Embracing Life

This time last year, I was talking about trying to get on board with the MFLC and figure life out from there. I had some things I was working on and damn if I haven’t gotten any to fruition. It seems frustrating and it can be, but if you remember my post from last week, about life being overwhelming, I’m working on how to get this overwhleming feeling tamed. I feel like I’m way further along with some of the projects and not so far along with others. More importantly, I’m leaning into this whole underemployed aspect of my current lifestyle. I’m trying to not stress day to day about working or not working. Even though every day unemployed is another day on my ever growing resume gap. Sure, I’m adjunct teaching, and maybe that will help, but I haven’t worked in oil and gas since Nov 2018. Yikes, now that’s a resume gap. I’ve been poring over LinkedIn and other venues for positions, and there seem to be a few more geologists positions opening up, still mostly in Houston. The hiring for the construction aspect of oil and gas, and mudloggers, and service industry folks is really picking up though, so I’m optimistic that geology hiring will start in full swing soon. Of course, Conoco just had a big layoff a couple of weeks ago, so that’s still happening as well. Here’s what’s been going on with me.

Visitation Center Reboot

Last year I had been talking about starting a non-profit that would serve as a supervised vistation center and support for families after they got out of supervised visitation. However, I couldn’t get funding, and even getting the business plan together, I realized that I’d need external sources of funding for that. I didn’t want to sink all of my capital into a house and then be strapped for day to day operations. Plus, I couldn’t convince myself that there was going to be enough need for this businessif I couldn’t expand it beyond the supervised visits.

I had a meeting with a non-profit of a CEO and a friend of mine that put us together and he made me seem a lot more optimistic about getting capital for startup and tangible costs like a building, or house and furniture, etc… What was more difficult, was getting funding for day to day operations and the non-tangible aspects of a non-profit, because companies can’t see those as easily. That gave me hope and I started putting together a full fledged business plan that I could submit to companies asking for money to help make this come true.

While writing that business plan, I got stuck on the same questions.

“How do I keep families engaged after they move past supervised visitation?”

“Why would they want to come here if they don’t have to?”

These questions made me rethink this whole concept. After a suggesstion from a friend, I realized that she was right, and I need to redo the whole concept of this. While I am passionate about helping kids in the foster system, and I’m passionate about helping families in the foster system, I haven’t been feeling as much passion with this project, especially after my stint at DHS. As much as I’d like to think that a visitation center could be useful, it has SO many logistical challenges from the sense of foster kids may be anywhere in the state, regardless if their parents are in this county or not. So, how could we get them to the facility, and how would it be useful for that?

Goodbye Visitation Center – Hello Something Else!

That’s so specific right, something else, lol. Between talking with my friend and other people and getting some feedback on this new idea, I think I’m going to pivot to more of a center that is there for teens that are about to age out of the foster system. Even just teens in the foster system. In OK, we have a program called OKSA that helps youth transition from the foster system into a successful adult. I was supposed to be filling out this transition program for a teen on my caseload, even though he had a few more years to turning 18. It’s a lot of work to get these plans together, and with my kid, it was no different. I was fortunate to have a 6 hr drive with him so we could discuss all of these plans, and the future and what it looked like for him. Even getting all of that information together, I didn’t ultimately get that packet completed before I quit, and he is now on the caseload of someone with another 17 people to juggle, so I’m not super hopeful that it will get completed, or get completed well.

My thought was that DHS is so overwhelmed with cases and time, what if there was a companion prorgam that could help teens on caseloads get their OKSA plans complete, and have somewhere to talk to and work through these plans and setting goals with someone and having someone oversee those plans and goals. That’s technically a social worker’s role, along with all their other roles, but my thought is, why couldn’t this center be focused on teens, and then ALSO provide supervised visitation as needed.

Hello Youth Center!

In short, yes, I’m describing a youth center, and feel like there could be a real need for this type of service in our community. While there are some of these already existing, I want to provide more of a niche than another general “youth and family service” oriented center. I want more focus on the youth aspect with the family part coming second. I’m still working on getting this more organized than I describe it here, but my excitement is that I ahve something to focus on and get moving forward with it again. Yay, that’s exciting to keep moving forward with.

Property Development Update

I have talked with 6 different contractors now and had 3 come to bid on a job for equipment they didn’t even have. Two of those contractors took 6 and 7 weeks to tell me, “our bid would be too high, bc we don’t own that equipment we’d need. Call Jo Bob, our friend that can do the job and we’ll still do the septic”.

Me: No you won’t. Not after wasting 6 weeks of my time when you could’ve told me that 6 weeks earlier.

I finally got a contractor that had a good price and would do the job immediately, only to be held up by, an oil and gas operator having an improperly installed line laying across the access to my property. It’s a 4″ plastic low pressure saltwater line, so, you can’t drive a dozer over it, you can’t adjust or regrade the entry or driveway or do any of that. So, after a month of talking with them and getting nowhere, according to my contractor it was a month and 5 days, lol. They agreed they would do the prudent thing and bury their line to give me access to my property. How nice that they’re doing what they’re legally supposed to. What a godawful company I’ll have to deal with at this property. Actually, I won’t have to deal with them other than calling in locates for anything to get done out at my property. Beyond that, there isn’t any need for us to ever talk.

My contractor had called in locates twice and everyone had marked their utilities except for, you guessed it, this jackass engineering company. My contractor got on site and cleared a driveway and was clearing a pad and guess what he hit? An unmarked portion of that saltwater line.

Prudent Operator? Not That I’ve Dealt With

It was a fun afternoon of getting cussed at, yelled at, and being called a liar by said jackass engineering company. They also hung up on me 3 times after yelling and cussing at me, some real lovely folks, let me tell you.

Ultimately, it came down to, “did you mark your line? Was it marked where it was on surface or underground? No? Ok, then that’s on you not being a prudent operator and not deeming it worthy to mark, and whoops, it got knicked by a dozer blade.”

Them; “It got more than knicked, it was cut it in half! And you wouldn’t know what a prudent operator in OK is, don’t tell me about being a prudent operator…”
Me: “Yeah, that’s what happens when a dozer blade knicks a plastic pipe. It cuts it in half. You’re right, I don’t know what a prudent operator looks like in OK, because I haven’t worked with one yet…”  That prompted the 3rd hangup, lol.

So, with a minor snag, the pad area was cleared and I have a sort of driveway access. My guy couldn’t feather down the driveway towards the road, due to, that saltwater line being right at the surface, so I’ll have to get the guys hauling gravel to feather that out once the pipe gets trenched and buried at the entrance, allegedly this week. If it doesn’t happen, that’s fine, I’m contacting the oil and gas commission to file a complaint against that company for blocking access to the property anyway, so I’ll find out what they have to say about any future issues. Basically, I’ll just call in anything I do for work out there and request locates and move on with work a week later.

That’s the only update for that. Construction has started and it is moving forward. Slowly but surely, it’s moving forward.

Summary

There’s a lot going on, that’s for sure. I still have class I’m teaching, I have the garage organized now so I can start woodworking again, and then there’s life. Just keeping up with regular old life is also a challenge lately. I’ve just been having trouble focusing on much of anything and most of the last 3 weeks has seemed like a lot of mondays running together with no real end or downtime. It sounds weird with me having so much free time, but oh man, it feels like that to me anyway. I feel like there’s constantly something happening that puts me at least 3 steps back when I take a half a step forward.

I just accept that not everything is going as planned or as quickly as I like and that’s ok. I’m not a productive super beast like last year, and that’s also ok. I’m learning to lean into this time off and enjoy it for what it is. In the meantime, keep focus on the other things I’m working on and be gracous with myself. I’m SO critical of myself and set insanely high standards I hold myself to, and I’ve got to cut that back too. I’ve been working on being WAY more gracious with myself and it’s coming along, but it’s not there yet.

What about you? What have you been up to lately that’s taking over most of your time? Is it adding something positive to your life, or is it not there yet? Any suggestions on the youth center idea? I’d loev to hear them!