In Transition

The second week of my class with Work Source is done. It’s a six week course. There’s a lot of material that’s covered. Hopefully I can use some of it.

There’s a different crowd in the coffee shop one the weekend. Some people from a church group gave me a pamphlet. I see them in a few places around town handing out Bibles. Since my mom is really Christian sometimes I talk to them.

I was at West Lake Park playing chess when I found out it was Martin Luther King Day. People who were in a marching demonstration stopped and had a rally there.

The music was so loud it was hard to concentrate. Then someone got on a loudspeaker and I could barely hear people around me. I resigned the game and told the guy I was playing it was getting hard to think.

A guy who was with the rally told me, “Now you know how we feel.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about, but smiled to be polite and walked away. It was obvious he thought there was some kind of connection with what he was doing and me, but I didn’t feel it. Better to act friendly than argue and make someone angry,

I set my alarm early and woke up a couple hours before it went off. When it started ringing at 5 a.m. I got up. That’s almost a decent hour to be up and walking around.

There weren’t very many guys up in the dorm. I made some instant coffee and ate some food I had stored and left the dorm.

After today I’m halfway done with my class at Work Source. Yesterday was about listening and public speaking. This class for job retraining is different than I thought it would be. It’s almost like a crash course in psychology. There’s a lot of things in it I never thought about.

Then again, in the labor jobs I’ve done, you just do your job and don’t say much. Nobody I’ve worked with on a fishing boat, construction site, or warehouse ever asked what I felt like. This is all new to me. There’s a lot of information to go over. Hopefully I can use some of it.

Next week a job coordinator sets up an interview with me.

With any luck I’ll be able to retrain for some type of work that doesn’t involve heavy lifting.

Written by Mark Blevins

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About Me:

I was a Construction Worker and Commercial Fisherman. An injury on a fishing boat in Alaska forced me into early retirement. Now I’m a Writer and Blogger. Having to start over forced me to realize people are more than their job title.

Contact me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Bllevins