UNIQUE TALENT? WHO, ME?

PUNKIN HEAD!

This is an experiment.  You are going to help me to decide what my unique talent is.  I have decided to answer that question here and now.  I have been spending more time on the Internet than any mere mortal should.  About 80 % of it is in job search mode.  Over the last month or so I have come to the point, finally, of realizing that I have to decide what I want to be when I grow up.  Imagine, after close to 50 years of  "advising" people by telling them that in order to be happy, they have to know what they have and what they want to do with it, I am digging into my inside to find the answer to those questions.   I came to this down to earth truth when I got an email from a man who was responding to my cover letter to his company.  Here is my cover letter:

I don't need a job, I need work.  Put it in front of me and I'll do it.  Not BS, BATB [Beating Around The Bush] just plain and simple work.  I'm a 75 year old dude.  I've already had a career.  All I need now is a job.  If you have one that you need done from a computer station, stop twiddling your thumbs and send it to me.

Ready.  Get set.  Go!

Now, if you owned a company and you got a cover letter like that what would you do?  You can be honest with me.  Actually, you're sitting there wondering just what it is that you would do.  Well, here's what the man who received this cover letter did:

Paul

If you end up applying, pls tell me so I can review your application myself. Liked your writing style on your blog
Keep in touch,
Steve

So now I have to answer the question on the profile that asks: "What is your unique talent?"  There is no way that I can answer with the smart Alec retort: "I awready tol'ja, WORK."  I have to be smoother than that, after all, this is a job interview.  Right, Steve?  I always have some trouble answering that question.  You would think that at my age, I would have the answer.  I do, but frankly, I have always, until right now, given people the answer that I thought would line me up with the income stream that I so desperately need.  This time I have decided to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the heartfelt, deep down gut shot, take it or leave it truth.  I have the unique talent of being a chameleon.  Put me anywhere on earth and I will blend into the woodwork inside of three to six months.  Now, that is not going to earn me a living.  The reason for that is that I did not marry an anthropologist.  So, I have kept that as a bragging point taken from my spotty past.  My equally unique talent is to be able to use words that indicate absolute values and make them relative.  Like "unique" maybe?  But all humorous sophistry aside, I am really good at writing and teaching.  I have a facility with words.  I have the ability to be logical and to make deep concepts make sense to anyone from the baby sitter to the college graduate.  I can do this across a fairly wide band of disciplines, but most of all, and very importantly, especially Theological truths.  On this blog you don't get to see the Theological side of me, so you have to take my word for it.  If you want to see some of my work on the church side, just click here for a sample.  

So, Steve, now that I have answered that question, coupled with the quote to which you answered, I can say that this blog post is my application for work at your company, www.lifebushido.com  

Stay tuned.

RETIREMENT IS BEING TOO BUSY TO HOLD A REAL JOB

If there's one question I hate, it is, "So how's retirement?"  To that I always give the interlocutor my most venomous dose of sass: "Retirement is for lazy people."  Retirement is one of the great gifts that human beings have and the greatest opportunity of all to misuse the best thing that we have.  It is truly marvelous to observe those who are eighty and who are scurrying around helping the old people who are sick and infirm at sixty-five.  My maternal grandmother was one of those and she did it in the deep of Winter, too.  Look around.  See what I mean?  They're all over.  I could give you a ton of examples, but I figure that since this is my thought for the day and this is MY blog, I am the example.  I know that I am a naturally lazy lout.  I know that, because I dodged work by spending oh, so many years in school.  I had to, otherwise I'd a been drafted.  Now, sure as shootin' (like that play on words?) I didn't want that.  So school it was.  Then of course I went to live in countries where a siesta was "de rigueur", so I never missed a single one.  But I did make a mistake once, and that meant that I had to go to work.  Bad news.  I never did get over it.  So, here I am, old, with a minimum wage part time (100 hours @ month) job as a billing clerk, a no wage Theology Editor's job for an Internet Magazine, a no wage job as a Bible teacher, a once a year $2,000.00 "emolument" for six months of pulling my tongue out to organize and pull off a catechism symposium for adults that lasts a whole week.  I'm a no wage writer of employee manuals for a start up company, a no wage job as a proof reader for my wife's weekly contribution to the Church Bulletin, a no wage job of keeping track of her work hours so that I can complete her time card on the laptop, a no wage dish washer and dryer and so many more things that it is impossible to continue without wearing my fingers to the bone.
Now, If I were not "retired" I would have time to hold a decent 65 hour a week senior manager's job somewhere for some real money.
Know what?  After that last sentence, I think it is more fun being retired!