Wish I Knew When

When first conceived of in my mind, this was meant to address two things that I wish that I knew when.

Upon further reflection, I have determined that one of the things is far too morbid and, thus, contrary to the positivity that I have striven to embrace over the past year once I got past the humiliation of being reassigned to a boss fifteen years younger than myself who is there to “shake things up,” “disrupt things” and to “get more out of people.”

I have been shaken, disrupted and have become a higher producer in response.  I also remain gainfully employed and smack dab in the middle of most important development-related projects in the community that employs me.  Go figure, but I guess that is what a long-time economic developer does.

The main thing that I wish that I knew when pertains to my job.

The second thing that I am no longer going to address here is my life.  Eleven years ago when all of us were eleven years younger, my wife a spry thirty-seven, me a sprier thirty-six, our son having just turned nine and our daughter having just turned four, we had a large family party at my wealthy aunt and uncle’s home.

It was either my sister or mother who hired a photographer at the cost of about five hundred bucks or so to come out and take photos.

The weather was perfect, the food that my aunt and uncle served even better, their huge back yard gardens in full bloom and their new patio furniture most comfortable.

Things were good.  We posed for a variety of photos, as people do, and the portrait of myself, my wife and our two children that day remains framed on our wall among many photos in our basement family room.

Another photo, with my two grandfathers, my father and everyone else who remains with us today is also on the wall.  My two grandfathers are seated next to one another in the middle and the rest of us are standing.  My two grandmothers had passed away many years ago, one back in 1986 and another right around when I completed undergraduate in 1992.  My wife met her once but she was an invalid at the time.

I knew that my maternal grandfather was not in the best shape at that party, but at ninety-four, that could be expected.  My paternal grandfather was ninety-six at the time and in better shape.  My father seemed in the prime of life, still very productive and at the top of his profession and still even occasionally playing baseball, not softball, at the age of sixty-one.

I had high confidence in living to at least ninety like my feisty and tough grandfathers and like my father surely would.

Five years later, all three had passed away.  My maternal grandfather in 2008, my paternal grandfather in 2011 at the age of one hundred, and my father the next year at the age of sixty-six, although his sixty-sixth birthday was spent dying of cancer in a nursing home.

The topic of a future post, I completely intend to begin collecting social security the first day that I am eligible to no matter what the amount is.  Sure, I might miss out on a few dollars by collecting on day one than waiting until I am seventy, but there is no guarantee that I, or you for that matter, will see our seventieth birthday.  If you happen to be reading this and have already attained that age, kudos to you and may you continue to live and prosper.  If you are a Prime Age like me or younger, you never know when your number is up.

I wrote about what I did not mean to for a bit, but as of right now, I do not really want to know exactly when mine will be up.

What I do wish that I knew when is when the last day at my current place of employment will be.

I am not actively looking to leave and I most definitely do not want to be let go.  It is just that I wish I knew when my final day there will be.  Will I take my IMRF the first day that I am eligible at the end of 2025?  Will I keep working there past 2025 if I am making good money and still depending on it for health insurance?  Will I finally get off my duff and start making some money by hustling online or starting an e-commerce business?  Will I be let go right before Christmas day this year or three years from now?  Will I take a better position with another municipality in 2020?  In 2021? 

God only knows.

I wish that I knew for a number of reasons.

First of all, I get so frustrated that so most of my contemporaries have moved up into positions with better titles and better salaries than I have.  Not that I actually love being a salaried office worker.  I would much rather own my own business or become a successful blogger or publisher or anything that entails working for myself and making money while I sleep.

But so long as I have a quarter century in local Illinois government and it seems as if I am in for the duration until I can start collecting a pension, it sure would be nice to get a better job with more pay.  And to have a boss that I can both respect and admire.

Two, I have a lot of time on the books.  As of this writing, I have thirty-seven vacation days, four personal days and just over a hundred sick days.

Despite having decided several years ago that I valued days off with my family more than the money that I can get by cashing out vacation days, I have cashed out four this year.  I simply have too high a workload to take too many days off, although I have already taken thirteen this year.

For instance, if I knew that in September of 2022 that I would become the Director of Economic Development for some other community, I would know that I have four more years at my current position.  Earning twenty vacation days per year and having thirty-seven on the books right now, I would do my damnedest to take at least twenty vacation days per year over the next four years. 

I would not hold onto my sick days for dear life in anticipation of gaining an additional month of service credit per every twenty that I retire with.  Even if I took twelve sick days per year for the next seven years at my current place of employment, I would still retire with over a hundred on the books and an additional five months of credit.  If I knew that I could both remain relatively healthy and would stay with my employer through 2025, I would try so hard to never take a sick day again and to retire with one hundred and eighty on the books, or an additional nine months of service credit. 

It may not sound like much, but that would probably result in an extra hundred or two per month in additional pension payments for the rest of my life, however long it may last.

The third and final reason would be the best one of all.  I would not have to stress so much.

Even though I would undoubtedly move into a position equally if not more stressful than the one that I have now, it would be great to think to myself “I only have two years left to work here” as I get the shit beat out of me in meeting after meeting, both public ones and behind closed doors.  

If I moved to a more business-friendly town or one that is more desirable to retail businesses, it would be great to have projects that are less like getting all your teeth pulled and more like the ones that you can brag about in a newspaper.  

I would work on cultivating stronger relationships with those who I may want to do business with in the future, and the local yokels who are always biting and scratching to get a piece of the action could go to Hell.  No more kissing asses of local realtors, insurance agents, financial people and local contractors who constantly want to know the inside scoop of what I am working on and how they can get a piece of the action.

I do not blame them, mind you.  I just would not have to play footsie with them so much.

I would go through my mountains of crap, both in print and in digital form, to determine what may be useful or of interest in the future, and what pertains only to the town that employs me.

With every business person that I would come into contact with, I would gauge whether they are capable of moving beyond the border of the town and opening a business in my new town.  With some of them, I would contact them the week or month of starting my new job and seeing if they want to open an additional location or even relocate.

Contrary to the above, I do have a fair amount of loyalty to my employer.  It is just that the current Board has been doing their utmost to whittle away at our benefits while, at the same time, expecting more and more out of us employees while supporting us less and less.

It does not help that I was reassigned to a Millennial boss who prefers to do business like a bull in a China shop, although I recently saw that a bull can make its way through one without destroying everything in it.  As a boss, he is actually pretty good.  It is just that, even after a year, I have a hard time accepting that I report to a guy who knows little to nothing about economic development and was an intern eight years before becoming my boss.

But that is sour grapes.

Here, I basically write what I want when I want to, and that is one of the things that I like best about blogging.

On weekends, I dream and scheme about launching my own business.  I am past the age of harboring ambitions of #FIRE.  My ambition is more like #FD-ROT.

The clock is ticking for all of us.  Can you hear it?

When it comes to that one thing, I sure do wish that I knew when.

*Note: I wrote the above 1,670 words in forty minutes.  At that pace, I should be able to crank out eBooks no problem.  So why don’t I?  I do not know.  Perhaps that is the topic for a future post or you can tell me why I struggle to do it.