Shooting for the stars!

It was a dark and stormy night.

Actually no, it was a sunny and illuminous day here, with the weather dipping to the low 70s and the skies dancing with the billowing remnant clouds of Tropical Storm Danny. What a great way to end August and unofficially, the end of summer.

This was my week to leave the office for what we call THE RUN. Basically it involves stopping at a slew of government offices for pickups and dropoffs, and while I’m usually not crazy about this part of my job, I definitely welcomed the opportunity today. If you’re quick about it, The Run usually takes about an hour and 45 minutes to do, so naturally it takes me about 3 hours. It also gave me a chance to enjoy the weather and get away from the office’s resident hens, who cannot help but talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, and talk talk talky talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk…

So I’m driving around far and away from the mindless, white noises of the office, and I’m thinking about things. I had been so desperate to move out on my own that I hadn’t really thought about another possibility: What if I could move out of state for real?

I was ready to give up on the idea that I would ever get another job or move out of state, and in that frame of mind I was looking around for any kind of apartment I could find simply to get away from my parents, resigning myself to the reality that my job now was the only job I’d ever have, and while I was lucky to have it, in another sense it was a blackhole too. There’s no promotional path, no training seminars, no chance to expand my skill set at all. In 9 years, I have learned nothing new. And because of it I was pretty much unemployable as far as the private sector goes.

But the public sector… well now, they actually EXPECT you not to have any skills whatsoever. :-D

It also occurred to me that I was in the most ideal place you could ask to be in if your objective was to make a life altering, dramatic move and career change. I have no wife and kids, no debt, no property that I owned, not even furniture. I could up and leave a moment’s notice, literally. And while I’ve been building up my nest egg in preparation to move out, I wonder now if I should stick around for the time being and invest in something even bigger, not simply just to move out and find my own place, but move out of my job and my state altogether.

I always thought the Feds would be my ultimate destiny, mostly because since I graduated it had been my dream to work as a special agent for a law enforcement agency, whether it was the FBI or somebody else, a dream I had to give up on partly because of my disability, and partly because I’m, well, pretty much an idiot.

But now there’s no better time than the present to shoot for the stars again, and maybe even if I couldn’t work as a sworn agent, I could still serve in a civilian capacity somewhere. I have the luxury now of being able to apply and go to any job in the country (except New Jersey, cuz, ewwww). I could also take a salary hit without feeling the squeeze now that all my debts have been taken care of as well.

I think I owe it to myself to at least give it a try before accepting the sentence of life imprisonment in New York. Maybe there is a faux log cabin and a bonnie lass waiting for me in Colorado after all.

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