Black Swan Update: Time Is A Flat Circle; The Circle Shall Remain Broken

After eight months at the local health care facility, I have returned to the printing industry, to whose siren song I am seemingly defenseless. It was hard to leave my position in Medical Records but it was the right move. I've settled back in at my old job.

With my old employer. At my old desk.

Say it with me: time is a flat circle.

As told in this post, I left my previous/now-current employer in late 2020 to return to a previous employer, one I'd left in 2008 with no plan or prospects. The company collapsed in 2021, leaving me with no plan or prospects. I took a job in Chattanooga, off of Highway 153, for a short time, just as I did in 2008 before accepting a position with the healthcare facility, which I left to begin work with my previous/now current employer in 2012.

It doesn't take a statistician or mystic to see patterns repeating as this one clearly is. The events of 2007-2008 repeated in 2021-2022. However, this exact pattern is unlikely to repeat, as the collapsed employer no longer exists. Ironically, my current employer bought some of the equipment of the collapsed one, making an interesting moment when I walk through the plant and see familiar machinery from somewhere else.

The pattern is broken. The future is uncertain, as is the way forward. Perhaps a new pattern will emerge; call me crazy, but I don't feel my work is complete at the healthcare facility. Regardless of what lies ahead, the present is Here Now. I suggest we all be that way as well.

Comments

In Memorium: Shaun Mullen, A Most Generous Man

Author, editor, blogger, and so much more Shaun Mullen has passed. Noting his blog Kiko's House hadn't been updated in a while, I did a search and discovered his obituary . My friendship with Shaun goes back to 2006. While living in Australia, I'd discovered his blog when searching for informed commentary on US foreign policy in the Middle East. Sadly, much of that policy remains unchanged 14 years later, but that is for another post. Shaun had noticed that his blog wasn't rendering correctly in Internet Explorer and asked if anyone could suggest a fix. I, being a bit of a tech head at the time, suggested Firefox or similar browser, and the problem was solved. We kept in and out of touch, finding common ground in music (I mentioned my love for the Grateful Dead and Shaun sent a dozen CDs of concert recordings. By International mail. The man was generous to a fault.), worldview, and more. My old site got its greatest number of hits when Shaun linked to a few of m

Tiny Treasures: Geocaching With A Kid

The Loot Need a little adventure in your life? Try Geocaching . It's an old-fashioned treasure hunt made modern by GPS and a global network of players. Just download an app, sign up and go hunting. With millions of caches across the globe, chances are you'll find something. A typical cache is a small container, within which is a log of players who have found it. Also likely to be included is any number of small keepsakes, the treasure of the hunt. The photo above is of some of the loot found on a recent outing with my wife and son. Speaking of which, if you want a lot of adventure, go geocaching with a kid. Even a grizzled old veteran of the game like myself is made youthful when a kid plays, because the expression of wonder and joy on the face of a child who finds a small box hidden away by persons unknown is truly a sight to behold. There's something magical about the act, and the taking of a keepsake (and leaving a replacement of your own) only makes it better. Some

The World In Which We Live: Safety Is An Option Edition

In a world in which Fight Club , The X Files , and the complete works of Phillip K Dick have collided into one twisted reality we call normal (with a dash of Black Mirror and The Big Short for flavor), we now learn that software upgrades that could have prevented the crashes of two Boeing 737 Max passenger jets were available... at a price . "Want your passengers to live to fly another day? Sure, but it'll cost you." And I'm unsure who is more evil, the manufacturer for making safety features ON A FLYING MACHINE optional at additional cost or the airlines for declining to install the features. This is a stunning failure of human decency in the eyes of this writer. Perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised. This is business as usual in our extortionary economy. In the US, medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy , a real-world manifestation of the "your money or your life" ethos of the street thug in literature and film. The hand wringing over w

www.markholder.org

Search This Blog