Jobless in Gainesville: Finding Meaningful Work and Our Place in the Sun

By Rene G. Parent

Writing is a conversation with life, our life. It's my hope you recognize yourself within the pages, within the story, within the conversation.
I've written a letter to my niece who sweats jobless in Gainesville. I've written on parts of my life as a stay at home parent. I've written on the writing process itself.

Though seasons change, what remains is our unity, the human connection, the people who people our lives. I've written on finding meaningful work and finding our place in the sun. Work uniquely defines us. Finding our ideal place to live is a luxury we give to ourselves.

I've written on the writing process. Writing is a conversation, more the listening part however. Much like music, and those distant planes, life is readily available as backdrop to our writing. Still we must pause to notice.
Enjoy listening along. May it be music to your ears, compelling to read, empowering to your life. My wife says it's called listening.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Apr 30, 2009
• ISBN: 9781426991646

Rene G. Parent

The author lives in Oregon. A dozen siblings live two time zones away. He is a stay at home dad.

Book preview

Copyright 2009 Rene G. Parent. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

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ISBN: 978-1-4251-8274-8

ISBN: 978-1-4269-9164-6 (ebook)

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Contents

DEDICATION

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

DEDICATION

To my daughter Madeline who helped edit this book. To my daughter Abigail who helped say parts of it. To my wife Melissa who helped listen to the book that is inside each of us.

To my sister Doris who helped define my life and is always in my time zone.

To all second readers who make this book possible, possibly their own.

Chapter 1

FINDING OUR place in the sun takes time, even in the summer heat of Florida. Finding meaningful work takes even longer. Never quite arriving for all too many of us. Still we wait for the job phone to ring, the temp agency to call, the resume to get written. Nowadays it might be wiser to rewrite our resumes. Fill in our own blanks and dream positions. Make them happen for ourselves. Write our own scripts, write our own futures.

It’s in the writing of our present, our now that is the hard part. We are so caught up in the moment, those drama filled moments that we can’t find the story within. We can’t hear the story inside as there is too much noise on the outside. Our outer world is moving too quickly or even stagnant without our sense of work. No job and so that is how life is characterized. It’s not going well at all. Or maybe it could free up lots of time to jot down our daily experience. An experience shared by all too many of our future readers.

Job hunting and relocations staples for many of us. Few would reminisce how wonderful it is at the time. Many hopefully would agree that it is a worthwhile venture nonetheless. Life is rarely stagnant. Either it moves along, or we do. Ideally we move in step. Sometimes not so much, something has to give. Either a job that no longer fits, or a locale that is no longer enticing. Maybe it never did and we moved for the dream job. Then we wake up one day realizing life doesn’t fit. So we move on.

That’s where my niece is in her young life. I thought I might have a game plan for her. Write about her dilemma. If it were so easy why couldn’t I do the same. Each of us has a book inside. Why not write one of my own? Few things in life would seem as rewarding, telling our story. Where we are? Where we went? How we got there? Don’t forget the why that makes us go in the first place. Job relocations it doesn’t get more universal than that. Thus write and get on with your day. I pause before sending off the e-mail to my sister. E-mail, a story started by one, finished by another.

My wife mentions that I should write about staying home. Write about being a stay at home dad. There are more of us today, although eleven years ago that path wasn’t so well traveled.

It left me puzzled. She thought I was defensive. It wasn’t so much being defensive as defenseless. What specific aspect of a stay at home dad did she think a story needed telling? For me that left it wide open. Presently there was the daily routine of getting the kids to and from school. Meals, errands, bills and the other usual stuff that fills most of our daily lives. Thus I found the idea to write about staying home too broad a topic.

Maybe I could write about how staying home with the kids came about. Or even why some of us choose to spend the early years with our own kids. Rather than shuttling them off amongst our own hectic schedules.

Thus to write about staying home I would have to go back to leaving home in the first place. To the beginning of the story, or at least to a portal that would affect my life going forward each day. Perhaps why we choose not to go along for the ride, other days, hopping on board.

The Army was paradoxically my first experience with freedom. Free to travel, free to eat all I wanted. Freedom from seven day work weeks. Life in the military just days after high school was a breeze. A gentle warm California ocean breeze.

Maybe not quite that grand yet you get the idea. Life was good at that point. Think many take the military route for various reasons, one of which is protecting our country. Many of us received much more than we left behind by serving our country

for a few years; four years in my case.

The travel opened up a future unknown in the farm fields of Vermont. People met along the way that influence us even today. Mentors that show up within the ranks. The military, perhaps the most diversified of secondary education campuses. All backgrounds are represented. Some join to get somewhere. Many join to leave someplace else. Others joining for advancement, a job skill.

Clearly there were restrictions. Physical training, marches and kitchen detail among them. Lots of downtime in our everyday drills that prepare us for an eventual war. Suppose that might be true outside the military base gates as well. Some of us are in survival mode.

Or else we start out that way. Only later that we come to realize the value of the journey itself. The process of life playing out through us. My niece wants a job now, wants life to take a predictable pattern.

I suggest there is plenty of time to get with the program. A lifetime ahead to follow that route. Enjoy the downtime, enjoy the lack of routine. Enjoy the lack of clock. Write about it if you must keep busy but enjoy the leisure of this time in life.

Maybe that is part of the reason I stay home with the children. Leisure is not a way I would describe the first seventeen years. Regrettably there wasn’t a childhood of unpredictability. There was routine, there were chores to do. Early on, we were marching.

The lucky among us learn how to change step along the road march. Maybe we hear a different drum. Possibly we become our own music. Singing our own song as it were. Writing our own stories. Living our script. We do get to choose how the end looks. The sooner we connect to this the better. The better our lives, the better our writing. The better those warm breezes that blow in our back patios.

Often it is only later in the going back to review our lives, even writing that we see the common thread. Our personal truth within our pages. A truth that remains central to our lives. It moves our lives further along. Initially towing the line amidst family, later perhaps the military lock step. Perhaps even later college or other post secondary education.

College for me was a highlight in my life. Learning in the classroom, learning outside the classroom. Learning for the sake of learning itself. That timely four years of leisure. Again leisure and the productive ones among us used that time well spent. Either reading, studying or taking notes amidst a lecture. I took a lot of notes, writing it down makes recall much more effective.

I now have the penmanship of hurrying to take down notes. Even today I usually take notes as I read. Sometimes I write the authors letting them know how much I enjoyed their books, or not. Recently I had sent a sympathy note to an author I’d spent the weekend reading. His mom was in our local Sunday paper’s obituary column. His book on marketing was titled Selling the Invisible. Suppose a condolence from readers sells the invisible. It was the right thing to do at the time.

Writing allows us to speak to a lot of people at once. Would think the real reward of our work would be feedback from our reading audience. Ideally it helps them further along in life. It empowers them in some way.

My wife said to write of my stay at home experiences. At first blush, I hesitated, the topic too broad. Or maybe too mundane to reflect, much less spend time writing about our current life circumstance. Upon further thought, each of us has a story inside us. Not so much creating a storyline, rather telling our story as it is. As it currently is lived within the everyday. Maybe even your everyday?

The military and college have both contributed to my life. My life today listening to my wife’s iPod in the backyard writing about those late summer breezes. Oregon’s extended summer. Most think it rains here much of the time. If that is what keeps them from moving here, so be it. For many of us, it is our place in the sun.

The military exercises at Ellensburg Washington in the late 1970’s introduced me to this region of the country. I was assigned to Fort Ord, a base inland from Monterey California. South Korea was later my final fourteen month assignment. That was a quick

reality check of some of the problems facing our world today.

Not all of us get to enjoy those summer breezes. So too for staying at home raising our children. Odd, yet that is a luxury for all too few in the otherwise prosperous America. I’ll be idealistic and hope that my presence throughout my