All I Can Do Now is Dream…
Fast forward to 2008. All I have been able to do for the last few years is dream of the day I can move to the Big Island and live in my house in Ocean View, Hawaii. I have pictures all over the walls of my cubicle at work. All I can talk about is how beautiful it is there. Now I feel like the rabbit with the proverbial carrot being held out in front of me. Boy, I can’t wait to reach that carrot! The harder I try the farther away it seems to get. LOL!
At this time I am working for a high tech company. I am making good money, living in a great neighborhood in a nice little house and driving a BMW Z3. And I am working 50-60 hours per week. The company I work for is thankless. My boss is a micro manager. I miss spending time with my wife and I have been giving up spending time with my family to work in the evenings and on weekends. Needless to say I am totally stressed out. But worse, I am completely burned out. I am having a hard time sleeping which only compounds my stress and feeling of doom. Another thing that was bothering me that I did not realize at that time was that I stopped working on my hobbies. In other words I was not doing what it took to help myself keep from being stressed out. Most of my hobbies require a fair amount of energy to do and I no longer had the energy. Things are getting worse at work. The product I am working on, which is the product that provides 90% of the company’s income, is becoming obsolete. The company is demanding more productivity and even longer hours including even more weekend work. I am quickly reaching my breaking point.
That is when the company reorganized my department. Funny thing is, they created a new group. And in this group are mostly my fellow employees and managers whom I had heard were top on the list of being laid off if the company needed to shed a few pounds. Coincidence? I don’t think so. The only problem is, I am a part of that group as well. The writing is now on the wall. A layoff is coming and I am going to be a part of it. While I am not unhappy about losing this job, the economy has already been in a downturn and I am starting to wonder if I am going to be able to find another job. I don’t relish being unemployed for 6-12 months. Last time I was unemployed it took me 6 months to find another position. There are two big differences this time. First, a lot of high tech companies, especially in Southern California, have closed up shop. And a large number of other high tech companies have moved out of state due to the unfriendly business and tax atmosphere in California. The second difference is I am now almost 10 years older than last time. I am the second oldest engineer in my entire department. Even the managers are all younger than me. And age is a deficit at high tech companies. They rather hire younger, less well paid, and less experienced college grads over the older engineers. When you combine all of this with the state of the economy at that time, things don’t look very good for me anymore. I started looking for a job before I have to endure the embarrassment of being laid off. I found exactly what I thought, there were few if any jobs available in Southern California. There were a few jobs available in San Jose, Arizona and Colorado, three places either my wife or I did not want to live. If I had to I would probably commute.
I decided one day as an after thought, to look for tech jobs in Hawaii. The majority of tech jobs are either on the island of Oahu or Maui. But alas, there are no jobs available. As a matter of fact there are VERY few jobs of any type available. It was about that time I remembered seeing a job posting about a year ago and thought I doubt they would have found anyone to do that job. The job was for a testing technician that tests construction materials such as concrete, asphalt and aggregates. The job entails physical, non-destructive testing of these materials. This was my first real job right out of high school. This job is a skilled labor job that is highly technical and requires strong math and engineering skills. It is from this testing technician job that I learned to be a Building/Construction Inspector. I was in the testing and inspection business for over 16 years before I started in the high tech computer industry. I started searching and found some archives from which I was able to find the ad I had seen a year prior. I contacted the company and spoke with the HR person. It was no surprise to me to find out the position was still available. The skill set required to do this job is difficult to come by on the mainland. It is even harder to come by on an island in the Pacific Ocean. The HR person read off a list of qualifications. Most of which I either had done or was familiar with. That is when she asked to set a date for an interview. At the same time the County of Hawaii was looking for a Construction Inspector and I already had an interview date with them. My interview date for the County job was on a Monday on the Kona side and my interview for the testing technician position was on the following Tuesday on the Hilo side.
A few weeks later I flew in to Kona on a Sunday and interviewed with the County on Monday. After the interview I drove to the Hilo side and stayed at a friend’s rental home. Tuesday morning I went for my interview in Hilo and by that afternoon I had an offer for the testing technician job! I immediately called my wife and discussed the offer with her. It took about 1 second for her to tell me I should take it! I had already wanted to accept it but I always want to hear what she has to say just in case she has some thoughtful insight as to how it would affect her/us. The next day before I headed back to the airport I called the Hilo company and accepted the offer and set a start date about 3 months later.
Guess what? I am moving to the Big Island of Hawaii!!!
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