Finding my path

Maybe I am the only one who gets like this. Then again, I don't think I am alone.

I sit at work, on my lunch break, staring into the blank pages of my pocket notebook, wishing for something more. I get so caught up in setting goals for myself and when I look back and assess the goals, I am looking at only 25% of these goal achieved in the time frame I set for myself.

Did I give myself enough time to get accomplished all the things I am accomplished? Were my goals realistic? As I go through them I don't think I am giving myself the time I need for each goal.

Like most people I never thought that I would have taken 2 steps back in my career from 1 year ago. My goal this year was to grow into a larger role, but there were some things holding me back. I have talked to a few people at length about not being able to get beyond that glass ceiling. All of a sudden, in this world, being a middle aged white man is a disadvantage when it comes to moving up the management ranks. That being said, I haven't moved up, because I was holding myself back. Not my manager. Not my wife. Not my dog. Not my social media habit. It was me. It was MY lack of focus that brought me down. It was the constant pressure I put on myself to perform at such a high level, I forgot about the basics of the job that took me there. It was my choice not to go to a 4 year school. It was my choice not to continue on the career path I was on. All of these things have played into the reasons that I am not at the level in my career that I want to be.

So what do people do when they realized the biggest goal they had for themselves has had an epic flaw? Sulk? Yeah, I will for a moment. I mean this IS my blog after all. Most people just sit around and become jaded. Many people in my profession do it, and I have gone back and re-read all my thoughts on this matter. I am slowly becoming a jaded retail worker. It is not hard to do, but it is hard to get out of the funk.

I went over to myspace the other day and pulled up my old blogs from close to 5 years ago. Oh my how I have grown and oh how I have not grown at all. I read the blogs about my first days on my current role 3 years ago, and I was happy to have a job after being unemployed longer than I would have liked. Where did it go? Where did my optimistic view of my job go?

I read my blogs about how people who have worked for my company over 3 years develop a sense of entitlement and they lack the ability to adapt. I saw my current self in the words from years ago. I have become what I didn't want to become. It's easy to remember your thoughts form years past if you write them down.

Having read this, I decided to go back to the drawing board. I ripped my goals out of my pocket notebook and shredded them. I am realigning my goals. I am revamping my personal plan of growth.

One of the major reasons I am stuck is my lack of 4 year degree. I can speak the language of business, I get the concepts, but I haven't the proof that I know what I am talking about. There isn't enough experience in the world that makes up for having a 4 year degree. I know. I have been there. It doesn't matter what I have done in my career, I still haven't finished college. So I am going to fix that. I enrolled to start my undergraduate degree in Business Administration last Friday.

So I hope to start classes in the Winter. My employer has a great program where they pay a considerable amount of my tuition. This leaves me with a bill of $0.00 at the end of the day. Why not take advantage of it?

I am started in the right direction.

My second goal is to get my manuscript, I have been working on, published, and then get paid for it. This goal is my short term goal. It is so close I can taste it.

I am hoping to be able to start researching and put together a presentation to the publishers soon, but editing is the toughest part of the process.

With the end of this post, I noticed I have more pages filled in my pocket notebook that I had ripped out. Maybe I am onto something.

It's time to stop worrying about the past, and focus on making the future I want happen. Sure there will be many road blocks, and wrong turns, but my co-pilot is there with me.

I have said it before and I will say it again. Behind every good man, is a great woman.

Pizza Burgers for 20 somethings

The sleep wipes from my eyes just like a bug on a windshield. It just makes a mess. I have been waking up these past few days, getting ready for work, wishing I could do something else besides work the endless grind of customers that is retail.

People in general look down at a retail employee. Regardless of what they say, how they act, and how they hold themselves to standards. People automatically think that just because I work in retail that I somehow couldn't hack it somewhere else and this was my "back up" job. You know that job only the mindless can do.

My job is far from mindless and it requires a certain level of skill to do what I do well. Yes you need to be able to talk to people you wouldn't otherwise talk to, but you need to have some concept of body language, tempo, and timing. When to say the right things, when to lean a certain way, and when to try and close a sale. People pigeonhole me into car salesman, when they say I work 'retail'.

So last night, when Audrey got home from vacation with her mom, I decided to try something different with dinner. I decided to try pizza burgers. I watched this on a segment on the Today show and knowing my love of a hamburger, I had to try it. What better time to do it than on an occasion to do something different than Audrey coming home?

So I sent a text to wifey and told her what I planned. I gave her the ingredients list and away she went. Pizza sauce, pizza dough, hamburger, and mozzarella cheese [shredded].

To make these things, it's not too tough. Cook a burger the way you like it. I like mine medium rare, or medium, but what ever you like is cool. Once that is done you divide up the pizza dough and sauce the cheese. To do that, you just take a LITTLE sauce and just make sure your shredded cheese is covered slightly. I recommend a bowl and not the original packaging for the cheese. Place the cooked hamburger on the dough, place a generous portion of sauced cheese over the burger, and pinch the dough over the hamburger/cheese mixture. Make like a little pocket.

Then make sure you grill is greased all the way up! I recommend using the PAM for grills on this one. Just brown up the dough on each side and away you go. Pizza burgers.

This was my first attempt so I used store bought ingredients [look for future blogs about this using more homemade ingedients, and maybe fresh mozzarella]. Now as I was preparing this last night I was secretly longing.

Longing to live my life in a different career. Working in a kitchen is something that intrigues me. There is something about comrade that just sucks me in. I know I know, it's hard work and not for the faint of heart, but if you do well, you can make a very good living, but the cost is your family time.

So later that night I was sitting on the couch, thinking about what I wanted to do. This past week has been a whirl wind of activity. From the new Podcast to the fact an old boss from my radio days wants a demo for me, it's been delightfully stressful, but yet, that stress has got me thinking of other avenues for my life. It always happens. I get bogged down at work, I have no time to think and I start wishing for something different.

So as I sit here at work, typing this out on my blackberry during my lunch break, I am thinking about how I can make it all better. I can make my current situation better by changing my style, do things differently to spice it up. I can make more money if I start to play that game again. Tell management what they want to hear. I will make more money, I will drink more Kool-aide and it will get better once I am out of the subordinate role and into the manager role [again]. I loved being a manager, but my boss didn't like me and she made my life a living hell. I am also thinking about desired careers. Chef, radio announcer, professional voice over actor, and maybe a writer. Here is the problem with all of that.

I don't know how to make a rue, blanche, or how to create delightful combinations, and the time it would take to learn that would be mind numbing. I can be a radio announcer if I am willing to leave Cleveland and go somewhere else, but leaving Cleveland means I could potentially be leaving Audrey and that is NOT an option. So I guess trying to get a job in the MOST volitile job market [radio] is not smart for the family. Professional Voice-Over actor would be out of the question because it requires a good agent and the market is so saturated with those. Being a writer is tough. It requires time to sit and be creative, and I have been trying to write a novel for sometime. Right now, I am about 1600 words into it and I have nothing that resembles a usable story. Just a ton of words tossed together.

So this leaves me at an impass. So here is the solution I came up with. I am going to learn how to cook better than I can now by pushing myself to reach outside my comfort zone. I am pulling out a recipe from a cook book and learning a new technique every month, and I am going to work on it until I get it right. I am going to keep up on the Podcast because that is honestly the only time I really feel alive anymore is chasing down interviews, following up on stories, and actually having my friends over to do a show. I am going to keep writing this blog because, who knows, maybe someone that has the opportunity to change my life is reading and thinks I might be interesting.

Short term, I am just going to end this post, but not before I tell you that I just got an e-mail from the 20 Something Blogger Community. I am now a card carrying member