2009-23 GEORGETOWN

I have taken to marking the passage of time in terms of toilet paper (or TP to be PC). I purchase a roll at the local WalMart and speculate that before it is expended I will move on, be called to a great challenge, or perhaps experience some celestial transformation. I’ve consumed a fair amount this go-round, but at last it appears we may have arrived at the end of the roll.

I know it will come as a surprise to some who pictured me as permanently relegated to the employment pasture, but the implausible has transpired. I knew intuitively that somewhere on the planet there was a niche into which I might scrunch my antediluvian corpus despite multiple inadequacies with which I struggle. Such has emerged in the form of a position that will send me back to my nation’s capital, where I began my professional career several eons ago.

It has been an interesting year, which began with bags packed and heading to Baton Rouge for a senior position on a long-term Louisiana state emergency management contract, but canceled (the contract, not me) on the eve of award for reasons still murky. Then in April I signed on as national coordinator for a FEMA contract to manage 20,000+ units of temporary housing staged and ready to deploy into devastated areas. I could almost taste the Gulf oysters. Yet this effort, to be activated in June, languishes on the desk of a contracting officer in Washington. While I try not to take personal offense, it did appear that the gods of professional challenge had turned their backs on me.

And now an opportunity to return east has arisen, and I have chosen to forsake the mountains of the west for the streets of Washington. As with personal relationships, one can never be sure of an outcome before jumping in head first and fully clothed, but the position on paper appears to embrace significant challenge, a prime determiner in the decision-making apparatus my entire professional life.

The position is attached to a lengthy vetting process, and so I will languish a bit longer as those who anoint such opportunities rummage through past decades of my rather bland existence.

And while I stand proudly behind all thoughts delivered in this BLOG, irreverent, opinionated, and occasionally arrogant though they may have been, I consider it unseemly to unleash political thoughts when I occupy a position of public trust. And so I BLOG no more.

My silence may lead to cleaner air and reduced peptic distress for those with differing views that possessed the fortitude to address my periodic ramblings. I leave in the comfort that no trees were sacrificed in the production of this work, and the ozone layer was but slightly increased by the exhaled exasperation of some.

In parting I would hope that on whatever point of the political spectrum you find yourself, take occasional opportunity to hear opposing views, not necessarily to accept or embrace, but to understand that there are positions contrary to yours which carry value – not enough perhaps to sway your thinking, but just enough to fire a few synapses of understanding.

At a time when most of my vintage contemplate fishing, long walks in the park, and afternoons with Oprah, the Adventure takes a hard turn about and plows for waters not previously contemplated. Thanks for listening.
.
.