The scales have now been tipped.
As you know, I've been doing this job
for a long time now. A long, long time. But today marks a turning
point in that long, long time. I'm probably the only one who would
even think to mark it; after all, I'm sure a normal person wouldn't
even notice. But it's something that made me sit down & do math
to mark the occasion, so mark it I shall.
When I walk in the door to go to work
today, I will have worked one day longer in Marquette than I did in
Ishpeming.
Let me explain—when I started doing
this job way back last century (1988, to be specific), the studios
were located in Ishpeming. I would have to drive up once (or twice)
a day to go to work, and to take care of whatever issues needed
taking care of. The studios were in a dusty warehouse of a building,
a building where the only view was of a cemetery or a parking lot, a
building where the air conditioning didn't work well during the
summer and the heating didn't work well in winter. Computers would
break down because of the dust, heat, or cold, and things were
starting to get untenable. Our fearless leader at the time, Joe
Blake, decided we needed to move to place where both the computers
and the people would be happy, and the day before Thanksgiving, 2002,
we finished a big project and started broadcasting from here in
downtown Marquette, a moment I marked by playing U2's “Beautiful
Day” as the first song from our new place.
And yes, I did it on purpose.
Late last year, I started wonder how
long I had worked in Ishpeming, and realized that I was coming up on
pretty much the same length of time as I've worked here in Marquette.
So I sat down, did the math, and realized that today is the day the
scales tip. After today, I can now say that I've worked longer in
Marquette that I did in Ishpeming. And those 14 years, two months,
and a couple of weeks have been a blast; our location here in the
middle of everything has allowed us to do all kinds of fun broadcast
events (everything from New Year's Eve Ball Drops to cooking S'mores
& grilled cheese sandwiches on a 95 degree sidewalk). It's also
made our computer equipment happy; instead of replacing parts or
machines every few months, we've gone over a decade using mostly the
same equipment. And on those rare occasions when things do break, I
can walk three blocks to fix whatever needs fixing, as opposed to
having to get into a car, clean it off if it's winter, and spending
20 minutes getting to where I need to go
In fact, I did one other piece of math.
By walking seven minutes to work & back every day, instead of
spending 45 minutes driving, I've been given an extra two thousand
hours back in my life that I didn't have to spend commuting. That's
over 90 days of my life not spent in a car, and instead spent in the
fresh air.
That might be the best thing about this
whole day.
So, like I said, today's kind of an
important day. I mean, it's important to no one but me, but
still...it's a turning point. From here on in, the scale starts
tipping the other way.
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