Timing is Everything

We can't help when we're born. Our placement in time and place shapes who we are. If I'd been born in, say Tehran, I might have been part of the revolution. Born a few years earlier I may have been drafted into the Vietnam War.

When I applied for the gig (that turned into a career) that I'm about to leave next year, they didn't hire me for the position I had applied for. I'd come out of art school with a degree in photography and that's the position I'd tested for. They offered me a job as a fingerprint trainee. I didn't look very far into the future at that time. When I accepted the assignment, which is how it was described, I was thinking about the immediate future. My first baby was on the way and I needed a job.

United States Navy Seabees (c. Early 1980s)

It's now twenty-eight years later, and looking back, accepting the assignment was one of the smartest decisions I've ever made. The timing was important also. If I'd waited for a photo position to open up, it may have taken two or more years. Accepting the position as an Evidence Technician Fingerprint Trainee when I did got my foot in the door. The contract under which I was assigned is amazingly generous relative to later benefits. And the timing works out where my age (for retirement) and my 30th Anniversary date align very closely.

I was relatively young when I started this gig, yet I had five years active military service to my credit which not only gave me a preference in getting the job, but allowed me to buy time towards my pension. Military service was practically an impetuous decision, but it turned out to be a good move in the long run.

And with that, I take a glance over my shoulder. There have rarely been second guesses as to what my course of action should have been, or what I could have accomplished. I don't worry about missing my calling. I did what turned out to be best(?) good for me and my kids - and while I was at it, I answered a few of those calls - but those tales will unfold later.