Driving around

This lovely Saturday morning, the start of a long-awaited extended weekend, found me out and about on a few unhurried errands in the neighborhood—trips to the shop for an oil change, to the library to replenish the supply of audiobooks (my reaction to the latest one is here, fwiw)—little things that needed tending to prior to heading off to a party later in the day. It’s probably revealing for me to admit that a simple outing like this felt like something to relish.

I almost said this was in the OLD neighborhood, but we do still live here. However, a few months ago I began a new job at a location 50 miles away. Now on week days I’m barreling up the freeway at first light and feeling too bushed in the evenings for more than the occasional good-faith effort to help the little guy with his homework. So I no longer see much of the home turf. But I sure enjoyed this opportunity to cruise around a bit at my own pace.

By chance, I passed the building where I’d worked for many years until a certain unnerving development occurred, about which I wrote earlier. I also passed the headquarters of Illumina, which had been the first potential next employer to catch my eye (before I understood the challenge of getting past that company’s HR firewall).

Then, as I continued making my rounds, without intending to I happened to drive within sight of seven (7) of the many places of employment at which I’d interviewed for work during my epic job search earlier this year.

Local history

Okay, living in one area for any length of time has the effect of gradually imparting history and personal significance to every street corner. Surely this is true for you as well. Wherever I go in the few square miles closest to home, I’m passing sites of various remembered little adventures and misadventures (any of the parks where I used to take my disabled son Joseph, for example, on the timed marathon walks that were part of his therapy; the clinic where his mom got her cancer diagnosis; the house of a great friend who has long since moved away). That’s to be expected. But today it was a little startling to notice in quick succession so many buildings within which I’d recently made all-out efforts to sell myself.

I’ve changed jobs much less often than is the norm, if LinkedIn profiles are any indication. But in previous experience, periods of transition involved the merest handful of interviews. This time the process seemed endless. (One wonders if it ever does or even should end, for anyone still in today’s workforce, but that’s a separate topic.)

At one of these companies, a place where I surely would have been a perfect fit, and expected to be a shoo-in, the process inexplicably went off the rails. When I inquired, the manager said apologetically that a former employee had become available and they’d rehired him, because “better the devil we know, and so forth.” Another employer did offer to hire me, but on terms that amounted to what Don Corleone might’ve called an offer I couldn’t accept. In most cases, I have no idea what happened behind the scenes. I’m pretty sure some advertised openings were never filled by anybody (perhaps because of budget issues or because of ambivalence about the notion of adding an honest-to-gosh writer to the staff (some companies expect engineers or marketing folks to do their writing)). No doubt, in discussing their candidates some hiring managers referred to me as “the old guy,” and made decisions on that basis.

The job I eventually took is far removed from my normal geographical circuit. Hence the commute (and the need for audiobooks), and the sense of returning to former haunts on my day off.

How did I get here?

In his famous poem about roads not taken, Robert Frost assumes that the traveler is the one making choices, deciding (albeit perhaps with misgivings) not to follow one course of action in order to pursue another. Likewise, there are motivational speakers who insist that the path to success involves commitment to a goal and refusal to be deterred by life’s obstacles and distractions.

All that is fine and true, inspiring and empowering, but also sometimes destructive, I think. There is going to be a way forward, and it’s very cool when unfolding reality coincides with plans. But despite our very best intentions that way forward often deviates drastically from the plan. What happens then?

And there’s the claim, which also has merit, that we’re better off letting destiny, or God’s perfect plan, unfold as it will. For example, perhaps there’s a perfectly good reason why finding suitable work at this point in life is so difficult for me: Perhaps the time has come to hang up that green eye shade, call it a day, and open up to the possibility of doing something else.

Perhaps.

But then I remember Joseph. (Just about all of my posts come round to Joseph sooner or later.) When the best efforts this family could muster did not succeed in overcoming his profound developmental challenges, the only option remaining was to allow destiny to take its course. That course has included wonderful blessings, for the family. For Joseph himself, not so much. No one could honestly maintain that his current state compares favorably with that of any representative nondisabled person.

Some of life’s directions appear to be inexplicably bad.

But beautiful Saturday mornings come along on schedule anyway.