most threats in the market and is the most dynamic in the form of innovation. A great challenge.


As my wife once told me, the house situation and the work situation were interdependent and when one settled the other was soon to follow. Needless to say, one week after I committed to my new position, we had a second showing of our house to a couple that made as a competitive offer that was within our range of acceptability in a degraded market. To formally enter a contract to sell your home, you need a successful inspection. We were very fortunate to find only two minor things needing to be addressed. With completion of those, the rest is up to the buyers to get there financing in order with a visit from the appraiser. This still can provide a hitch in the process but we are hoping for the best.

Now we are on the clock to find a new home in the area of our choice, with the configuration we desire, and the future of memories we're going to create. We've been out three times now to look and are pretty excited to get the process going. This will be the third house we have bought in the last seven years. With any luck, we can stay in it for awhile. This decision is based on the greater good of the family and our future so I’m sure it will be perfect.




While it is stressful to do everything at once, sell a house, buy a house, change jobs, and protect your family from adversity, I welcome the adverse challenge. My life has always been like a snow globe. When the snow settles, I shake the shit out of it again.