Short Story - A Second Chance - Grant Eagar
I'm 63 years old and I have done a lot of stupid things. There are manythings I wish I had a second chance to repeat. This is one chance I was givento have a do-over.
It was the winter of 2010; I was finally let go at Boeing in Salt LakeCity Utah. I had contracted there for three years. For a contractor, it was agood run. I started putting out resumes and got an offer to go work at Boeingin Philadelphia. There were local jobs at Hill Air Force Base that would take afew months and did not pay as well so I passed them up for a well-paying jobout of state. I thought this would only be for a few months and I would find ajob back in Utah.
We were heavily in debt and felt like we did not have a choice. I ended upspending the better part of the next six years working away from home. Thereason I did not bring the family with me was that we wanted to have stabilityand allow the kids to graduate from high school. We finally tried to sell ourhome and it would not sell. It was all well-meaning. The irony is that we endedup going bankrupt anyway so all the sacrifices were a waste.
Looking back, I have kicked myself a hundred times. You either live by faithor you live by credit cards. I also felt I should have faced the situation withfaith and either taken the family with me or stayed in Utah and found somethinglocal, even if it took a few months. Like they say hindsight istwenty-twenty.
Fast forward to 2024, I've been laid off again. This is a chance to finallydo it right. I hold my wife's hand when we pray and our prayer is that I canstay with the family and either find a job here in Las Cruces or be able towork remotely. Being unemployed is super stressful so at first, I was willingto take whatever I could get, but I remembered my promise to myself and when Iprayed I felt the assurance this would happen. I quickly got a job offer out oftown which made us feel much better, but I wondered if the impression I got wasreal.
I decided to wait and after a month I got a job as a contractor workingremotely for the company that had laid me off. I've found that for many of thethings I wanted to redo, I ended up getting another chance.
Unfortunately, sometimesI still make the same mistakes again. 😉
