Mouse Plans
Plans gang aft aglee. To tell the truth, I don’t think I really had a plan, I think I was just coasting on the plans made last spring. Since working at the North Rim was good, we decided to put in to work at Big Bend. So I sent in my application on Nov 14, way after their season began, figuring that the turnover would leave me an opening.
My stay in Hillsboro TX dragged on and on. It was a good place to be for the holidays, but it has been very very cold, too cold to go do stuff. I insulated and wrapped up my outside connections and hunkered down. I went through a 40 lb tank of propane every week and will have to write a fat check for electricity to my host. And still no word from Big Bend, so I called.
Two possibilities had turned up, one a full time store manager job (August =110 degrees, not in a trailer) and a Front Desk job. I phone interviewed for that, felt qualified and confident, and then got a message that I didn’t get it. Crushed, I called the HR lady, and found that I would have been hired, but they had no RV space open.
After a week of trolling around, I was turned down for 4 more campground situations. I began to think I was worthless, washed up, etc etc, and have deep sympathy for folks looking for work. In truth, the campground and resort world work on a seasonal clock, and trying to find a place in January is hard, actually impossible!
Is there meaning in all this? I’m inclined to want to believe that something is running this show from behind the scenes. My Roman Catholic upbringing would say it is a trial sent to test me and make me strong, maybe a test of my faith that a Being (or a number of heavenly beings) has ordered up to improve the muscles of my immortal soul. Or maybe there is a plan that has been set out, the maze of my life, that is preset and my job is just to wander it. I generally feel very blessed (lucky?) about my past, sometimes I even feel a little guilty, or even afraid that the other side of the good stuff of my life will soon be evened up by bad stuff.
What about earning the good stuff? Do we get rewarded for being good, by racking up points which will somehow cancel out the bad stuff? The RC church in the past (?still?) allowed something called indulgences, whereby prayers and good works including donations, would get you time off from purgatory. Purgatory is where we serve out our jail time for minor sins before being clean enough to go to heaven. Reincarnation holds out the promise that if we are good, we will come back in an improved body, and if bad I would come back as a lesser being. (Can I be a horse, please….) It would be nicer if our good works would be a hedge against bad stuff here on earth.
Right now it feels like I’m some sort of model train layout that is being run by an unseen hand. Watching the switches come up, thinking that this one will be it, the job, the place to spend the rest of the winter, but the train rolls right on by.
So I dropped down another level on my list and emailed to Habitat for Humanity about builds in the area. I did one day of this during an Airstream International Rally, and liked it, plus the idea of actually building a house for someone who needs it is just the kind of work I want to do. On the good works scale, it is clearly a 10, whereas serving the needs of vacationers is probably about a 3 or 4 at best. And lo, I am to turn up Jan. 31 in Las Cruces, NM and work for 2 weeks. So now I have something to DO. And an even stronger suspicion that my fate is being managed somehow. (This morning, one of the “filled” camper jobs called up and wanted me…..)
So in the next few days I’ll leave here and mosey in that direction, doing a little tourist stuff like Carlsbad Caverns on the way. It will be good to be moving again, and the weather is decent and will get better as I go south.
My stay in Hillsboro TX dragged on and on. It was a good place to be for the holidays, but it has been very very cold, too cold to go do stuff. I insulated and wrapped up my outside connections and hunkered down. I went through a 40 lb tank of propane every week and will have to write a fat check for electricity to my host. And still no word from Big Bend, so I called.
Two possibilities had turned up, one a full time store manager job (August =110 degrees, not in a trailer) and a Front Desk job. I phone interviewed for that, felt qualified and confident, and then got a message that I didn’t get it. Crushed, I called the HR lady, and found that I would have been hired, but they had no RV space open.
After a week of trolling around, I was turned down for 4 more campground situations. I began to think I was worthless, washed up, etc etc, and have deep sympathy for folks looking for work. In truth, the campground and resort world work on a seasonal clock, and trying to find a place in January is hard, actually impossible!
Is there meaning in all this? I’m inclined to want to believe that something is running this show from behind the scenes. My Roman Catholic upbringing would say it is a trial sent to test me and make me strong, maybe a test of my faith that a Being (or a number of heavenly beings) has ordered up to improve the muscles of my immortal soul. Or maybe there is a plan that has been set out, the maze of my life, that is preset and my job is just to wander it. I generally feel very blessed (lucky?) about my past, sometimes I even feel a little guilty, or even afraid that the other side of the good stuff of my life will soon be evened up by bad stuff.
What about earning the good stuff? Do we get rewarded for being good, by racking up points which will somehow cancel out the bad stuff? The RC church in the past (?still?) allowed something called indulgences, whereby prayers and good works including donations, would get you time off from purgatory. Purgatory is where we serve out our jail time for minor sins before being clean enough to go to heaven. Reincarnation holds out the promise that if we are good, we will come back in an improved body, and if bad I would come back as a lesser being. (Can I be a horse, please….) It would be nicer if our good works would be a hedge against bad stuff here on earth.
Right now it feels like I’m some sort of model train layout that is being run by an unseen hand. Watching the switches come up, thinking that this one will be it, the job, the place to spend the rest of the winter, but the train rolls right on by.
So I dropped down another level on my list and emailed to Habitat for Humanity about builds in the area. I did one day of this during an Airstream International Rally, and liked it, plus the idea of actually building a house for someone who needs it is just the kind of work I want to do. On the good works scale, it is clearly a 10, whereas serving the needs of vacationers is probably about a 3 or 4 at best. And lo, I am to turn up Jan. 31 in Las Cruces, NM and work for 2 weeks. So now I have something to DO. And an even stronger suspicion that my fate is being managed somehow. (This morning, one of the “filled” camper jobs called up and wanted me…..)
So in the next few days I’ll leave here and mosey in that direction, doing a little tourist stuff like Carlsbad Caverns on the way. It will be good to be moving again, and the weather is decent and will get better as I go south.
posted by Thistledown24 at 5:48 PM
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