You must walk away from the past before you open door to the future

By David McElroy · May 31, 2018

I quit one of my jobs today.

It’s really more accurate to say that I made official what I had already planned to do. I let people in my department know that I’ll be gone at the end of June. I introduced them to the guy I’m recommending to take my place. So now it’s official. I’ll be gone from here in a month.

When a long-time friend — who was the chair of the computer science department — called to offer me this job almost five years ago, I first turned it down. I’m ashamed to say that it felt beneath me to work part-time for a college overseeing computer labs and helping students with their problems.

But I was broke and desperate. I hadn’t figured out how to transition from my previous days as a political consultant. I was looking for a big opportunity, but none had come my way.

I’m grateful now for a small opportunity that offered me a lifeline while I needed it.

Honestly, it was the easiest job I’ve ever had, but I was well-paid for a part-time job.

It could be frustrating at times in the beginning. Two of the four labs I oversaw had aging Dell computers that required constant troubleshooting and repair. I quickly became an expert at replacing power supplies, fixing dead fans and swapping out misbehaving hard drives.

Things got easier as all the labs were slowly upgraded with newer equipment. Then it got even easier after one of the labs was converted to iMacs last year. (I can work on Windows PCs, but I strongly prefer Macs — just as I can eat bologna but prefer filet mignon.)

When I took the job, I was pretty sure I’d be there only a few months until I found something better. But the path to something better has been a long time in coming. I’m still not where I need to be, but I’m slowly getting there.

When I leave for the last time in a month, I’m going to miss some people here. I’ve had some wonderful co-workers, but I think I’ll miss the students the most. Not all of them, of course, but I’ve run across some amazing people — including the guy who I’m pretty sure will take my place. (He’s actually more technically qualified than I am and he has a better attitude about helping ignorant people, so I figure it won’t be long before the department is grateful that I quit.)

But my focus is on the future. I’ve been working at a real estate company — doing operations and marketing — for about 18 months and then I got my own real estate license six months ago. I’ll be working in real estate full-time for the time being, but I still expect that to be a stepping stone to something else.

I didn’t want to take this job when it was offered. I also didn’t want to add the real estate job when it was offered. I further resisted the idea of getting my real estate license for about a year.

I’m not good at things that I don’t want to do, but I know I have to keep moving forward — taking opportunities — in order to get back to where I once was financially. If I stay with real estate for long, I’m confident that it will make me wealthy. If I find the right other opportunity, though, I’ll make myself wealthy in a way more consistent with my personality and natural skills. I have an intense need to create art, but I have to get paid well.

When I started this job, I couldn’t wait to get away from it. Now, I’m mostly thankful for the stability it provided me when I was desperate not so long ago.

It’s time to walk away from this place, because there are other things to do and other places to go. I’m excited about the future, but I’ll always be thankful for my time in HSB 450.

This place has been good to me, but it’s time to move on.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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