back in the OC empire

Im back in my OC empire…sleeping on the floor in my shared 350 sq ft mansion (with A GREAT view). We did a cram session of info today, talked with the soccer shots franshising owners about some stuff…fingers crossed that they catch our vision and get behind us.

our spring season we only had 23 kids in our program, we believe that we already have about 150 kids enrolled for this fall (thats an estimate but it could be more or less..we dont know until the season starts). Thats a pretty good growth rate. We have lots of work to do, but for the first time in my life…i dont dread my job. I really enjoy what im doing…now if only we can build up our company and make some money at it.

cross your fingers for us my loyal readers……reader…….hi amanda (my wife).

PS. next week is “scary time” (we give our weeks names…like POWER WEEK and stuff like that)..next week is the first time that i am the only partner here working the phones, running “demo days”…etc. I have the Least experience so its a little intimidating. even my toes are crossed now.

what am I leaving behind.

I am leaving behind a lot of hard work…but, I cant help but feel that I wasted my time. I know that in hindsight…40 yrs from now, I will have a very clear picture of all the great things I got out of the last three years of my work life…but right now it looks a bit hazy.

Let me break it down for you. I bought a house, good investment. Then I took my spare money and invested it in building a rental suite in the basement, good investment. I also had spent a couple thousand dollars when they were pouring the basement so that they would add a separate entrance to the basement, good investment. Then everyday after work I sat in the basement watching YouTube videos on how to- tile a bathroom, install linoleum flooring, install a kitchent, hang doors, install laminate flooring, install shelves etc…, good investment. I bought my dad a plane ticket to fly up and help me work on the project, good investment. I put all my spare money into increasing the value of my house while my friends were buying new quads and campers with their extra cash, good investment. The problem was that when the markets crashed it meant that after all my work, my  house was now worth an estimated 20,000 dollars LESS than what I had into it. Pretty cool, basically the lesson learned is that a good investment opportunity is just that, an opportunity..not a guarantee.

During this time I was putting in 3 years towards getting my CGSB lvl 2 tickets. That certified me to work with Radiation, inspecting welds and castings (with the opportunity to work on inspecting airplanes as well). My boss felt that it was best for me to own my own tickets. I dont totally agree with him, at least as far as how he defined the process of getting to that point. If my name is on the ticket and I did the work, then I would in every sense of the word “own my own tickets”. You are the bottom end of the totem pole, making the Least amount of money in the industry, yet you have to come up with $10,000 to pay for your tickets. When I was in my courses, all of my fellow students….every single one of them, had their courses paid for. Most of them also had their hotels and food paid for. Some of them were paid an hourly wage to be in the program, since they were employed and it was part of their training. So it seems that most (All) of the industry would agree with me, but that’s besides the point.

I was working towards Franchising. There is a 90% dropout/failure rate in this program. In November 2008 I finally recieved all the tickets necessary to start up your own business and franchise under a large companies License number (Way too expensive and difficult to get approved by the Government to have your own Radiation License, and the liability is THROUGH the roof!). The deal was that I would work for 2,000 hrs for the guy who got me into the program, and then I would cut loose on my own.  16 days after recieving my tickets, I started to have some pretty severe physical symptoms.  Then I spent an entire winter on call, 24 hours a day…7 days a week.  And I BARELY got any work. So the bills got harder to pay, and i spent more and more time in the doctors office. I had most of my blood taken out of my body, one little innocent looking tube at a time.  On May 9th I was finally told that I would no longer be able to work at my job in canada. bummer.

Then my boss put his hand through a table-saw. So he really needed me to stay and cover all his work for him or he would lose the few contracts that he did have. The problem was that there was no work available.  So I stayed on, committed full-time. I skipped a lot of family stuff and just stayed in a small town. Only I didnt get any calls, just like i told him that there was no work in my area all winter (he didnt believe me) there was also no work during the summer. I paid all my bills with a Mastercard, and used up the equity that I had access to in my home (the bank thinks its worth more than it is). Then when I told my boss that I had to leave in July he got really upset. He told me that my character was a disappointment, because i hadnt stayed on to work the full 2000 hours that I had told him I would work prior to branching out on my own. hmm…someday i might write him a letter.

SO..i left a job that paid me $30 an hour reg, $45 an hour OT…only it actually worked out to more because I got paid a minimum of 4 hours for every call out. When its working at a fulltime rate you end up getting paid about 16hrs worth of work for about 11 hours of actual work. Also, anything after 3pm is considered an OT hour. Once i franchised though, that hourly rate was triple digits..not a bad payout.

Now i have nothing to show for all that, living on the floor in California, sharing 400 sq feet with two guys. My wife and 4 month old boy are living in canada while we wait for their paperwork to come through for them to immigrate to the States (looks like it could be up to 10 months). And i am starting up a business from scratch. awesome. (its called Soccer Shots..look us up at soccershots.org Orange County)

Why move?

well, i was minding my own business when my circulatory system let me down.

I never really got nervous doing presentations in class…or going on dates…or asking a girl to marry me 4 months after i met her, so you would think that i would not be a likely candidate to suffer from chronic ‘cold feet’.  I have a circulatory disease. Not that big a deal. The symptoms are easily controllable, all you have to do is avoid cold weather and emotional stress and then you feel like you are on top of the world. Unfortunately I was working in a job that required me to be consistently exposed to -40 temperatures….problem. And the economy was crashing around me..oil and natural gas prices were plummeting, which was directly affecting my job…I was on call 24 hours a day..every day. Problem was that from May 9th until July 25th I was only called out for 34hrs…hard to pay the bills,…emotionally stressful…sooo, problem.

Off to california. With virtually no money. My wife and kid dont have paperwork to come to the US, so I live here by myself. Well….not totally true, i live on the floor of a 400 sq foot studio…with three people (one of them snores like a revving engine)

Hard Tests..Radiography Level II

Basically i am challenging 2 years worth of training, hours and testing by cramming everything in at once and then taking a rediculously hard test. The exam that I took and then recently got my marks back on (after an Excruciating 3 week wait) had a 90% failure rate…yeeaaaaaah. thats a 10% pass rate….that means that only, on average, 10 out of every 100 times the test is taken, is it passed.

I was pretty shaky on how i felt about it…pretty shaky. I worked So hard..i have been studying cue cards and taking practice tests and memorizing definitions and math equations since the beginning of January. I got into the exam and i was like “oh crap”. The test was SO hard, the questions were SO confusing, and there were math questions with equations that i had Never even heard of before..and i have memorized Tons of equations.

I phoned the guy up in Ottowa…he checked his computer, and told me “Mr. Barkey, you have successfully passed all three parts of the Written Examination, congratulations”

I couldnt believe it, i was so overwhelmed and relieved and surprised that it quickly became a moment that i wont forget, characterized by a sweeping blanket of intense emotions. I was so released from stress that it just flooded out of me in waves of excitement! I have worked so hard, and been blessed by so much prayer support that i am just extremely grateful to have this part of the certification process behind me and now i prepare for the last step, the Practical Exam.

It is a 2 days exam and I get three attempts at the Practical Exam. Since i have no material to study, i am planning on going into the first exam with the mindset of learning as much as i can in the first go around…and hopefully passing as many of the 7 parts as possible. Im pretty nervous about it. the exam is mid august..and because they are SO backed up, i cant rewrite until the end of October…STRESScase!

math test

its super fun writing a math test after ZERO hours of sleep. My reasoning and deduction skills were a bit slow..but I managed to get a 14 out of 15 so im happy about that. It wasn’t actually too difficult of a test..we were taught way more than we were tested on, so that was nice.

the foot thing…fun times. Just like last time, after sitting in the hospital for 7 hours..my symptoms dissappated and by the time a doctor came around to check on me, they were gone..just like last time. So he said “i have no idea…but it seems to have fixed itself”. This wouldn’t be a big deal except for the fact that absolutly nothing brought it on (I was laying in bed) and that 2 yrs and 4 months ago the exact same thing happened while i was sitting on a couch and got worse while washing some dishes. The clinic doctor said he had no idea and then sent me to a hospital where the symptoms dissappeared before i saw a doctor. So so far only the walk in clinic doctor has seen anything. The symptoms are similar to a blood clot, except that it doesnt progress into a deep vein thing..and they are similar to gout except its on the wrong part of my foot (top, outside part…instead of running up from big toe)

so after a sleepless night in the hospital i got no answers..but at least i was  a little better prepared for my math test than the doctors were for my foot.

wow, it hurts.

It is 3:30 AM and i think i am having my second Gout attack. I went to bed at 11 PM with zero pain in my foot…but as i started to drift off the pain got worse and worse. Right now it is a throbbing pain that is almost impossible to walk on, and its progressively getting worse.

I had this happen once before. I went to a medical clinic..then got sent to the hospital..and by the time Canada’s wonderful health care system decided to see my the symptoms had dissappeared as quickly as they came. So here i sit…counting down the hours until i have to be at an extremely hard course in the morning…probably on zero hours of sleep. To make matters worse i cant drink coffee because it says that it might make it worse.

awesome. ever wonder at God’s timing?

im not too stressed because this has happened once before, about 2 years ago..and even though it technically went undiagnosed that time…im pretty sure its the same thing right now. crazy painful. no chance of sleeping. can’t really walk. pray for mental energy tomorrow..and an easier day so that i can absorb more info. i have my Math Test today (friday morning)..this should be interesting.

 

my big scary Radiography course

well today i started my Level II Radiography course..my last stage of training. So far i have been fortunate and i have done well on the courses…but the other courses didnt boast a 90% failure rate. They changed the grading scale less than a year ago..and since that time the failure rate has risen by 230%…i know…seems a little crazy.

Today was easy..but thats cause it was all review…tomorrow is some more math fun..then on Friday morning i have my First Test that i have to pass to get my math certification…should be a blast. Then i have four days of joy called Materials & Processing..then a test on that..probably on Tuesday morning, then i get another cute little certificate…then i have a couple weeks on Radiography…then i take a nice big test to get my last certificate.

Then comes the fun..the gov’t exams. I have to pass a written exam, and then a practical exam. The waiting period is typically 2-3 months to get in to take the practical exam. That is Way too long. Its so easy to forget things between now and then…so i would appreciate prayer that not only do i pass the course certificate exams, but also that somehow i would find my way into a practical exam in the near future..and then capitalize on it.

thanks for thoughts and prayers.

a big day for me.

My favorite soccer player is David Beckham. I have followed his career starting on the roster for Manchester United..followed by his transfer to Real Madrid of Spain and finally his move to the LA Galaxy. He has faced so much adversity throughout his career and he has maintained a calm cool that is to be envied. Because of his massive star power it seems that whenever a new coach comes into the organization he is playing for they use him as a pawn to set an example. They bench one of the greatest place kickers of all time. Twice in his career his managers have gone so far as to say that he will never play for their squad again, and twice they have had to swallow their shorts an beg him back onto the roster.  He isnt a flashy player with brilliant speed. He doesnt shoot his mouth off and proclaim his greatness to anyone who will hear. He is a quiet footballer who has developed himself into an icon for his sport. He is the greatest sports icon of all time. I am not saying that he is the greatest athlete of all time, or even his sport. He is however the most widely recognized personality in the history of sport.

Tomorrow, for the first time in my life, I get to watch him play an exhibition game in Edmonton. I Am Pumped. I am going to enjoy Every Second of the game.

Losing a baby.

What a ridiculous term. Lose. We didn’t lose anything. Why do we minimalize the grieving process by putting Disney names to it? “Oh,..she passed”. No, passing is what you do when you are stuck behind a 94 year old sunday driver in no hurry to get home to watch the football game. Died. Dead. If we are so afraid of saying the word ‘Death’, then why don’t we just say it how it is?…I had something special in my life, now it is gone and there is a big gaping hole where that something used to be, and even though I am tough and strong I cry like a kid sometimes just remembering what used to be.

I thought that words like death were supposed to sum all that up in a shorter effort so that in the midst of grieving you could say what happened without have to sob through a big long paragraph description, but now apparently death just means that we lost something.

Fetuses die. Just because its supposedly a common thing doesn’t mean that its easier for me. ‘They’ say that one in four fetuses self abort for a vastly varied number of reasons. I guess that later on it can potentially be comforting to know that you aren’t the only one going through something, but at the time it sucks..and just because it happened to someone else doesn’t mean it sucks less this time.

“It gets easier”…no..it doesn’t. We decided not to tell anyone this time. Why go through what we went through last time. Last time we did everything right. We bought all the right books, we started kicking around great baby names and we started thinking about ways to baby proof our very ‘non baby ready’ home. We did it all right and it all turned out wrong.

This time we took the test, then took it again, and then one more time just to be sure. Success. It was time to start moving forward again. No more dealing with feelings of being stuck in the mud with the world passing me by. After a very brief talk we agreed not to tell anyone. We wanted to wait until we were sure we were safe this time…we could wait until the sixth month right? So what if people thought Amanda was ‘filling out’ a bit. At least with no one knowing, we could control the excitement. We had no one to disappoint but ourselves this time.

I was working out of town when I got the phone call last week. “Its happening again”. No need to elaborate. When you have gone through it once, you just know when its happening again. It didn’t take long to realize that we needed friends around and that it was important to have family know what was going on. We really appreciate people praying for us and asking how we are doing. We had some good friends over this weekend who miscarried only a couple weeks ago, she said that nobody can ever really understand how to tell you that they are sorry for what you are going through unless you can see the same pain in their eyes. I agree, but I also appreciate it when people try their best to show that they are my friends and that they support us because you don’t always have to understand in order offer comfort and support.

Its with a heavy heart that I end this post. I feel that even though its understandable to try to stifle your excitement the second time around because you understand the possibilities of what could go wrong, its unfair to withhold any emotional attachment because of negative things that could happen. If you live your life wound up tight, worrying about what might go wrong, I think it will always be a struggle to fully enjoy things when they do go right. So I am glad that even though I tried my best to suppress my emotional attachment, when I sat on a log crying last week I was relieved to discover that I was already in love with another lost child. When we start withholding love in order to protect ourselves, we actually end up robbing ourselves as well as others of so much potential joy. Thanks to everyone who supported us last time, and we really do appreciate the encouraging support that we are receiving this time.  Its hard, but it helps make me more and more appreciative of the things I do have.

We washed an extra plate because Daniel came and ate.

Busy.

We always get so busy. “Stuff” always takes up so much of our time that significant opportunities unfortunately get missed weekly, daily, hourly. Today was not going to be one of those days. We had a lot of cleaning up to do today. Eric came over and helped me break down cardboard boxes that we had hung onto after moving. Then it was sweeping and mopping time. After that came the dishwasher…the list went on. Amanda came home from work exhausted, and started cooking right away. We had a big dinner on the go.

There were seven people coming over tonight. Daniel, though he didnt know it, was definitely the guest of honor. I love college students. They are poor and they are extremely grateful for minor things like a good home cooked meal..its so easy to keep them happy. What were our ‘regulars’ going to do when they met Daniel..how were we going to make sure he felt welcome and important to us? It can be hard when one guest is a 3 generation gap older than everyone else.

Daniel showed up with a bucket of ‘strawberries and cream’ icecream.

He was a little bit nervous, and a lotta bit excited. Everyone was really friendly, they introduced themselves just like mom had taught them to do. He was cold so he asked if he could keep his coat on. He apologized when he shook our hands, he said it was hard to keep his hands warm. Next time i’ll turn up the heat a bit more ahead of time, this time I just cranked up the fireplace. The regulars asked good questions to get him talking, he relaxed and laughed a few times. He told us that he was feeling old telling stories about things that happened to him in his life before any of us were even born. Then he laughed again.

He had perfect manners. He sat there and waited until the hostess had been served and had started eating before he took a bite. His eyes were huge as he eyed dinner excitedly. Then he dug in. He explained to the regulars how happy he was that he was eating food like this, with company like this. He told the same stories a couple times, it was awesome. The regulars listened eagerly whenever he repeated himself. We decided to go around the room and tell a bit about ourselves. I told Jeff that if he talked too long, i would gong him by hitting my spoon on my glass. Everyone took a turn and Daniel listened carefully. He was learning about his new friends. I noticed that he remembered names throughout the evening. Impressive. When we got to Amanda she said that I should talk about her as if i was amanda, and she would tell about me as if she was Jo-Ben. I said about three words and then Jeff gonged me with his spoon, it was pretty funny. We had some good laughs as I pretended I was amanda and mentioned several times about how lucky “i” was to meet the perfect man of my dreams.

When it came time for dessert he got really excited again. I had to tell him not to wait for Amanda to start eating because his icecream was starting to melt. Amanda made a delicious banana dessert. Daniel told her so several times. I accidentally made an extra plate of dessert…Daniel laughed pretty hard when Eric asked me why I had two plates in front of me. I hadn’t noticed. I told him that one was for the spoon in my left hand. Then i picked up amanda’s spoon and said that the other was for the spoon in my right hand. Daniel grinned from ear to ear.

After dinner we played Farkle. Its a great dice game based almost entirely on Luck. We played for about an hour, I was a very ungracious host and accidentally won. We had a lot of laughs….a lot of laughs. Daniel told us about his kids and grandkids. He talked a little bit about battling cancer, and mentioned people by name who were kind to him when he was sick. He says sometimes he doesn’t feel well and has to miss out on things. He told us that he is a dreamer, and so what if he doesn’t always accomplish his dreams…at least he dreamed. He has a tandem bicycle sitting under his deck.. He put it there so that it would be protected from the elements until he got the chance to do some maintenance on it. Its been there, untouched, for five years now. Daniel had a good laugh. He told us that he had a Masters in Business and that he was an engineering consultant. He said that he had a pilots license and that he had won several awards in engineering. It made him happy that people wanted to hear about his accomplishments in life. He told us about mistakes he has made, and his relatively recent conversion to a Faith in Christ. He told us that strict churches were made for guys like him who needed structure…its funny hearing that from an older dude. He told us that we were still young with our whole lives ahead of us. He told us that we could do anything we wanted. He repeated that our whole lives were in front of us.

He said he had to get going. He had been smiling for most of the evening, his cheeks were probably sore. We all walked him to the door. He put his shoes on and stood there facing all of us. He thanked us for walking up to him and inviting him in the hospital. I told him that he hadn’t had a bbq on our deck yet so he was going to have to come back if he was willing to spend another evening with us. He said he had so much fun. He said goodbye to amanda and asked her to please invite him again. He was such a cute old dude. He waved goodbye and said again to please have him back, he had so much fun with us.

Daniel blessed us tonight and I almost didn’t bother to mow the lawn, again. I wonder how big of a blessing I passed up the last time I disobeyed and didn’t answer the call to mow the lawn. Not this time, this time we washed an extra plate because Daniel came and ate.