The Transition, Crossed the line
If you haven’t noticed, I have been going through a transitional period of life. If you know me a little bit you know may realize that I am all about maintaining the status quo. That’s why I continue to try to live a healthy lifestyle, work inside of routines, and try to address most conflict with a level headed approach. I do this because I foolishly pursue the idea that I can somehow stop time, or at least slow it dramatically by continuing to do things as I always have. If I still am doing pull ups and push ups at 54 it connects me in time to when I was doing them when I was 34. It’s hard to verbalize just how this strategy accomplishes anything tangible but it’s the reality I have always existed in. Consistency equals protection I guess. If I am still trying to do the same things now as I have done over the last few decades, somehow I am “winning”?
I routinely make mental comparisons to my trajectory and my mom’s. My mom had a number of longer term relationships after she was divorced. Her last one ended in her early 50’s, she was dating a man that had all sorts of inner demons despite outwardly being really outgoing and funny. When that relationship finally ended she never had another serious relationship and insisted she was happier being single, which I never believed.
I know in my mind, the idea of trying to determine the true nature of a person to see if you want to invest increasingly more precious time into possibly starting a relationship sounds daunting, exhausting, and frustrating most of the time nowadays to me. The dating app that I am on only reinforces those feelings along while making it apparent that so many people are in a similar boat as I am, just searching for a person they can trust enough to build something significant and long lasting with. When you get to the age range I am in people have so much excess baggage they need a 20 foot trailer to carry it all. I think if I had an honest conversation with my mom she would have expressed a similar mindset, that trying to find someone you really connect with when you are older is such a big mountain to climb that it’s easier to just raise the white flag and fly solo.
So in addition to the life transition I now have a job transition to manage as well. In some ways it isn’t a major shift as I will still be doing much of what I already do as my buddy/boss was much more specialized in his tech expertise which was not really IT focused in a conventional sense. His background was as a lifelong cobol programmer. I had large areas of responsibility already but now I will have ALL of the responsibility for our department. One of my early tasks will be filling the position that will open up. I have never had any direct hiring/firing duties, now I will. It is a step forward/upward for me for sure and likely the last forward movement I will have in my career until I retire in 8 years. I still can’t help wishing I had someone taking those final steps with me. After all I have always been in relationships so as outlined above, my natural instinct is to want that to continue.
The Russia/Ukraine debacle is unfolding. It seems insane to most that the entire world said Putin was going to do this as a form of dissuasion and he does it anyway. I hear some at home saying this is all Biden’s fault, that if he was a “strong” president Putin would never have attempted this, really?? I would love an explanation of how a strong president would react differently? Drop a nuke on Russia? Send US troops into Ukraine? The only realistic reaction is to try to cut them off from as many sources of support as possible. The Russian people are already protesting the move into Ukraine. Imagine how that wave of dissension will grow as conditions in Russia continue to degrade.
My understanding is this is mostly about controlling the pipeline that runs through Ukraine despite whatever Putin says about human rights of russian friendly citizens in the eastern region. The idea that Ukraine was becoming more west leaning was a real line in the sand for Putin along with talk of Ukraine joining NATO which was unlikely to ever happen. It’s a real cluster f.
The response to the conflict has been harsh from our allies yet there is a very tight rope that is being walked. If NATO countries would get directly involved in the conflict things could spiral very quickly. As is, Russia will be unleashing all of it’s tricks to sabotage anything and everything it can with it’s cyberterrorism capabilities, which are immense. We already know how adept Russia is at sowing seeds of psychological manipulation into social media, that effort will ramp to new levels for sure. I clearly remember time when Putin first came into the scene that he was seen as a decent, reasonable, leader. His transformation into a thinly veiled dictator (that Trump thinks is “brilliant”) is very sad. At least the world has something else to talk about besides covid…..
This weekend I am attending my first event at South Street in many years. They are throwing a party for the two people retiring on Monday, my boss and another regional manager. It will be fun to be in the bar socially, something I used to do pretty routinely the last time I was single. I am sure there will be lots of swiping left as well. I prefer to make my own memes by the way.