I apologize for my long absence from here. I spent from December 8 to January 9 working on five proposals over at the aerospace company I retired from in 2010. I’ve done a few gigs there before, but this one was especially grueling such that it gave me little time for myself, let alone to pursue any of my usual writing and reading projects.
My new memoir sat dormant, my reading was almost nil – though I finally finished Toni Morrison’s Sula in the first week of January. It literally took me over four weeks to read about one hundred and fifty pages. Also, I didn’t write any poetry or my favorite small stones (little two-three line observations). And, needless to say, my review of my friend’s six hundred page book stopped cold in its tracks. Even my daily gym workouts had to be curtailed.
Though I thought I’d start right up again this past Friday – my first day off – I could barely keep my eyes open to do anything. All I wanted to do all day was sleep, and so I did. I also slept over nine hours Friday night – something I haven’t done in my recent or past memory. I’m usually a six-hour a night sleeper.
So today is really my first day back to normal. I got up at six thirty, went to the gym, did my cardio, and took a Pilates class. And now here I am, writing my first blog post since December 29. And I’m happy to say I’m glad to be back. I promise I’ll write more regularly here in the future.
You might be wondering what I did during that month-long work assignment. It was the stuff I did while I was a full-time employee. I helped engineers write proposals to attain government contracts worth in the millions of dollars. The most important aspect of that job in my mind is making sure what they propose follows the government requirements – called a Request for Proposal (RFP) – exactly. And when I came onboard I could tell almost immediately I needed to persuade them to do that. And in some cases it became a battle almost until the end.
Another thing I did was read and edit everything. And then I had to work with our Publications experts to get the proposals ready for delivery. So it was a beginning to end process: managing the development of graphics, the text writing, the editing, the production, and the delivery. At the end of December we delivered one proposal. Last Thursday we delivered four – all electronically. And when our delivery program showed the last one was delivered successfully we all applauded. With that I put all my personal stuff in a bag and left the building – not looking back.
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