I am really enjoying this new job. I love having fourteen different things to do, all of fairly high priorities. I’ve always worked well under pressure, and now that my body’s adjusting to the stress, I’m rolling with it well.

Some things aren’t all that different from my old job. I still stand around and look at holes in the ground. But a key difference is that I’m in charge now, not just observing. I’m the one shutting the water off so we can cut open a line, I’m the one handing out the notices to the tenants so they don’t get a surprise when they try to flush, and I’m the one who can say, “Enough. We’ll finish this part after the weekend.”

The beautiful part is that I’m still not the one paying for the work. The County’s doing that; I’m just in charge. If I need something done that will cost money, I put a quick proposal together and hand it to my boss, who goes and arranges for the funding. I get to get down to business and just get the work done. It’s fabulous.

Even as I knock things off of my to-do list, more pop on. And I’ll take those as I get them, and be happy for it. I have to plan ahead and prioritize things, so I have work to do for the next six months and the projects get done kind of evenly. I can’t spread myself too thin, but I’m sure I can get it all done.

The first big project that I was working on was sort of an isolated thing. I went around and did my job without interacting a whole lot with the other guys. But now I’m branching out a little more, and working with other people, and I like it.  I went into a building scheduled for demo with a couple of them last week, and salvaged out some good plumbing fittings, and remembered how nice it was to work with good people.

Tom’s got a lot to teach me, and I’ll be spending quite a bit of time with him over the next few months, cramming as much as possible into my brain before he retires. I’m not stupid, and this is the sort of thing that I pick up easily, but there’s so much of it that it’s going to swamp me for a while, but I’ll get it. I don’t expect to learn all of the secrets of the place right off the bat, but in ten years or so, I might have most of them down.

My job satisfaction is at an all-time high, and it’s not jsut because of the money. Oh, don’t get me wrong; the money’s extremely nice, but it’s everything else. It’s getting out there and turning wrenches, it’s shlepping around in a tool belt and hat, it’s getting this place knocked into shape that does it for me. I don’t remember ever loving a job so much. The heat wave isn’t even getting me down.

Now, if only I can continue in this vein for the next ten years, I’ll be golden.