Sixintheworld.com

I just stepped off the conveyer belt that has been moving me forward the last 13 years. It is very strange. Yesterday was my last day at work, but I woke up this morning and still checked email before 7:00. I did not check my calendar. Voicemail will all be forwarded by my assistant, I mean ex-assistant. For the next year, I am not the VP of blabidy blah. I have long struggled with the way Americans define themselves by what they do professionally and not who they are as people. Well today, I have forced myself to walk the walk, and…. It feels weird. I am sitting on a plane. It is not unlike one of the thousand of planes I have sat on over the last decade. I fly a lot. In fact, I have been proud to wear my 11 year Delta platinum status on my sleeve as another sign of what I do and how dedicated I am to it. However, this time it is different. There won’t be a crisis for me when I land. There isn’t a pile of Powerpoint documents, contracts, or business cases to go through. I am on a plane that is literally and figuratively taking me away from work and towards the family.

I am not sure what I will miss most about work. It will take me 2 weeks before it sinks in that this isn’t a normal vacation Right now the one thing I think I will miss most is the people. My departure was a great excuse for a month of celebration.

Superfriends, Cass “the voice” andra and The master with the pen Janetta with the sixintheworld cake.

My former assistants threw a great party at work complete with a www.sixintheworld.com cake. There were also dinners and a happy hour with great company and great food. I had numerous meaningful one-on-one conversations and email exchanges with coworkers in the weeks leading up to my departure, which leads me to think the one thing I will miss will be the people. Of course you could argue the world is full of people. We will actively try to meet many of them, but there is something different about the people with whom you work. I think there is a bond built because you are united in a cause bigger than yourself. As you work together you draw closer and if you have successes closer still.

I am counting on that philosophy being translatable from the workplace to the family. Although our adventure will include a lot of fun, jokes, and entertainment (not unlike work), we each will have roles to play, tasks to accomplish, and need to be a support system to one another. This blog, for example, will become more of a community effort. Over time, we will expand to podcasts and the occasional Vcast. Dax will step up as a writer and video editor, Mac will step up as a photographer and videographer, I will move from being the back end technician to more of a participant, and Asher and Kieran will get a combination of starring roles and menial tasks, perhaps craft services. When we are done, we will hopefully have created a great treasure for the family and grown together through the experience of both traveling and working together. In hindsight, I probably should have enjoyed this plane ride a little more. We are going to be very busy.

Technorati Tags: earthlink, puppy, Round the World, RTW

About two years ago one of my molars was giving me trouble. When I went to the dentist, he diagnosed a small cavity, though he couldn’t really see one, and inserted a filling in the offending tooth. Despite his efforts, it still felt like the tooth was going to break every time I bit down on it. I waited a few uncomfortable months until we could change our insurance plan and go to a new dentist whom we had just met at church. Within fifteen seconds of my sitting down in his chair and with the help of his way cool, micro-camera that blows those little round dental mirrors on sticks away, Dr. Erik diagnosed a crack. Yep, a crack. “What on earth could cause my tooth to crack?” I wondered. I wasn’t eating Jolly Ranchers (ask Tom about them), chewing ice on a regular basis, or interested in getting into the Guinness Book of World Records by pulling locomotives with my teeth.

Together we pieced together the puzzle. In the depths of slumber, I was releasing all the stress of my home-schooling days and book-writing nights by clenching my teeth. I knew sometimes my jaw hurt when I woke up, but never imagined I was biting down with such force that I could crack a tooth. The remedy was a crown, excellently executed by my most wonderful new dentist, and something called an occlusal guard, a beastly hard, plastic device that fit over my top teeth and absorbed the force of my clenching. Unfortunately my tenure with the guard was short-lived. I received it in a liquid-filled plastic bag and was instructed to keep it hydrated at all times. If I didn’t it would wither like a Shrinky Dink or my old retainer that Tom cooked one Christmas with a batch of crescent rolls—don’t even ask. This was simple to do while it was in my mouth by night, but nearly impossible to achieve by day. I tried using a retainer case flipped upside down, but it leaked and sometimes mildew would grow on the device. Yuck! I substituted Listerine for water in an effort to stave off the mold, but this only left me with a blue puddle on the counter instead of a clear one. I began to slack on wearing the thing, convincing myself that I was over the clenching. The book I was writing was done, the kids had gone back to school for a year, and life was simpler. Soon the occlusal guard was half its original size and any possibility of wearing it again evaporated. (Erik…if you’re reading this, sorry.)

This spring I got another crack-induced crown and last night I think I clenched harder than I ever have before. Delusions of unbooked campervan reservations, yet-to-be-purchased travel underwear for the little kids, and forgetting some critical gadget or document at home danced through my mind. We leave in 11 days and there are still about 487 things left for us to do before we board that first plane. Clench.

All of this got me thinking, why not put my stress to good use. People run, walk, swim, and jump rope to raise money for worthy causes, why shouldn’t I stage a “Grind Your Teeth for World Peace” campaign? I and people like me could solicit pledges for each hour of clenching and before you know it, we might have enough to fund a global, grass-roots peace initiative. Just an idea…

I don’t have any pictures of the occlusal guard or my teeth, but here’s a picture of a parrot (who is still alive at the Hogle Zoo).

Technorati Tags: Clenching, Dentistry, Occlusal guards, Round the World, Round-the-world, RTW, Tooth grinding