Meet The McKinneys

The letter “Y” can change a lot. Happy certainly isn’t the same as happiness. I know I get pissed when someone spells my last name without one and it seem to soften the flint of an otherwise difficult name to say i.e. Cutty, Gunny, Baby,. Starting to get the picture? It can completely change a fish to fishy. No “Y” brings about images of open seas and aquariums and the other makes you curl your nose. And let’s face it. A fair and a fairy are way off. I guess the one rule of thumb that sticks out in my mind. If you have to put a “y” on the end of class, It’s probably not.

It all began Tuesday morning. I got up, felt great, got a shower, and got dressed. All except for my shoes. After chasing Gabby around and trying to stay within the boundaries of my routine We were all running a couple of minutes behind schedule. She had finally landed on her little pink chair and Amber was finishing up with her own hair. I went to retrieve the ever illusive baby hairbrush from the guest bathroom along with the Flintstone vitiamins. Which, by the way, would soon be emptied onto the counter to find the last orange “dino”. Gabby has systematically removed and devoured the purple characters, leaving only the red ones. For some reason she either prefers them and is saving them until last (the captain crunch berry theory) or she absolutely hates them and won’t eat them at all. We will only be able to tell after the last orange Barney and Betty are gone. I reached down like normal and grabbed my shiny black dress shoes. I pulled the left one on and took another step towards the brown living room chair that will temporarily reside in our bedroom until Christmas is over. I took another step, hoping to pull the other shoe on effortlessly in stride on my way to sit down and lace them both up.
That’s when it hit. My weight shifted. I moved slightly the wrong way. Whatever it was I knew this feeling all to well. With all the anticipation of a soup bowl on passenger train drivin by Casey Jones himself, my back gave way. The bone on bone grinding that results in the finality of a disc slipping pop. The next two months flashed across my mind to inform me of my future hobbling. I hit all fours. There was no where to go but down. The sharp pain is followed by the debilitating loss of mobility. I was trying to bear the pain and I must have looked very silly to Gabby.
Kids are great though. She simply got on all fours and began helping me look for what ever it was that I dropped. Needless to say, Priceless!

A little over a year ago now a good family friend made a suggestion about working for Wachovia, made a phone call and got me a telephone interview. I won the interview and got a follow-up interview for a panel interview. I got the job offer by the end of the day. Which got me thinking. Maybe I should keep looking. I did and got two subsequent offers elsewhere. In short, I took the Wachovia position, resigned from my old company, and moved home.
Since then I have been fortunate to make good friends at Wachovia and I have learned a lot about business relationships. Much more than I was getting at my old company.
Meanwhile, my old company is at the heart of “credit crunch” and a highly impacted industry is taking blows from all sides. They aren’t doing so well and I don’t feel the least bit guilty for them because I haven’t wished anything bad on them.
Likewise, my experience working at Wachovia so far has been a fantastic experience. It has been a place where I can showcase my people skills which is where my true talents are. What a difference a year can make. And you can take that to the bank. I did.

What a great weekend. It was good to see my old friend Swee. It was also good to see his little boy. I mean, his “minnie Me”. Kelby and Gabby got along great. Kids adjust to situations better than we give ‘em credit for. Gabby was very shy at first. We finally broke the ice between the two of them with a common thread amongst kids under age five…DVDs.

For some reason kids under five will stop dead in their tracks to watch Elmo or Happy Feet or whatever. They look like little zombies. Sometimes they’ll break their concentration for a snack, but it’s got to be a really good snack.

We caught up on old times and talked about some new ones to come. Grilling out and talking about Glory Days never gets old with good friends.

Thanks for the visit Swee… and tell Sandersville I said hello. Oh yea…congratulations…you sooooo deserve it!

Change is good. All kinds of change. Drive a differrent way to work. Buy a cup of coffee from a different coffee shop. Matter of fact, use the left over change in your car to by a lottery ticket. It may not sound like that much of a difference, but even little changes are good. Break your routine and live a little. Sure, there’s comfort in knowing what’s coming around the next bend. But then there’s also monotany. As humans beings we crave routine. And when we get it, we crave change. The only thing that is constant is change (except maybe spare change!).

Do you remember that great feeling you got when you were a kid and your mom or dad bought you a new pair of Zipps sneakers? Yeah that feeling like there was nobody better than you. You could run faster, jump higher, and if people weren’t careful you might flash through their kitchen and leave only a trail of light and an empty plate of cookies behind. Change is what produced that feeling. Breaking the habit of wearing the same old shoes. Sure, those would wear out or your foot would grow out of them, but they carried no less “zip” than the first day you put them on. But they too paled in comparison to the new pair of nikes you got next.

Change.

Today, traveling home I pulled off the I-20 freeway to go home. On the exit ramp a man sat on a duffle bag. His flannel shirt made no sense in the Georgia heat. It was beginning to rain and the ink on the sign he’d made was beginning to run. It said: “traveling thru. hungry. need change please…” I decided I would look him in the eyes when I got to the stop sign he was leaning on. That’s something I normally wouldn’t do.

Change. Right?

I normally would find myself turning away or digging out my sticky soda baked coins. But today I would look him right in the eyes. What would I see? I tell you, it was a strange experience. The hardness of his skin contrasted with the tenderness of his soul. The story was in his eyes. Like a flash you could see it. You could see he was ashamed to be begging. You could also see that it hadn’t always been this way. He probably had a family at one point. A job. A car perhaps or a truck. He probably saw somethings in me too.

Rain drops collected on the leather of my interior as my electric window rolled down. He rose to his feet and came to collect his prize. I decided to give him that feeling I had when my parents bought me those shoes years ago. I reached my hand out to meet his and I deposited the lottery ticket that I bought earlier that day when I was searching for change and I found it in the seats of my truck.

Because you see, it’s not the prize itself that we crave. Whether it be shoes, a different flavor of coffee, or the idea of winning millions of dollars that changes us……It is our dreams. Only they can move us to change ourselves. And I think that’s just what we both needed.

To Blog or Not to Blog?

Blogging…Yep…I remember when I was on the innovator segment of the us markets. I’d buy myself the latest “toys”….cell phones, digital cameras, pda’s..etc…etc… I would have the latest and greatest of whatever with complete disregard for risk. Ah…the good ole days.

Then something happened. I grew some gray hair, returned an item or two, and became a skeptic. Oh sure, I still like the latest and greatest…whatever. I just don’t trust it until the bugs have been worked out. That’s why I haven’t jumped whole-heartily into this blogging environment. Until now.

I have used the technology as a creative tool. It gives me an outlet, but also serves as a void that my Type “a” mind needs to fill. Am I huddled over my PC until 4A.M. talking about who is the lesser of two evils? Hillary or Obama?…No.

I do fill that void with expression, opinion, and occasionally a photograph that will get you thinking. Whatever the case may be, it’s enjoyable.

I do keep one rule in mind: “Don’t write anything down that you don’t want read at your funeral.”