The Retirement Dream and the Waking Nightmare

Assuming I remain employed for the next 15 years and climate change hasn't quite destroyed civilization yet, I plan to retire at 65. Having now seen most of Canada, here's my short list of retirement possibilities:

Vancouver Island
Prince Edward Island
St. John's (or somewhere on the Avalon peninsula)
Some little hamlet in New Brunswick or Nova Scotia

All of these places offer natural beauty, lovely people, plentiful entertainment and relaxation opportunities, better weather than the Prairies, and proximity to larger cities should the desire for metropolitan experiences ever hit.

In all honesty, though, these feel like fantasies. For some time now I've felt a sense of impending economic doom on a personal level, perhaps because I feel like I've used up all the luck I have to get to where I am now. I've often told people how incredibly fortunate I feel to have enjoyed a comfortable living for the last couple of decades, but during that time I've survived several layoffs and I can't help but feel that eventually my number will come up. Sylvia and I have planned carefully enough that we should be able to avoid homelessness, but the pace of technological change, climate change impacts, and potentially catastrophic political upheaval over the next couple of decades make the future extremely uncertain.

I'm very aware that I live a life of incredible privilege compared to 95 percent of the world, and it feels incredibly selfish to worry about our personal destiny when the fate of billions is at stake.

I wish I had more of Sylvia's confidence that everything will be okay.  But I find it hard to be consistently optimistic.

On the other hand, there's always a chance that the forces of good will triumph over the sociopaths, or that the singularity will come and solve all our problems by means unimagined. Here's hoping...

Morning Bootup

Fancy Furniture Famine

Here's the furniture the facilities people moved in to replace the fancy MLA furniture. It was still a pretty nice office. Not shown: sofa. 

Fancy Furniture Feast

For a couple of days in 2008, I had fancy MLA furniture in my office at the Legislature Annex. Then they came and took it away. Which is fair, after all, because the furniture is meant for MLAs and there's only so much of it to go around. Dig the fancy TV I had to monitor Question Period. 

You Know My Name

Fancy nameplate day. 

Butchered by Bottles

It was the summer of 1992. I was driving a parts truck, delivering auto parts for Norwest Automotive, my first job after graduating from the University of Alberta. Upon returning to the store after dropping off some parts to customers, one of the partsmen warned me to be careful around the big cardboard box we used to store empty soda bottles and cans.

He was a burly fellow with curly black hair, with a laconic manner. Almost lazily, he gestured toward the box of bottles.

"Hey Earl, watch out," he said, and as he spoke he leaned into the box, pointing with an extended middle finger. "There's a broken bottle in here and you don't want to EARRGGHHHH!"

I watched, goggle-eyed, as the partsman impaled his index finger on the sharp tip of a shattered bottleneck. He jerked his hand back and started flailing, spattering blood all over the box of bottles, his own clothing, the walls, and the clipped-out SUNshine Girls that adorned them.

At that moment, Ron, the manager, rounded the corner.

"What the hell is happening?" he cried. "It looks like Freddy's final nightmare in here."

I don't remember if I managed to control my laughter or not. I hope so, but...

My Old ATCO Cubicle

Oh, how I miss my cubicle. I hate open office plans, and I always will. So wrongheaded. 

Earl Explains

Or maybe I'm asking for clarification. Alberta Liberal Caucus, 2010. 

Panorama of a Sloppy Desk

PPEsaur

Sometimes the right idea just refuses to spring to mind. I don't remember what I was thinking when I doodled the PPEsaurus, but I imagine I must have been thinking he could have been a mascot for the company's health and safety awareness campaigns. (PPE stands for "personal protective equipment.") I can't explain the hand growing from the tail. I will say that hands are very, very difficult to draw, especially for a terrible artist such as me. 

How to Live with Envy and Ambition

As time marches inexorably onward, I notice that more and more of my colleagues are, inevitably, younger than me. This wouldn't be so bad, were it not for that they seem to have achieved more in less time. It leads to the inevitable question: what have I done with my life?

Sometimes I feel like I peaked early. My brief moment in the television spotlight began and ended at age 15. My only management role happened back when I was in my 20s. My first (ghostwritten) book was published just before I hit 30. Since then, I've been, in the parlance of the corporate world, an "individual contributor."

If I were a better person, this wouldn't irk me at all. I should be--and am--happy for younger people who achieve directorships, chairs and vice-presidencies. But it does make me question my own talent and ambition. What have I done wrong? Am I too late to make a difference? What qualities do I lack?

Frustrated Ambitions
I've thought about this a lot over the last couple of years. I think my failure to earn management roles can be attributed to a number of factors:

• Ambition. Rightly or wrongly, I've always viewed ambition somewhat skeptically. Of course I understand that ambition is responsible for a lot of good, when applied to the right projects and causes. But naked ambition, pursuing power for the sake of it, makes me nervous. So I don't chase leadership opportunities, and thus fly under the radar. 
• Self-confidence. I've never had a lot of self-confidence, even in my (supposed) fields of expertise. It's tough to manage people when you don't believe in your own ability. 
• Leadership. Who am I to tell people what to do? In my own defence, I've experienced a couple of moments of crisis, during which I took command in order to get people out of a jam, but I found that easy because there were imminent (very minor) threats and the right path jumped out with crystal clarity. But in the longer term, with unclear outcomes, I struggle to offer leadership. 
• Desire. I love storytelling, and I think, when it comes to my chosen career, that's where my strengths lie. If I moved into management, I'd have to leave all that behind. 
• All the things I haven't thought of. Believe me, I have no trouble coming up with long lists of my own shortcomings, but those lists pale beside the true picture of my inadequacies, which may be for the best; I'm not sure I could take it if I really knew the full extent of my failings. There are doubtless many good reasons I haven't been earmarked for leadership roles. 

Paths Not Taken--or Started

Sometimes, too, I wonder if I should have just resolved to be poor and stuck with writing fiction as my ultimate career goal. To this day, I wonder what would have happened if I'd finished the spec Star Trek: The Next Generation script I was working on and sent it to to the producers back during that golden era they were accepting material from writers without agents. The odds of anything coming of it, of course, were and are a million to one, but at least I would have known. There's a slim chance I might have found up with an accidental credit, because my (unsent) story, "Electric Sheep," explored what might happen if Data were hooked up to the holodeck and started dreaming. Elements of that story wound up in "Birthright" and "Phantasms" from the show's sixth and seventh seasons, which shows that an idea is worthless until it's executed. I failed to execute, so someone else made the sale(s). 

When Reach Exceeds Grasp, Be Happy with What You Have

Despite the trajectory of my life so far, I still feel as though I have the capacity to serve the public in a leadership context, but only if the opportunity is somehow thrust upon me. That sort of thing generally only happens in some kind of moment of crisis, so naturally I'm not going to wish for that. And perhaps I'm only rationalizing my own inadequacies. 

Most importantly, no matter what happens, I recognize how privileged I have been to work at all, and to do so in fields at least tangentially related to my true desires. I've worked with a great number of amazing women and men over the years, people who I consider friends and mentors. And with almost two decades to go until retirement, there's still much that can happen, and much that I can make happen if I ever find that reservoir of ambition and desire inside myself.

Be Brave Enough to See Your Own Worth. 

Maybe I haven't been a leader, but there are still achievements that I'm proud of. I try to do good work every day, I've been involved with a couple of projects that earned peer recognition, and generally speaking I feel and hope that my clients have been pleased with my work over the years. Maybe asking for more is asking for too much.

How do I live with envy and ambition?

By being grateful, by learning, by appreciating the people around me, perhaps by recognizing that there are many kinds of leadership. Some time ago, a supervisor told me I have leadership qualities that I wasn't recognizing or utilizing. Maybe I should take that advice in the spirit it was meant and start exploring.  

ATCO Sunrise

Farewell, ATCO, and thank you for three and a half years of growth, learning and new experiences. On to the next thing! 

The Milk Gag

There's a communal fridge at work that contains several cartons of milk, presumably so my colleagues can use it to lighten their coffee. I thought it would be amusing if I bought my own container of milk and then lurked in the coffee room, waiting for someone to appear. Then I would take a hearty swig from the carton, and when they react in horror - "How can you drink from the carton, uggghh!" I'll say "What? I've been doing this since I started here." 

Training is What You Make of It

Edmonton Skyline 1998

Back in 1998, I obtained permission to shoot some photographs from the top of Fort Garry House on Saskatchewan Drive. Bruce and Akemi handled the actual professional photography while I puttered around with my own camera, resulting in this underwhelming, backlit skyline of Edmonton's downtown as seen from across the North Saskatchewan River. I "fixed" the image as best I could with Photoshop, but it's still pretty bad. One day I'll learn how to be a real photographer...

3 Years and Counting

Earl and the iMac

From the spring of 1998 to the fall of 2005, I wrote gardening books and articles for Hole's Publishing in St. Albert. Most of that work was done on this first-generation iMac. (I never took to the Mac OS even after working with it for half a decade.)

This photo was probably taken by Bruce or Akemi, and quite early in my tenure at Hole's for as you can see my bald spot has yet to appear. This image required a lot of cleanup, scanned as it was from a pretty dirty, beaten-up slide; it could still use some work. 

Sylvia's Promotion

Ooooo, she gets so excited! 

One of the things I love about Sylvia is her inability to suppress her feelings when she's very happy and excited. She had good reason for her characteristic adorable giggling and squealing today when she learned that she'd been promoted to Human Resources & Internal Communications Coordinator at Alberta Pensions Services. It's a good fit, as she's been studying HR through MacEwan University for some time and it's where she's wanted to move. She's going to be fantastic in this role - APS made the right move.

So congratulations, Sylvia, and never hold back your glee! 

One Year In

One year ago today I joined ATCO Electric, and today my boss presented me with this very stylish plaque and a nice pen-and-key chain set. Pretty spiffy!

Things You Realize Years Later

1) Those Jack Ryan movies weren't very good, except maybe the first one.
2) I sure wasted a lot of time, money and effort taping every episode of TNG, DS9, Voyager and Lois & Clark when they were broadcast.
3) Never should have started drinking Coca-Cola in university.
4) Really should have made English my major and Political Science my minor instead of the other way around.
5) Staying at Hole's for seven years and the Official Opposition for six and a half was too long in each case. I enjoyed both jobs, but I got too comfortable and probably set my career back about a decade. When you only get one shot at life, that's a pretty serious mistake.
6) On the other hand, I wish I'd toughed it out at the Bleak House of Blahs for another year or two.
7) If I'm still blogging ten years from now, I'll probably realize this reads more like a list of regrets than a list of things I realized years later. Maybe future-me will revisit this.