I’m having a really good day. The weather here is gorgeous, the sky is a clear blue, cool breezes running via open windows throughout the house. Slept like a rock, got up early as usual to see that Kristi got on the road with breakfast and a packed lunch, and then crashed out for a few more hours. When I woke up at 9am I felt better than I have since before we got sick. Factoring stress into the equation, probably the best I have since the plane landed in December.
16 years ago – God, has it been that long? – I remember driving into work down Kirkman Avenue in Orlando, about this time of morning and this time of the year. I was 19 and worked in an A/P department at Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin). With the recession and massive post-Cold War defense cutbacks, 1991 had been a bloodbath year in aerospace. Bad, bad year. By March ’92, I was burnt out. I’d go to the local water park every day after work just to unwind before the painful drive home down I-4. I spent most of my time fantasizing about being anywhere and doing anything other than staring at phone bills for a company that specialized in blowing people up.
So that day, the day I driving on Kirkman, I’d told people that I had a dental appointment. Truth was, I was putting a job application in at Universal. Kirkman ran right alongside the park back then. The money wouldn’t be nearly as good, and I wouldn’t be getting a steady 40 per week, but it’d be fun. And I desperately needed fun at the time. I’d already decided to quit Martin and already had a resignation letter written and in the car. It was just a matter of having somewhere else to go when I left.
I was driving down Kirkman with the windows open and it was early spring just like today and the weather was perfect and I just realized that I couldn’t bear going back to that big grey building full of overweight grey people doing boring grey work where every hallway was decorated with Orwellian security posters. The place full of people who in the fall of ’91 were hoping, praying, desperately dreaming that the Gulf War would turn into a full-region bloodbath – so that they’d keep their jobs. The place where everything was a number and everything was locked behind a security card swipe and everyone pretty much accepted their lots in life and accepted grey as the natural color of the world.
In short, everything that a blue-sky spring morning in Florida – or California, for that matter – isn’t.
I went back to the office, handed in my letter and that was it. I didn’t get the job at Universal; I went back to temping for a while, drove across the country a couple times, ended up working at a Winter Park health food store a few years later. It wasn’t an easy road from there to here, but I never regretted leaving Martin. It was just one of those defining moments that not only set my life in a new direction, but made a big difference in the man I became as well.
The first really stunning morning in spring always makes me think of that morning. It makes me take notice of the colors and the fresh air and everything good in life. And there’s an awful lot of good in life right now. You could say I’m a happy guy; it’s a good day.