Work-Life (Im)Balance or “My Why”

I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling this is how we balance work and life in Corporate America. Actually, I should’ve tipped the scale a little more toward work.

You’ll never find this guy in an airport. Driving the country enables you to enjoy life and see the country. Photo by Carolina Bird Club

A glass-bottomed boat captain told us it would bring five years of good luck to have our pictures taken standing in the embrace of this tree. So here we are. Not that we’re superstitious or anything. Photo by Anita

This post originally appeared on the Hermit Haus Redevelopment website on 2016-06-09.

When I used to work in the corporate world, management had this thing they called work-life balance. They understood on some level that you couldn’t just work people to death. One even told me with a straight face, “We work to live; we don’t live to work.”

Unfortunately, management always lost sight of that goal at some point, no matter how much Mahogany Row would like to. Between product release deadlines, understaffed departments, and the unending goal to “do more with less,” the employees (if not the management) began referring to the work-work balance. In other words, “How do I work hard enough to keep my job without going crazy or postal?”

Well, that is one of the reasons I love running this company so much. You haven’t seen me post on [the Hermit Haus] blog in over a week because we ran away to Florida to celebrate Sue Ann’s high school reunion in person. No, I’m not putting a number to the reunion. (Sue Ann says, thanks.)

We chose to drive, because I think you miss out on so much of the country when you fly. And driving lets you avoid being treated like a piece of pink slime in the airports. But seriously, when was the last time you saw a roseate spoonbill in an airport? We saw several—not to mention countless other interesting birds—in their natural habitats while driving through Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. Did I mention the Everglades?

I got to meet a lot of my wife’s oldest friends, and I liked all of them. I’m not usually good in a crowd of strangers unless I’m on stage or have a microphone in my hand. But I have to admit all of the folks she’s kept in touch with are genuinely nice and interesting people.

I have to admit; I didn’t leave my phone at home. We participated in the daily huddle meetings while driving or from our hotel rooms. Nor did I stop marketing. We told everyone we met about the business. Almost all of them brought it up first. We sprinkled a pleasure trip with business contacts. We also looked at projects wherever we stopped. You can truly do this business anywhere.

So that’s one of my “why’s.” Sue Ann and I were able to take a week off and drive across the country with minimal involvement in our business. While we were gone, work continued on all of our active redevelopment projects, and our acquisition pipeline kept active. I met old friends who may become new partners. And I had a genuinely relaxing and good time while doing all of this.

After decades as a wage slave to corporate America, I can finally say I have achieved that elusive balance between work and life. And that’s not counting my dad’s adage: “If you love what you do, it’s ain’t work.” That attitude kept him planting corn when he was 92. I hope to be redeveloping houses at 100.

Desperados Under the Eaves

We had the eaves enclosed in metal. They’re insulated, too.

Stella played a hole in Fribby!

  And if California slides into the ocean

  Like the mystics and statistics say it will

  I predict this motel will be standing until I pay my bill

—Warren Zevon

After listening to Ralph gripe about “those damned sparrows” building nests in his eaves and crapping on everything, we took his experience to heart. We had Murdock come back out, now that the electrical is run and the siding is up, to enclose the eaves on our porches in metal. Let’s see those bloody sparrows build nests there.

House finches are another matter.

Bird Box

Grillo builds a nest for the house finches. Now that all the bamboo is down, Stella approves.

Construction often requires destruction. Today, Andy, whom everybody calls Grillo (grasshopper) for some reason, was upset that he had to take down a house finch nest. He was so upset that he built the babies a box and hung it back up in place after installing the plastic wrap that helps water seal the house. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the parents will most likely abandon the nest anyway.

 

Animal Lovers

Jaime’s son holds the turtle they “rescued.”

We have hummingbirds!

Hummingbird don’t fly away, fly away.

Don’t fly away.

—Jim Seals, Dash Crofts

Jaime’s whole family works on his crew. They’re all nice people, and they’re all animal lovers.

On the way in this morning, they saw a turtle crossing the road and “rescued it.” They brought it to the ranch and put it in the front pond.

You know who else is an animal lover? My dad, who turns 92 today. Happy birthday, Dad.

 

Port Aransas Retreat

Beccano and Suna Act Touristy

Suna, Beccano, and I took our first “vacation” since we went to North Carolina a couple of years ago. OK. “Vacation” may be a strong word for a weekend retreat to Port Aransas with a group of people from church.

We hadn’t planned on going, but there some kind of harmonic convergence that allowed us to. It started at the game Friday night when we learned that we had a by-week. Then Sunday at church, Janet mentioned that one of the rooms handn’t been taken. Those two things combined with a need to get away and destressify ourselves and then we were on our way.

Suna and I both worked extra hours so that we could take off
early on Friday. We decided to take the interstate to Corpus and the causeway to Port A. We made it to the condo shortly before sunset.

We spent most of Saturday wandering around the area. We started with a couple of walks on the beach taking numerous pictures of the local wildlife. At one point we saw a seabird feeding frenzy. The birds on the horizon we thick enough to be confused for smoke.

Just because it’s pretty. I don’t know what kind of flower it is.

Then we took the ferry to the mainland and wandered around looking at the sites. We got eaten alive by the mosquitoes at the estuary and headed back to the condo and the beach.

Saturday evening was taken up with a pot luck dinner. I improvised a sausage dish with pan fried Kielbasa in sauce of red wine and cheap mustard. It turned out to be delicious, and almost all of it disappeared.

This guy looks serious. You can what I mean by clicking on the image.

Then we went out to the beach again to play with tiny jelly fish that fluoresced when rubbed. These tiny blobs don’t sting, so you can pick them up in your hands. The hardest part was convincing our fellow beachcombers to turn off their flash lights. It seemed counterintuitive that you needed almost complete darkness to see very faint bioluminescence.

A walk this morning, packing our dirty clothes and then we hit the road for home. We saw another instance of the seabird feeding frenzy, this time up close.

Birds

A couple of weeks ago, Suna and Beccano talked me into buying a bird feeder for the front yard. I had put one up in my front yard in Granger and found out that most of the seeds in wild bird food are weed seeds. I had a few birds but a whole yard of thistles.

So I was a little sceptical. I have, after all, worked very hard to beautify the front yard over the last few years. I didn't want a bunch of thistles taking over the flower beds and lawn.

Then I came home from work one day this week to find a dozen birds pecking seeds from the lawn. Another half-dozen tiny birds hanging on the feeder. Of course, they all flew off when I pulled into the driveway.

The next morning a small flock flew away when I opened the front door. As I watered the container garden, I noticed the loudness of the Morning Song around me.

I love the sound of the birds in the morning. For this I am grateful.

Mother’s Day, Birds, and Flowers

Dad’s newest calf

We got up early (for us, late for Dad) this morning and drove into town for donuts and coffee—the most nutritious of all breakfasts. We sat around the Donut Palace, watching the head server call out people’s orders to them as they came through the door and wondering how cool/boring it must be to know everyone in town that well.

After breakfast as we trolled the streets of Yorktown trying to figure out what to do next, we came upon Uncle Carol working in his yard. So we stopped and bothered him and Aunt Kathy for awhile.

We mostly sat in the back yard talking and petting the neighborhood dog, but we were really bird watching. They have a bird feeder built to look like an Old West hotel and painted with Bed and Breakfast. Even the tiniest birds couldn't fit inside to see if there was a bed, but they all seemed to enjoy their breakfast. Among the visitors to the feeder were:

Suna sits in a field of wild flowers at the intersection of US-87 and FM1116.

• White winged doves
• Mexican doves (with red under their wings)
• Cardinals
• A yellow-headed woodpecker

Then we drove around the countryside talking about nothing. Back at the farm, we walked around—looking at the flowers and cows, mostly just enjoying being outside together.

Too soon, it was time to leave. We took the scenic route home so we could enjoy the wild flowers running amock across the countryside. Dad said there weren’t to many around his place, but we found them. I think he just looks for other things and misses the beauty around him. We found one spectacular field at the intersection of US87 and FM1116.

Grateful Monday: Possums, Buzzards, and Deer

Possums ain’t nobody’s favorite varmint.

Photo source: Tassem Land, U.S.A.

Driving around on our brief excursion to Lake Limestone yesterday (short trip, nothing really to say), we saw loads of deer, other mammals, and birds. On the way back from picking the kids up at the airport, we saw a possum (an opossum for the purists since the initial o designates the marsupials found in the Western Hemisphere) ambling along in the neighborhood.

Many people don’t like possums. They are evil, wicked, mean, and nasty. And that is a list of their good points.They will eat through the floor of a mobile home or pier-and-beam construction to get at pet food. But they do serve their purpose, whether it’s cleaning up nature’s garbage or knocking over humans’ garbage cans.

While there isn’t a lot of ground-based wildlife in our part of the neighborhood—I think all the privacy fences confuse migratory paths—it isn’t unusual to see various lifeforms in the immediate vicinity. For that I am grateful—even for the possums.

Big Storms Last Night

MacGillivray’s Warbler Photo Source: Wikipedia

I met this little guy this morning. We had some terrible storms blow through last night, and they must have pushed him along with them. He was at least a hundred miles east of his normal migratory path from Central America to the forests of the American and Canadian West.

I’m sad to say that he didn’t make it this year. The storms were just too much for him. I found him on the front porch. I said a few nice words over him and buried him in the flowerbed where I hope he rests well.

He was a truly beautiful bird. He had a brilliant yellow underbelly. His head and cape are supposed to be slate gray, but his head looked almost purple (as seen in the painting). The gray cape had almost a greenish tint.

Other than the little MacGillivray’s warbler, we came through very lucky. A funnel cloud was spotted in our neighborhood about the time we were coming home from choir practice, but it didn’t touch down. Beccano is terrified of tornadoes, so he had a bit of a rough patch. I am proud of the way he handled himself. Not being afraid is stupid. Learning to work through your fear is what courage is all about.

We had a lot of wind and hail, but no downed branches on our block anyway. (Suna says the University campus took quite a bit of damage.) And the hail at our house was apparently small. It didn’t even stay on the ground long enough for me to measure it after the second wave. I didn’t see any hail damage or even any shredded leaves. Other places in town reported hailstones up to 4”—the largest ever recorded in the Austin metroplex, according to News8.

We did get about 1.5” of rain over night. (That’s on top of about .6” the night before.) I am worried that one of our plants is so top-heavy from the rain that it may have damaged its stem. I’ll check it out when I get back home.

Bats in the Belfry, Birds in the Pond

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live where you could see sites like this? Photo by: Suna

I’ve been looking into ways to continue to make a little money once my current contract with ALE ends. With the economy going south, I have been a little worried about the availability of other contracts. So, I’ve been doing some research.

The first thing I am reminded of—I actually learned this lesson a long time ago—is that the only people who make money from the advice found in entrepreneurial magazines and conferences are the publishers and speakers. I am amazed at the number of ads claiming that you can make ludicrous sums a week by doing nothing and without knowing anything. I am reminded of a Far Side cartoon where a shady character is offering a book for sale to a 40W bulb—the title Double Your IQ in Two Weeks Or No Money Back.

In the day, my parents made a bit of money fixing up and selling old houses. I have the skills for this endeavor, and I know what to look for. The mistake I’ve made in the past was trying to live in the house and do the updates on a shoestring after work. That approach is a recipe for stress and failure. Over the past few evenings, I started doing research on houses that I could afford to look at with this purpose.

Today, Suna and I made the trek through the Hill Country to look at three of the most likely prospects. One was unfindable (the GPS kept trying to route us through closed gates), we decided not to bother with the second, and the third was in a neighborhood that was way too scary. So I have determined that I can’t afford to approach this investment the way I wanted—a very disappointing result. I will just have to be patient and keep looking for an opportunity.

The best part of the day—other than spending time with Suna—was the getting out of the city. We saw some amazing sites, including the wader pictured here. The birds were worth the cost of gasoline.