Moving Pains

With the move from hosting this on my own website to having it hosted on a free website comes quite a few changes. I can't make this look like the old one, which, whether you liked it or not, was laid out the way I liked it, for my convenience. Can't do that here. Also, the plugins that I used for the photo galleries don't work here, nor did the photos from the galleries come over.

So, I have to do a lot of rebuilding. I have all the pictures from the old website, I just need to rebuild the pages that contained them and upload them here. BTW, kudos to the support staff here at wordpress.com. When I asked them for help, they were able to transfer all the photos that were actually in the blog entries from the old website to here. For me, those would have been difficult, I would need to go thru over 400 posts and look for the missing photo and download it and upload it and re-link it. Wordpress Support took care of those. I just need to go thru the 17 pages and take care of the photos on them.

On another subject of moving, my guess is that I will almost certainly be heading for the Metro area to look for work after the divorce is final. Here in the northern part of the state there are only a handful of employers that can use my skills, and I know most of my counterparts in those positions. In the Twin Cities Metro area there are 100's of companies that can use my talent, and quite a few of them have hundreds of employees doing what I do, so there are lots of possibilities there. And like I said before, I need to get out of the Grand Rapids area, just too many memories here. I wouldn't mind going to Bemidji to be closer to the kids and close to a 4 year college, but again, there are only a couple of employers with only a couple of jobs and I know several of those folks up there already.

And it's kinda frustrating. I've been applying in every place for any job I know I can do. I've applied at WalMart and been interviewed for a job, but since I know and they know that I could be making almost 10 times the salary in my profession they don't want to hire me and train me knowing that I will be leaving soon. Home Depot, same story. KMart, same story. Holiday, same story. 99 cent store, same story, and the list is very long. For the month that I haven't been at the hospital I have applied for at least 150 jobs in Grand Rapids and Bemidji, and gotten back similar responses from about half.

So, I need to be looking forward. It is sooo easy to look back and wonder what I could have should have would have done differently, but I need to look forward. Somewhere out there is a place for me that involves less stress, uses my talents productively, and gets me where I want to be. I need to be looking forward. Just like in a car, you have to be looking and planning for the road and traffic ahead while being aware of what's in the mirror. But if you focus on the mirror and don't look ahead you will be in trouble in a second. For the last six months I've been focused on the mirror, and look where it has gotten me. I'm finally starting to look forward again, and I need to keep my focus out there in front of me and determine where and what I'm going to do.

Because I'm an introspective type of person I need to analyze the why and how of everything. It is very very easy for me to focus my attention and my problem solving power on the past, trying to analyze where and how I went wrong. However, it doesn't help a lot when I start trying to relive the past. It's good to know how and why I went wrong, but once that has been determined it does no good to keep worrying over it. I need to take the lesson to heart and start analyzing the why and how of my life ahead using those lessons from the past. What does it say up above? "Experience is knowing a lot of things you shouldn't do again". OK, so I've had the experience, now it's time to move forward without repeating the same mistakes.

I probably don't have the quote right, and I don't recall where it came from but I wish I did. As I recall, it was from a scifi story about time travel: "The mind goes back, but time goes on, and farewells should be forever."

Time to start moving forward. There are a few loose ends from the recent past that need to be wrapped up, but then I will be moving forward. There are better things out there ahead for me, I just need to go out and get them. I know it won't be easy. I need to prepare myself for a long tough road ahead, but I can't do that by looking in the rear view mirror. I can only prepare myself for the road ahead by watching the road ahead, aware of what has gone on before and brought me to this place. But focused ahead!

Addenda Just discovered that only the photos from the last 6 months were moved over, whether in pages or blog posts, so I still need to do everything before then. It will take me a LONG time because I don't get much Internet time. But, I need to do it ASAP because right now the ONLY copies of these photos are on my old laptop.