松涛 (Windsong)
第二章
Making the transition
A transition, a major transition, had been set in motion. A person's life is full of transitions. During my childhood my family moved from house to house so relocating our home site was normal to me. Staying in one place for more than three years would be a transition. I don't have the numbers in front of me that it would be very difficult if not impossible for me to think of a three-year time period in the first 18 years of my life that was spent in one location. The closest we came to that would've been the five years my family lived in the San Fernando Valley when I was in first through sixth grade. But even that period was not a stable one since we only spent a few weeks of the first and last school years during that period in that area. Also, we lived in three or four houses at that time.
The first transition in my life was deciding to attend one college for four years and staying in Fayetteville for five years. My transition into marriage with Gail started in the middle of that time period and would carry me across six more states before we transitioned through divorce. Marrying Sheila a few years later in joining the Forest Service took us through another series of experiences. The transition that began in 2007 continues in 2013. The transition from Atlanta to Arkansas took less than a year but the real transition from working full-time to retirement is still going on.
Sheila and I had made the decision to begin to leave the lab rat race. The word "lab" in the last sentence is an artifact of my voice recognition software but I like the sentence so it's going to stay there. We didn't know exactly where life would take us but we knew it was time to get out of the Atlanta and the big city and take on a more relaxing life in Arkansas. Our next problem was twofold, how to get our stuff to Arkansas and what to do once we arrived there. Sheila's life was dictated by conditions. She found a job with Dr. Abraham who she had worked for in the early 1990s and he owned a house that we could use for the time being in Arkansas. I was still at least six months from retiring so I needed to stay in Atlanta.
Pre-retirement decisions
My job in Atlanta had been a fascinating one in the Southern Region of the United States Forest Service but fascinating did not always mean enjoyable. I thoroughly enjoyed being a full-time writer and editor. But government jobs, while generally secure, can create their own kind of instability. As mentioned previously, the day after we arrived in Atlanta the regulations which it caused my job to be created had been changed. In 2007 several rumors made their way around the office. Some were more than rumors. At one point, the Office of Personnel Management made the decision unilaterally that all Forest Service regional offices would be closed during 2009, permanently. A few weeks later, an alternative decision was made to keep them open but to decrease the size by 25%.
My job was on the chopping block. Retiring early would allow me to escape any future repercussions. I still don't know what happened and don't really care. I don't work there anymore and I don't spend much time on Forest Service lands. My supervisor and I had general disagreements which are making life in Atlanta unpleasant. With the change in regulations my job changed and become poorly defined. Every week, someone from the national forests was coming into the office and I train them to do my job, working with appeals and litigation, as a result of the new regulations. But that left me without a lot to do. I felt like I was spinning my wheels and I think my supervisor and I would agree of at least with that concept.
But I needed to make some decisions that would affect the rest of my life. Sheila and I had spent years moving and working for the agency to improve my career options. I don't want to waste a lot of time discussing everything we considered because we've narrowed it down considerably. We had rejected taking a position in the Washington Office as being too much trouble and too far from family. We had rejected taking several positions scattered across the country, also for family reasons. "I only have one more move left in me," Sheila had said. The move to Arkansas looked like it was going to be that move. Doors appeared to have been closed for other Forest Service options and so we chose the open door.
One piece at a time
Sometime in July or August the physical move to Arkansas began. I had purchased a camper shell so we go camping with the pickup truck and it came in very handy during the move. I decided to begin to move as much of our furniture and household goods as I could one truckload of the time as I went home to Arkansas to see Sheila on weekends. I usually took a trip every second weekend which allowed me to work 10 hour days and not miss work time traveling on a Friday and Monday. That is, I would load up the truck Thursday night, drive to Arkansas Friday, spend the weekend, and drive back to Atlanta on Monday. Then I would work four 10 hour days to get my workweeks in. Actually, with several federal holidays, vacation days, and sick leave I rarely worked a 40 hour week. But that was true even for most of my five years in Atlanta.
Had this transition occurred 20 years earlier it would've been very different because there would have been no computers or internet. Fortunately, Sheila and I were able to get on the internet and talk to each other most evenings. I really enjoyed that opportunity after many years of having to use a telephone without a camera to talk to anyone but I was out of town. In fact, should I travel to China on my own, which is likely, I will enjoy it again.
So, week by week, month by month, we began to move from Georgia to Arkansas. I would make a total of 14 trips over the next six months, 610 miles, driving by myself and usually in a single day. Infrequently, I would stop for the night along the way but it quickly became obvious the driving through was the best way to go. On the next to last trip I rented a small U-Haul trailer and carried some of the larger appliances. But overall, I made almost all of the entire move by myself.