I'm borderline obsessed with this game

I tried to embed it, but it's not working, so here is the link:

http://www.travelpod.com/traveler-iq

Covering the last couple months

Hello everyone!

Not surprisingly I have missed my monthly quota of updates. I’ll just have to make this three times as long (or three times as good, whatever comes first).

The last update I gave was the story of how I got my job, so, naturally, this email is going to be focused on how my job is going (since, by far, that is the question I get asked the most). The short of it: my job is going well (really well, in fact). For a long time now I’ve wanted to work at a non-profit of some sort. And, as many of you know, Habitat is just that.

There’s a certain peace of mind that comes, for me at least, with working at a non-profit. Although I am liking my job a lot, there are plenty of hours of mundane, monotonous, seemingly pointless work that I take part in. But, at least with a non-profit I can have the satisfaction of knowing that all of that seemingly wasted energy is moving along a project that is doing something worthwhile. I understand (well, to some degree) that doing pointless, mundane work is a part of life, and that sometimes, in order to feed our families, or pay the bills, we have to work for a company that we might not necessarily agree with or suffer a job that we don’t necessarily like. But for now, while I don’t have a family to feed or a mortgage to pay, let me live in the naivety that I can somehow escape that and work in the non-profit sector with shabby paychecks for the rest of my life.

Lately, I’ve come to the surprising realization that people often have to work for and with people that they don’t like. I’ve had the luck of never (yep, never) having to work with someone I didn’t like. There might have been people at the company or in the wider spectrum of co-workers, but no one that I had to deal with directly on a regular basis (customers is another story altogether). I have always had friendly, caring, and competent bosses and co-workers. Actually, I’m still friends with (or at least in contact with) at least someone from every job I’ve ever worked (and I’m not taking the easy road, that’s excluding anyone I knew before I worked there with them). So, inevitably it seems (I’m going to jinx myself with all this pompous talk), Habitat continued the tradition. Actually, one of the things that I like the most about my job is the people that I get to work with. By coincidence or otherwise, there is an unusually high concentration of quality people at Habitat. My manager, Bill, is someone that I honestly respect, which I think pretty much says it all. He is always working, and always working hard. He pushes me to stretch my own meager work habits. He has taught me a lot about what it means to be a good manager, striking a balance between being interested, invested, and caring in our relationship, but also not afraid to crack the whip and to not let me be confused that although we are friends that business is our first, and necessarily our most prioritized relationship. I feel like my time and effort there is appreciated and that I am a valued part of the company. I especially like that I am not micromanaged. I am able to do my own thing and make a lot of management-type decisions (like how the store is run and how everything is set up and displayed). This makes me feel like I am trusted there, which is a good thing to feel at work. My co-workers Ryan and Erik are both great people. We are all relatively new to Habitat, and it has been a pleasure to work and get to know them. I feel like I could have been friends with both of them outside of work even if Habitat had never happened. We have a new driver that just came in, and it seems like he’s going to be a good fit here too. I think Bill is pretty scrupulous when it comes to hiring new hands, paying special attention to personality, and it has paid off when it comes to building relationships in the workplace.

Besides the people there are a couple of other things that file under the good category when it comes to working at Habitat.

First, I really like working with my hands, much more than I thought I would. Not that I thought I wouldn’t like it, but I didn’t think I would enjoy it. I thought I would be rather indifferent about it. I did work on a ranch for a long time, and you think this realization would have come during that period of time in my life. But for some reason it didn’t. I suppose it’s because more of that job was working with animals and moving cages, and not the kind of manual labor that makes the world go round (to clarify, animals and cages do, to some degree, make the world go round, but petting zoos and pony rides do not). And maybe as a strapping young lad I didn’t have the kind foresight to appreciate what I was doing, something I’m barely tapping into now and the ripe old age of twenty-three. Anyways, I’m digressing. There is some sort of primitive satisfaction that comes with moving stuff around all day. But more than that it’s great to be learning so much about the products, materials, and procedures that has built so much of the modern world. I’m even able to do little fix-it things around the house now! My grandfather was a mechanic (I think) and my dad knows a whole lot about how to fix things, make things, and how to make things do things so that they work as if they were fixed, but sadly I didn’t seem to inherit any of that, and this job has been a good first step to being a full-fledged do-it-yourselfer (now if I can just get my dad to teach me how to work on cars).

Second, it feels good to connect with the working class. As a middle-class kid raised in the suburbs, spending time with the working class wasn’t exactly something I scheduled in. At Habitat, every once in a while we do get in the wealthy person looking to save a couple bucks (not that there’s anything wrong with those people), but mostly our customer base is good ol’ blue collar workers. At this point in my life there is just something refreshing about being around the people that work all those jobs that I so often (and very much still) overlook and take advantage of. Consequently, having a working class customer base it creates a really down to earth and low-key environment to work in.

Third, it’s great to have my work constantly changing. As I said before, and as with almost all jobs, there are moments and even days of monotonous tasks to be taken care of. But, for the most part, my job is filled with a changing list of things to do, well, in a sense anyway. Because our inventory is all from donations, what we are bringing in, and what we are having to do to pick stuff up, in constantly changing. With each different item we have to figure out how much it is, what condition it is in, how we can get it on the floor, how to keep the store organized and presentable, etc. This means that the store is constantly in flux, always adjusting to whatever new products we have at the time. This means there is plenty of opportunity to continue to exercise my analyzing, problem solving, and critical thinking skills, which means, being a person that needs to be challenged and pushed to feel content, I am a happy camper.

Lastly, and possibly not least, I get paid. And for a straight-out-of-college job in this economic climate, I get paid pretty well. A full time job with full benefits is not something to laugh at. But one were I get paid more than minimum wage in a non-profit sector job where I am developing real skills and not just something that looks good on paper is something to be celebrated. And so here I am, telling all of you, that I thank God for this job. And, also importantly, that I am more than happy working here, and working here for a while, at least until grad school, or something else big comes up, but I guess that will have to wait until another email. This one is long enough.

And here’s that unrelated end-of-the-email whatever that I said I would tack onto every email:

I found this commercial startling and moving (in a makes me uncomfortable, moves me to action kind of way)

With love and hope,

Eric