I promised myself I wouldn't think about Imperfect Hope for at least a week. Like the old joke goes, "whatever you do, don't think about bananas..." (Try it. Tell yourself "don't think about bananas", and see what you think about) ;-)
That leaves me with a bit of a vacuum to fill, writing wise. In truth, I've stayed away from all writing since last sunday, though I've allowed myself to pick up a pencil and jot down some ideas (I suppose technically writing, but...) Things like maps of the Mud Bay area and such, and "whatever happened to..." regarding the IFGS version of characters. That led me down a different road, "whatever happened to..." with the subject being real people from the past that I've lost touch with.
Sadly, that's a long list, pretty much anyone from high school or college. I ran through a list in my head of significant people from my past that I still hear from or run across or, at the very least, know what happened to them, and there were almost none from about 1986 or earlier.
Granted, I went through some significant alterations in my path about that time. I'd entered college with a pie-in-the-sky image of my career choice. My naive view of a geologist was someone who traveled the wilds of the world, trekking through the most beautiful mountains and jungles of far away places, finding exotic minerals and turning the results over to the engineers to figure out how to extract it. Many of the people I knew were in the sciences, with career ideas that ranged from medicine to engineering to finance. My image of a geologist's life began to change when I spent a summer and fall working on an oil rig, where I met a real geologist, whose exciting career consisted of sitting in a ratty trailer 12 hours a day and collecting mud samples from the drill outwash every hour to record what kind of rock the rig was drilling through at that time. It was amended further the summer I worked in Nevada following maps to collect sand in the desert, and the summer I took field geology. I enjoyed the field work, hiking and such, but the reality was beginning to sink in. Geology rarely takes place in pretty places, and a bachelors degree in geologyphysics wasn't going to cut it, anyway. By 1981, I wasn't sure what I was chasing.
I was still attending classes, and working essentially full time at a Village Inn, but... The view was changing. By the end of 1982, I'd dropped out of college, briefly chased a different dream to Idaho, and returned to Colorado to work in restaurants again. Some more college classes revolving around a second career idea (computers) followed, which led to a new job path, starting out working at a tech company putting together electronic instruments for the medical field. (bio scanners and precision scales). All that changed when I took the Air traffic control test in 1986, not because I was looking for a career, but because my girlfriend at the time was unemployed, and her dad (a pilot) suggested she take the test. I came along for moral support, and stayed for the career...
So I went from geology to aviation. From imagining what a particular 5000 square mile area of rock looked like 500 million years ago, to predicting what a 5000 sq mile piece of airspace will look like 500 seconds in the future. From watching things that move at 8 millimeters a year to things that move at 8 miles a minute.
I wonder if the people I knew in 1981 would recognize my name. I have a feeling that they would not, yet I still believe that I would recognize them in a heart beat. I've wondered about their paths in life, if they've been as filled with as many twists as mine, or if their plotted paths came about as they'd envisioned. There's a load of fun in imagining that, someone popping in after 30 years and saying, "Hey, what's up..." There's also that fear of them saying... "Uh, who are you again???"
It'll make an interesting story.
TTFN
Jim
That leaves me with a bit of a vacuum to fill, writing wise. In truth, I've stayed away from all writing since last sunday, though I've allowed myself to pick up a pencil and jot down some ideas (I suppose technically writing, but...) Things like maps of the Mud Bay area and such, and "whatever happened to..." regarding the IFGS version of characters. That led me down a different road, "whatever happened to..." with the subject being real people from the past that I've lost touch with.
Sadly, that's a long list, pretty much anyone from high school or college. I ran through a list in my head of significant people from my past that I still hear from or run across or, at the very least, know what happened to them, and there were almost none from about 1986 or earlier.
Granted, I went through some significant alterations in my path about that time. I'd entered college with a pie-in-the-sky image of my career choice. My naive view of a geologist was someone who traveled the wilds of the world, trekking through the most beautiful mountains and jungles of far away places, finding exotic minerals and turning the results over to the engineers to figure out how to extract it. Many of the people I knew were in the sciences, with career ideas that ranged from medicine to engineering to finance. My image of a geologist's life began to change when I spent a summer and fall working on an oil rig, where I met a real geologist, whose exciting career consisted of sitting in a ratty trailer 12 hours a day and collecting mud samples from the drill outwash every hour to record what kind of rock the rig was drilling through at that time. It was amended further the summer I worked in Nevada following maps to collect sand in the desert, and the summer I took field geology. I enjoyed the field work, hiking and such, but the reality was beginning to sink in. Geology rarely takes place in pretty places, and a bachelors degree in geologyphysics wasn't going to cut it, anyway. By 1981, I wasn't sure what I was chasing.
I was still attending classes, and working essentially full time at a Village Inn, but... The view was changing. By the end of 1982, I'd dropped out of college, briefly chased a different dream to Idaho, and returned to Colorado to work in restaurants again. Some more college classes revolving around a second career idea (computers) followed, which led to a new job path, starting out working at a tech company putting together electronic instruments for the medical field. (bio scanners and precision scales). All that changed when I took the Air traffic control test in 1986, not because I was looking for a career, but because my girlfriend at the time was unemployed, and her dad (a pilot) suggested she take the test. I came along for moral support, and stayed for the career...
So I went from geology to aviation. From imagining what a particular 5000 square mile area of rock looked like 500 million years ago, to predicting what a 5000 sq mile piece of airspace will look like 500 seconds in the future. From watching things that move at 8 millimeters a year to things that move at 8 miles a minute.
I wonder if the people I knew in 1981 would recognize my name. I have a feeling that they would not, yet I still believe that I would recognize them in a heart beat. I've wondered about their paths in life, if they've been as filled with as many twists as mine, or if their plotted paths came about as they'd envisioned. There's a load of fun in imagining that, someone popping in after 30 years and saying, "Hey, what's up..." There's also that fear of them saying... "Uh, who are you again???"
It'll make an interesting story.
TTFN
Jim
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