Busy Busy

Between living my first year of marriage, finishing my degree, applying to Optometry school and working 60 hours a week any chance to stop and reflect on my experiences in a post has been difficult. Even when the dust settles and I have a moment to sit down behind the computer I find it nearly impossible to choose a topic to address. There are so many:

1. My newish job

2. Graduation

3. Being married

4. Our trip to Oregon

5. Figuring out my career path 

6. Our anniversary 

7. Social experiments

8-2034…. ect.

I finally decided I just need to bite the bullet and pick one. I'll talk about the other ones later or simply leave them to your imagination. I’m sure you could come up with some stellar scenarios that would make me out to be legendary. That is how legends are born after all right? Lack of information and no shortage of embellishments to fill in the gaps? I have faith you can pull it off.

Anyways after taking some time off and heading to visit my Grandpa in New Mexico I finally have some time to focus on a topic. The topic that will be decided, of course, be rolling a 6 sided die and assigning each topic a number (excluding social experiments and ect. naturally. There are some things you just can’t know if the experiments are to work. You understand).

So the topic of the day is…

My newish job? Fair enough. It wasn’t that long ago that I talked about the wide variety of jobs I’ve had in the past. After graduation we made the wonderful/terrible decision to live with my folks so we could save up some money while trying to get into Optometry school and/or figuring out contingency plans. Upon coming home and beginning my job search my Brother suggested I look into being a pest control technician. Not long after I was certified, had my own truck and was expertly assassinating critters with biochemical warfare.

 The irony of this development didn’t hit me until I had been exterminating for a while. Back when I was a young tyke in elementary school I had somewhat obtuse career goals. Each year when teachers would inevitably ask us kids what we wanted to be when we grew up I was surrounded by the usual answers. In a classroom of potential Firemen, Astronauts, Policemen, and Athletes I was the weird kid who wanted to be an Entomologist. Perhaps I liked being different, perhaps I got a kick every time people (including my teacher) had no idea what that was, but mostly I liked bugs. A job where I got to study them sounded like heaven to me. I found them fascinating.

Look! bugs I recently found.
This Dragon Fly has some cool markings.
The blue color is striking and the wings are made up of fun patterns.
They can fly forwards, backwards and side to side.




Look at the size of this thing.
Brings me back to my days in Texas where everything is bigger.
Not something we see often in Nevada.

um.....
..............
................... !!!

 At times I wonder how miniature me would feel if he somehow found out that my living is made by seeking their destruction through raining pyrethroid death on their colonies and nests. Instead of studying the way they live I study how I can more effectively make them die. How laughably similar and yet opposite my childhood aspirations and adulthood realities have turned out to be. It’s hard to take a child’s dream job seriously when experience tells us just how many things will change between elementary and college graduation. But those early interests and obsessions can still impact our way of thinking and our personal development. The reason I chose to work toward a career in Optometry was because my poor eyesight gave me lots of experience in an eye doctors office and I could easily see myself in that capacity. In my attempts to prepare myself for Optometry school I took the necessary classes, immersed myself in appropriate extracurricular activities, taught, researched and narrowed my interests. After years of focusing all my efforts on following that course things have not been working out the way I hoped they would and we’ve had to do some very serious reevaluating.

Looking back with new perspective at all of the skills and interests I gained and built upon trying to be an Eye Doctor I discovered a love I have not only for certain subjects I studied but for teaching those subjects. A love I would have never found if I hadn’t pushed myself so hard to achieve my goals in Optometry. I fell sort in some aspects while superseding my expectations in others redefining my limits and my strengths. Whether I end up a Doctor, teacher or something completely different this was a powerful lesson to learn.

I guess that covers the topic of Figuring out my career path too. I have always been fond of killing two birds with one stone.

I am an exterminator after all.