Follow the herd to the Golden Corral

I want to clarify right at the beginning that I don't consider myself better than the people I am going to tell you about. I guess I am making a bit of fun, but I am also keenly aware of how close I come to joining their ranks.

I, totally honest and trustworthy, had never eaten at a Golden Corral until September of last year. I have saddled up to quite a few buffets in my food driven life, but never the GC. I liked it. As my debit card receipts will bear out, I often have a hankerin' for it. It is not a fancy spot with menus. This is the kind of place that toothpicks are offered after the meal. It is a place of value for the buck.

I usually only eat here at lunch times. I join the ranks of other hungry workers who want to share a dollop of mashed potatoes, fight for the last piece of chicken, and enjoy some ice cream out of the machine. These are my people. We communicate without words to form single file lines and obtain our selected meals without harm or danger to others. We fill our plates high like mountains that need to be conquered. We might get mighty portions, but, perhaps due to time constraints more than will, we usually only get two helpings.

Tonight, I went for dinner. These are not my people. These folks are professionals. They are the reason that it costs more to eat buffets at night versus lunch. I watched as three heavy hitters all sat on one side of a table so they could fill the other side with piles of plates. It looked like their imaginary equals were filling the chairs opposite them and devouring plates while they were eating only a normal portion. They sat in silence, staring ahead, and just ate. It didn't even look like they enjoyed it. They just ate.

One row up was a similar group. I don't know how many plates they knocked out before I got there because they were on dessert by the time I arrived. Picture yourself going to a local bakery and pointing to the entire showcase of desserts and saying, "I will take that, please." To make it worse, I could almost testify that I heard them talk about diabetes. These are true warriors. Not even the threat of amputation slows them down.

Looking around the "corral", I couldn't help but to notice more of the night crowd. They were easy to pick out due to their uniforms (sweatpants and loose shirts). It reminded me of the Friends episode where Joey wears maternity pants.

I sat there looking at all of these night people when it all started to connect in my head. Just as Bruce Willis realized he had been dead the whole time in Sixth Sense, I realized that the night crowd must be my people also. I am here with them. I am a threat to the buffet's existence.

I will pick up my uniform at Wal-mart tomorrow.

As honest as I can be.

I have been a worker for as long as I can remember. I have worked hard and always accepted the extra responsibilities and opportunities that have come from that hard work. I am so very thankful for all of the blessings and rewards that have come to me, but my heart, I think it is my heart, is uneasy.

Quite a few changes happened within a year's span. Media Play closed. I know from a Wall Street perspective it came as no shock, but from the perspective of someone who spent a major portion of time...I guess "sucked" is the only word that comes to mind. Closing was the outcome we worked so hard to prevent, and then it just happened. Powerless. That is how I felt. Without direction? That too. I started to think about the point of it all. It seemed to me that I spent a lot of time working. I had often said that work was my hobby. It dawned on me that I don't like the way that sounds. In fact, I hate it. Being honest with myself, it is not like I was saving lives, but I did enjoy the community of it. It was quite the experience and I grew, I hope, quite a bit while I was there. It still ended.

What came from the closing was a realization of reality. I realized that I spent way too much time at work. I realized that I do have more to me. Most importantly, I realized that I had been, simply, a bad husband. I regret saying the last line, but I know that it is true. By being always at work, I wasn't present. As Dylan says, "You got to serve somebody." It can be this, or it can be that. It can't be both. My abundance of time spent at work was a dashboard indicator of priorities and one that I regret. Our actions really are how we say things best.

The combination of the company's closing and some untimely passings laid a solid foundation for the overwhelming sensation of the grandness of life.

Being "on the road" has allowed much time for thought. I have mostly thought about being present, or living life. I don't mean for living life to be defined as doing the extreme, or even travelling to the unknown. I mean being present for my life. I want to stop and take inventory on a daily, even hourly, basis. I want to truly be present in my life and not let it slip past camouflaged in the everyday of it all.

I confess I made a mistake in thinking I was made for the kind of travel I am currently doing. At least, I know I am not made for it without Kirsten. Perhaps I would be better suited for it with my best friend along with me. I pray something, somehow brings me home soon.

To the point, I am on a quest to go forward. I am trying to be honest with myself. Honest enough to say what I really want, and I pray that I will have courage enough to go for it. I pray I will be smart enough to lay out sound plans to get there, and flexible enough to scrap those plans to make new ones when necessary. I hope to be a better...just better will do for now.