On Yer Own
Those of you who have j-j-j-jobs may look with some envy upon those of us who don't. Perhaps you covet the freedom to set our own hours, to work for our self, and to not have to answer to anyone else. Also, I don't have to shave every day. I can mix up the clackin' and the phones with watering the gardens or tying up a tree (to support posts). I eat when I want to, go for walks with Buster, plink at recyclables, or if it's chilly — and I'm having trouble quite conjuring up this image what with the mercury pushin' past 103 — I can slip into the hot tub in the middle of the day, to throb my cares away.
Most all of that is deliciously true. I do have to deal with clients, however, some of whom have their heads so far north that their view is all underground; if you get my meaning. They think they know my business as well as their own, so I won't work with them again. By and large, it's a wonderful way to work, though not for everyone. People with families to support probably would feel crushed by the angst of sporadic paychecks. Some folks need more structure in their lives. But for those who finely balance the uncertainty and lack of restraints, it can be a grand plan.
One of the particular issues I face, wearing a bunch of different communications hats, is that a lot of the time I don't know what I'll be doing in a month or so. Or how much money I'll be contributing to the household. There are days like yesterday when a couple of promising ventures were put on hold. I also worked on an effort I didn't think was likely to bear fruit, any time soon if at all. And I sent out a last-ditch email to a fellow who might get me through an important and otherwise inaccessible door.
That last epistle went out just before it was time to make dinner for Linda, and as I clicked the send button, I felt something of an internal sigh of relief. The kind that comes from serving up that three-two pitch with bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth. Except of course, in this situation, I want to hit a home run not strike out. The pitch is on the way.
This morning, with unweighted shoulders, I drove out to the airport to fly the Piper Cherokee with GPS, the global positioning satellite system. Audrey, who taught me instrument flying, had signed me off to fly the plane myself, and now we were going up together so that she could see that I knew how to use the GPS, which helps you figure out where you are when you're in pea soup (clouds). It's not terribly complicated, even at this relatively early stage in development, refinement, and distribution, so it only took me a couple of GPS approaches into Red Bluff to show Audrey that I knew how to make it tell me, accurately, just where I might find a runway instead of a mountain.
We had a grand time, climbing to 3500 feet, where it was considerably cooler, and flying here and there according to the little screen with the little plane and the lines and things of all sorts of different colors. Bang-zoom. And after I made Audrey promise that I could buy her lunch, I set a course back to Benton Airpark. My landing was a shade over A-minus. Her comment was that she always thought of me as a Piper kinda guy; that I fit the plane and it me, firmly and comfortably.
I was still flying, as I taxied to the hangar, and past the entrance, positioning the plane so that I could push it backward into its hangar. That would earn me french fries with my sandwich. Hey, we're talkin' 1500 pounds of aircraft, and I have trouble parallel parking my car still. Then, as I climbed out of the Cherokee, up drives some guy who was taking the plane next. My parking gig was canceled.
Audrey and I had a leisurely sandwich, with only a few fries. Later Pilot Bill sat with us to swap stories and laughs. Dunno what time we started or what time we finished. I didn't have to call my boss. Clients and schedules and expectations had been left in the car, another lifetime only two hours earlier.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.