I know its been a long time between posts, but such is life. Work continues to go well for me. I had a meeting with my HR rep which was nice. It was not a special meeting, just her annual face to face to keep in touch with her IT people. I came out of the meeting with a good feeling about working there and the possibility of advancing myself. It's nice to feel like people are looking out for you and interested in your development. Oddly, I seem to get along pretty well with HR and a certain type of management. I think it is obvious pretty quickly that I am pretty ambitious and motivated. I'm something of a "low hanging fruit" for people who's job it is to get their employees/clients advanced. When your advancement reflects well on other people and other people's ratings on how they are doing their jobs, it is a good thing to be an easy win for them. They are more inclined to give you help because they know it will come back to them more easily than a "tough case" type of person (which I also used to be and, not surprisingly, had little or no relationship with my HR and management). So that;s good.
In less great news, my uncle was killed in a car accident on the way home from my parents' house a little over a week ago. I had done Skype with them and Felix just two days before and seen him and my aunt talking and hanging out at my mom and dad's dinner table. Then on Friday I got the phone call from my brother. There's a way that someone says your name that you know they are about to give you bad news. I could tell that Dave was going to tell me something tragic even though he sounded calm and even keeled. When you get that call, you immediately assume the worst. I remember that as he said my name the second time (the kicker in the "I have bad news" greeting) my brain started to anesthetize, preparing for a really really bad piece of info. But I think my brain also picked out things that it used to remain calm and pre-judge the severity of the news. Even though I was intellectually gearing up for news that my mom or dad was injured or dead, something unconsciously ruled those things out. He started to tell me about my aunt and uncle leaving the house that morning and, I'll be honest, I felt terribly relieved. I knew that I could cope with that. I love my relatives, I truly do, and I'm very sad that anything bad should happen to them. But there's no denying that a child fears the death of a parent or sibling more than anything. An adult fears the death of a spouse, a child, or a close friend more than anything. I think you fall into one of those two categories automatically depending on the context of the news you receive. Since an uncle is not #1 on either of those lists, I knew that I'd be able to handle it without my life being turned upside down. Let me repeat, I love my uncle and have very fond memories of him, I mourn his loss. But I was incredibly relieved to find out that it wasn't any of my immediate family members that was the source of the bad news. After getting off the phone with Dave I sat and thought to myself, wondering quite uncomfortably why I wasn't feeling very broken up about it. Was it just that I was so relieved it wasn'ty mom or dad? Was it that I thought about how my uncle was just a really nice guy, but getting older, and luckily to not waste away? I'm sure he would have had many years ahead of him if not for the accident, but who can say? There is speculation that what killed him in the accident was quite possibly his heart giving out. Of course, if it wasn't that, it was definitely the trauma of the accident. Either way, he went quickly, which is ideal, I think.
Anyway...when someone you know dies, it causes you to think and review your own feelings and thoughts and what you believe in. It makes me wonder if I feel guilty for not being so upset BECAUSE I'm atheist or INSPITE OF being atheist? My initial reaction to the news was "Well that sucks. What can you do?" Which seems really sort of easy. No wondering and questioning and speculating about God's motives or etc...I know that accidents happen, nice people die, and there's nothing more to it than that. Do I feel bad for not feeling bad?
