I start a new job the day after tomorrow. There really was nothing wrong with my old job; the people were great, the pay was good, the work was interesting, and the hours were tolerable. But I could not get past the feeling that I wanted to try something bigger, so when something bigger was offered to me, I took it.
Since my old job was pretty good, the change has made me a bit nervous. I guess I don’t deal all that well with change, or with risk, so I am still wrapping my head around the decision.
During the middle the last few nights, I have awoken feeling some combination of anxiety and excitement. And when I cannot go to sleep I often sneak out of the bedroom, walk over to our TV room, and try to find something to settle my mind a bit.
It’s a habit that started when Finn was diagnosed.
And when Finn was diagnosed, I tended to watch the West Wing through the nights. At the time the show happened to play through the night on a cable station, it was interesting enough to take my mind off of Finn’s condition, but it was also somehow soothing enough to eventually let me fall back asleep.
Oddly, I discovered the West Wing on Netflix streaming the other day, and I have been watching it during the nights. So, yet again, that old television show is accompanying me through a bit of a life change. In a way, seeing the parallels has done wonders for me, because the challenge of a new job is nothing like the challenge of Angelman Syndrome. If I can handle AS, I can handle a new company.
Finn, on the other hand, continues to take most things in stride. He got a bunch of cool stuff for Christmas, but his favorite toy may be the puppet pictured above, which actually was not a Christmas present - it was something I picked up at work. Somehow the puppet has acquired the name “FredBob,” and he sounds a bit like the Taco Bell chihuahua. By the way, how is that for an ancient reference?
Finn feeds FredBob, takes him for piggy-back rides, likes to go careening through the house with FredBob in a toy shopping cart, and will sometimes even put FredBob to bed on a couch before going to bed himself. None of these may seem all that important, but I am excited whenever Finn engages in pretend-play.
Finn also had his first skiing lesson this past week. He wasn’t too sure about standing on the skis, but he loved the sit-ski. It’s a first step, and he managed to tolerate most of the rigamarole associated with skiing (all the gear, the cold weather, the ski lifts, etc.). So we are laying a foundation, and hopefully with time he will become a far better skier than me.
I think that’s it for me this week. I will try to be better about posting, especially once I settle into the new job. Writing this tonight has made me realize how much more I could say about the past month, so perhaps I should try to stick to a weekly schedule again.
