Immigration Anniversary

A year ago next Saturday I was just arriving in Montana to look for work.

Much has changed.

Thursday I switched out of the truck I'd been running in as a contract pumper, which I had gotten brand new and had only put about 25,000 miles on, and I switched into another new truck as an employee of one of the world's largest energy companies.

They pay for all the fuel, insurance, and maintenance.

I have a company cell phone and laptop for business purposes, as well as a company credit card for travel and procurement expenses.

They give me great training, including computer-based courses I can take from home, not only helping me to be more productive in the present, but also preparing me for a very profitable future at their company, or anywhere else in the oil and gas industry for that matter; and they pay me for my time!

What's more, I enjoy my work! There's enough variety to avoid boredom - it isn't constant physical labor, nor constant talking, nor is it constant sitting at a desk or in a driver's seat.

I don't feel dehumanized, as if I'm just an extension of a piece of machinery, as I did at that factory I worked in for 9 months. I don't feel as though I'm being pressured to lie and defraud, as I did at another workplace of mine in Ohio.

We're on our way out of debt, with all our credit cards paid off, and also one of our auto loans. My wife is now back in Ohio for her first visit since moving out here with the boys back in June, in part to drive that car we've just paid off to my dad so I can sell it to him as part of a repayment for years of relying on his generosity to stay afloat.

 We aren't wealthy (by American standards, anyhow), but when I compare my income now to the best of jobs back in Ohio, when I worked harder than this and yet couldn't pull us above the poverty line, I'm so relieved to be earning a decent wage that allows us to buy the necessities without worry.

Now I'm saving for our first home, hopeful we'll be able to either buy one outright, or else purchase some land and have a modular brought in. My company wants me to move to Sidney to be closer to my route and the office, exciting in part because it tells me they want to rely on me more, and/or they're concerned for my safety with the amount of driving I do now.

In any case, housing is still the biggest hurdle. There's a scarcity of rental options, and what is available is very highly priced and has been spoken for by the time you call. Homes for sale are more plentiful, but we're still trying to climb out of the financial hole after years of scraping by. I'm hoping to save up for a down payment within 6-9 months time and have us moved before next February.

In conclusion, the point isn't to brag, but rather to excitedly explain what's possible. I've grown so tired and depressed of the economic and political doom and gloom I hear in the news. Sometimes I wonder if anything truly good can or does happen in this world. Surely I'm not the only one who feels that way. To some extent, I like telling my story because it reminds me of hope.

Elsewise, I like the thought that my encouraging story will give hope to someone else; if they have hope they will persevere.

Reliability and Reputation

I worry a lot - too much, in fact.

...about what people think...

...about whether I'll conquer the world some day...

...about whether I'm brilliant or original in any way...

...about how my sons will turn out...

Why do I worry? Do I think that somehow the only way to motivate myself to excel or succeed, perhaps even survive in life, is to make myself afraid?

I am imperfect. Am I trying to prove otherwise? What am I so afraid of in being imperfect, rejection?

The terrible thing is that all this insecurity might actually end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, more thwarting than ensuring my success. If I'm always nervous and distracted by the thought of failure, I'll not have sufficient focus left for succeeding.

But then maybe I should probe deeper into how I define success. What am I striving for? What would it take for me to consider myself successful?

I don't know when it started exactly, but I have a suspicion. I started working for a prominent logistics company in Cincinnati, Ohio and was being told I too could work really hard and make a six-figure income. It wasn't long before I adopted that dream as my own, and I worry that since then I've held it up in my thoughts as a sort of idolatrous mirage. When did my life become all about making money? It can't be!

But wait. Am I saying that making money is bad? No. But putting it at the center of your self-concept is, and so is seeing your whole life revolve around the attainment of that goal.

The same goes for people-pleasing.

Why have I gotten so wrapped up in trying to impress everyone anyhow? Maybe as a means to the end of someday making a lot of money, I'm not sure. Or do I want to make a lot of money to impress people because that's really my highest goal?

I used to enjoy writing and singing and taking pictures and being funny and thinking grand philosophical, theological, political opinionated thoughts, and voicing them, and debating with people. Not so many years ago, I used to really enjoy those things. I can't seem to do any of them anymore, or even consider doing them, without first asking myself what people will think.

Do I even enjoy my children anymore? I know I do sometimes, but how often am I just simply missing out on relishing the privilege I have to be their father right now? Too often, and all because I've become preoccupied with worrying about whether people approve of the age at which I started having these sons, or whether they approve of how close in age my sons are to one another, or whether they agree that we should have this many, or whether they think my children are well-behaved.

It's insane.

"The fear of man is a snare,

But he who trusts in Yahweh is safe." 

 So what gives, Garrett? Why are you afraid of people? Why don't you trust God anymore?

I think that's what it comes down to.

Well, for one, the stakes have never been higher for me. I didn't want to fail as a father when I only had one son, but now I have four!

We recently moved over 1,400 miles for the employment and career opportunities which are uniquely available in abundance here in eastern Montana and western North Dakota, due to the Bakken oil and gas formation. Sometimes I feel like the eyes of everyone who knows me or has heard of me are on me and that my rise or fall will be subject to an audience of hundreds.

So what if it is, though? Yes, that possibility plucks my heart strings on two notes - that of people pleasing and also of wealth chasing. But maybe I don't need to care so much. Maybe I can choose to care less.

My cousin posited the statistic about funerals to me that, on average, only five people will cry at your funeral. In other words, only five people are going to care enough that you died some day to even shed a tear. So if the vast majority of people I meet are going to care that little about my life when it ends, why should I burden myself too much with what they think of me while I'm alive?

Maybe I won't end up a phenomenal success right where I'm at now. Maybe I'll never conquer the world. Maybe this is as good as it ever gets. So what? I don't think that's true, but so what if it is? I shouldn't stop enjoying the life God has given me right now and be miserable just because it's not quite what I expected.

If I'm patient and work hard and try to do a good, thorough job, remain honest and decent and faithful with what's been entrusted to me so far, I will make progress and move forward, whether slowly or quickly.

"God willing, we will live and do this or that."

Career and Purpose

I'm coming up on six months at my current job as an MSO - Multi-Skilled Operator, a.k.a. "pumper" for a major oil and gas company in the Bakken. I'm still wearing a green hard hat, what I've been told is a pretty common signifier industry-wide that you're a new guy, and that everyone else needs to look out for you and not assume you know how to do your job. Once I've hit six months they'll give me a white hard hat. I think that'll make me feel more established, more secure.

I've recently been switched into a new pickup, and I mean brand new. The odometer read 400-some miles when I jumped in; I add more than that in two days of running my eastern Montana route. The new pickup helps me feel more secure too, I'm not going to lie. Plus there's no getting over the satisfaction of jumping in each morning and enjoying that "new car smell". It's really a treat.

The pay is very good, at least for me. I'm making more money per year than either my dad or my wife's, more money than any of my brother-in-laws, probably more than most of my friends, and certainly more than I've ever made. Our bills are being paid each month, even when that includes more expensive grocery trips, $750 a month for rent, and catching up on bills we'd fallen behind on before we left Ohio.

And that's just the thing. My future still feels so insecure. The life of poverty is still so close in memory as to make me feel that it would be very easy to get back there, or to feel as though we've not yet left that life. And with every uncertainty at work, any mistake I make or opportunity that I worry I've missed, fear and anxiety grip my heart.

My young, impatient, probably foolish heart fluctuates between fear that I won't progress in my career and wealth-building quick enough, and dread that complete ruin lurks around every corner and could pounce on me at any moment.

I have so many dreams, so many hopes and aspirations.

For instance, I want to travel around the world with my family - to live in foreign countries and have my sons visit foreign museums, learn other languages and cultures, get an education they couldn't from only reading books. When they graduate high school, I want to take each one of my boys individually on a long trip (somewhere between a week and a month) to a foreign country of their choice.

I want to buy each of my sons their own small starter home as a wedding present, in case they want to marry young.

I want to design and build my own home, some uber-clever subterranean high efficiency home, and I want to run a bison ranch.

Not to mention I'd like to be able to write more seriously; I've always told myself that'll have to wait until I become independently successful since writers, as I understand, either do very well or starve.

But all of this takes money, and my net worth is something like -$80,000.

Living in the moment is difficult lately. When I do catch myself enjoying where I am, who I'm with, what I'm doing - I worry that my inattention to the future is going to put my wishlist in jeopardy. On the other hand, I worry that my lack of attention to the present, and, what's worse, my anxiety over the future, is going to serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy ensuring failure.

I read histories and biographies, I read the news and informative magazines - Wired, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and the like. My hope is that arming myself with useful information, committing to work hard, be honest and compassionate, and taking it one day at a time, I'll find myself where I should be, enjoying the life God intended for me to have.

The simple fact is that control isn't meant to be entirely ours as humans. We're not supposed to hold all the cards. If we did, how boring would that get?

Life isn't all about getting what we want because life isn't all about us.

Maybe I will lose my job tomorrow. What then? The world will keep spinning. But maybe I'll get a promotion, or a pay raise  It won't mean my life is any more worth living, or that I'm suddenly a better person, any more worthy in the eyes of God.

Perhaps underneath perverted human ambitions is a misguided certainty that we're supposed to be living to bring glory to God, that we show his greatness when we are great. But how tragic to, as Jesus phrased it, "gain the whole world and forfeit your soul."

More than any of those other items I mentioned, I want to come to the end of my days in this body with a calm peace, knowing I am right with my maker, that I did justice, loved mercy and walked humbly with my God.

Into the Void

There's something lonely about blogging, I think. It feels like I'm talking to myself.

Then again, I write as someone who's only dipped his toe into blogging from time to time. Perhaps something in my soul tells me I'm stranded on a desert island and need to send a message in a bottle.

But maybe there's more to blogging than I've considered. Maybe my perspective has been overly self absorbed.

What if there is good to be done in sharing ideas? What if I have questions, observations, doubts, assertions, etc. that someone out there could benefit from considering?

We live in a jaded, cynical, spin-filled world. It can be hard to see past that mountain of scoffing internal objections.

I recently finished listening to The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson (good read, by the way!). In it, Johnson talks about how the cholera epidemics in London in the mid 19th century required a dual perspective that was difficult to balance.

A microscopic understanding was needed to see an adversary, the Vibrio cholerae bacteria, that was smaller than the naked eye can perceive. A glass of water might look clean in a cursory glance, but a more intimate examination would reveal the tiny killer of thousands.

But a macro understanding of the waste management and water supply system was also needed, perhaps more urgently, in order to convince a skeptical public and scientific community that had come to believe firmly that cholera and other illness was spread by noxious smells in the air, what was known as the Miasma Theory. Without a larger perspective of how the current infrastructure of London was actually poisoning it's people, the status quo was going to keep leading to epidemics as bad or worse than those current and previous, since London was already the largest city in the world, in history, at the time, and was sitll growing.

So what does that have to do with my blogging or not? Well, here's what I'm wondering: What if the problems of our world are not just inevitable? What if fatalism has it wrong? What if there is some good that an individual can do, and what is needed is thoughtful, considerate persons willing to take an honest look at the situation and brainstorm in an open way for solutions.

Sure, such can be done privately, and I suppose it must be done at least privately, at least at first. But what good is it if considerations are only private when the fix is needed on a large scale, not just in my life?

Sure, it's great to see Vibrio cholerae in a microscope, but the benefit is limited if you can't zoom out and recognize how problems of infrastructure are spreading the little bug.

Just so, it's fine for me to examine problems on my own, mind my own business and tend to my private life using what conclusions I've drawn from my private ponderings. I'm not just living a private life, however. So even if I do mind my own business, what's going on in the greater outside world will eventually affect me.

Doesn't that mean that, to some extent, what goes on in the outside world is my business also? Don't I have some responsibility to engage with the problems of my day?

On Writing and Writing On

I love writing.

It used to be you could always find me with my nose in a book, magazine, perhaps even the occasional newspaper. I used to love reading too. I still like it, but...

Now I love writing.

Hopefully it doesn’t make me vain and conceited that I enjoy writing my own words better than reading what’s already been written. It certainly makes a little harder the task of going back over what I’ve already written, at least. No, I don’t even enjoy reading what I’ve written as much as I enjoy writing it. But maybe with regards the writing of other people I am a little arrogant in that I enjoy speaking more than I enjoy taking the time to listen. Yes, I worry that such is the case.

Nevertheless, I do love writing.

I first began learning to write well when I began to endeavor past what was required in school, beyond what was required to pass my classes.

My interest was piqued as I took to internet forums in junior high, debating with men much older and more educated than I. Not wanting to show my youth, or let on that I hadn’t known the definitions of all their terms before pulling up Dictionary.com or Wikipedia, I worked hard at the beginning to sharpen my skills in spelling, grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary. I soaked up like a sponge new words and new ways of expressing simple, common ideas. You might say I was eager to employee le mot juste, or “just the right word” as the French say, in every conversation.

And yes, that is to say that I first began to care about writing because I didn’t want to look foolish to debate opponents or on-lookers. Moreover, I wanted to win and prove myself the wiser and more able arguer. In hindsight it seems to have been rather proud of me to have been that way, maybe a little misguided, but those reasons seemed good enough at the time. And maybe they were sufficient to get me to where I am now.

But it wasn’t all debate either. I also spent a lot of time reading science fiction before college, and I think that helped a great deal. Among my favorites were Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, and various authors of Star Wars fiction. I swear my brother and I must have checked out and read every Star Wars book at our local public library. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy also became an instant favorite when I read it in high school, after I saw Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) in my freshman year.

My grandmother was always sending subscriptions for my little brother and I – National Geographic, Smithsonian, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Discover, Reader’s Digest. So we were always reading articles about what the latest and greatest discoveries and developments around the world were. Our bedroom and library walls were covered with maps pulled from National Geographic, and posters bought at the many zoos and museums my parents took us to. Daily we were reminded of how big the world outside was and could be.

In more recent years, as I made long work commutes, or when I held a data entry job for a year and a half that had me bound to a chair 6-8 hours a day, I listened to audio books. One title after another, I enjoyed histories and biographies, books on philosophy, politics, economics, culture, and how to manage myself well. As my hands and eyes focused on driving and typing where I was, my innermost being visited other times and places and imagined what else there is to know and do in this life.

My imagination is good now, or at least better than it would have been without these influences. I’m used to reading and greatly admiring authors who employ vivid imagery and weave a grand story out of the ideas their creative minds conjure, and also those who, basic facts in hand, use their personal perspective and opinions to speculate and highlight important persons and events from the past, present, and anticipated future.

Some part of me has always thought of writers as being on an elevated plane, myself in awe of their ability to convey excitement and enthusiasm about what’s going on outside my home, outside my town, outside my country, and even outside my time or this galaxy.

I watched Star Trek growing up, for instance – a lot of Star Trek. In fact, a main form of punishing me when I was a kid was threatening to take away my Next Generation privileges. Though I know we can’t yet (if we ever will be able to) beam people and objects across distant points like Mr. Scotty did, there’s something about what a good writer does that seems much similar to those transporters in Gene Roddenberry’s stories.

A good writer takes your heart, mind and soul to another place, though your body remains seated on your couch or lying in your bed. Reading a good writer allows you to see through someone else’s eyes and think their thoughts, even if only for a moment, to consider what you may have not known you didn’t know.

Good writers make life seem so much bigger, though objects and places distant suddenly feel much closer. Through reading a skillful author I realize and remember that those objects and places I may have once heard about do still exist, or may exist, and that it is possible to see them, since indeed the author has seen them, or he spoke with someone who saw them, or he at least hopes and wishes to see them. Sometimes just hoping to see them is enough too.

Good writers have contagious perspectives, I’ve found; by reading them I at least have hope that perhaps I will someday see what they have seen. You want to see what they see, be where they’ve been. And in some sense, if they’re able to write well, you get your wish, and you keep reading them to continue seeing through their eyes.

So perhaps it’s not all vanity after all that leads me to enjoy writing more than reading. Perhaps I enjoy writing because I feel that by writing well, or at least getting closer to writing well as I continue to practice the art, I become a better person.

A confession: I always imagined those authors I read to be better persons than I. So in writing I feel that I am growing and maturing, and hopefully giving others an opportunity to grow and mature. Perhaps through my craft they will see lands that, though close and familiar to me, have always seemed distant, even non-existent to them. Perhaps even if I am not ever a great writer I will trick someone else into thinking at least temporarily that I am, or that they may become one.

So I suppose I’ll go on in my love for writing. And hopefully others will love to read what I’ve written. And they’ll continue to write, and I’ll read what they’ve written.

Raising Myself First

Some people think we’re crazy. My wife and I, married five and a half years, have had four little boys in that time. The eldest will be turning 5 this summer; the youngest will be 1 year old next month. Oh, and I’m only 25, with another birthday myself not until the beginning of November.

As I say, some people think we’re crazy.

But that’s the thing of it. We’ve not just gone through pregnancies, births, feeding, diapering and transporting those four boys around. Yes, of course, we’ve gone through all those normal parts. But we’ve not just sat idly by as our boys have come into this world and grown. We’ve grown, had to grow, right alongside them.

As a father of four little boys, I hope earnestly my example will put them in good stead when they reach manhood, and also between now and then. Unfortunately, being human, I encounter facets of my personality from time to time which, as I’m honest with myself, it becomes apparent must be adjusted, removed, replaced or grown if I am to make good on my intention to lead my sons by good example.

Case in point: my wife and I recently were chatting about a decision I made some months or years ago, or a number of decisions I’ve made in life, in which I wonder now whether a wiser course of action was available as an alternative to what I chose. At the time, when I made these decisions, as I weighed my options, it seemed I could only go one way, that there was only one course which was wise and good and honest, and that the other options were cowardly compromises. Still I wrangled with self-doubt, wondering in hindsight if I could have avoided some discomfort going another way, or thinking longer on the matter, or asking for advice from someone wise.

What a gift my Lauren is to me, though.

She stopped me, as she often does when I get to talking that way, and asked me directly: “If one of our sons were in a similar situation, what would you have wanted them to do?”

And that settled the matter. As I thought about it for a moment, I answered: “Well, I suppose I would want them to do as I did.”

“There you have it,” she said.

But as I continue on as a father, I learn more and more that I need to be making sure I know well the lessons I need to teach these young man-cubs before I venture to instruct. So a great deal of maturation has come for me, and probably more opportunities for growing personally than I’ve noticed or taken advantage of fully, by way of the blessing of these boys God has given me a chance to be a father to.

Had you asked me years ago, I might have thought I would be the one doing all the teaching. Instead, I find that I have learned a great deal more than I knew I didn’t know.

That’s the thing of it. Fatherhood, at least for imperfect men like me, takes a great deal of humility to do well. That’s not to say either that I am humble or doing fatherhood well. Rather, I at least know that in order to do it well I must be humble, and the more humble I am the better I do it. I know I must be able to look at myself honestly, to see my faults and shortcomings without turning away or denying them, and to be willing to apologize, to ask questions, to learn, to grow, to stand corrected. Won’t that be what I’m asking my children to do, after all? I can’t teach what I don’t know.

I want strong, courageous, honest, humble, gentle, considerate sons. So I must choose to be strong, and to do what I know I must despite fears and opposition; I must choose to tell the truth, even when it’s inconvenient to do so; I must be humble, not arrogant; though choosing strength, I must use my strength in a way which guards others instead of either purposefully or accidentally hurting them; and I must consider my ways, the circumstances and those around me, and be respectful, polite and wise in my conduct.

Those little eyes are always watching, those ears always listening.

So again, people think we’re crazy. But I think we’re getting wiser as we go! Yes, these children try our patience. But also, yes, they are helping my wife and I to become more patient people, and I am growing as those children grow, trying earnestly to stay ahead of them in terms of maturity, to know what’s ahead that they need to learn about, what they need to become in order to live in peace and prosperity. And I learn in them that it’s okay to not have all the answers, to not have arrived yet in perfect maturity, so long as there is still hope to continue learning and growing.

And there is.

Coming Back West

Glendive, MT is my hometown. Born here November 5^th, 1986 at the Glendive Medical Center to Byron and Alice Mullet, I remember cold winters as a kid, the feeling of a fresh wind blowing on my face, looking out over grassy plains and hills in the summertime, seeing pheasant and antelope and coyotes roaming about freely, and my brother and I fishing with grasshoppers as bait in the creek that ran through our farmland out near Bloomfield.

Eastern Montana has a sort of rugged beauty about it. When dry, the land reminds me of an elderly person who’s lived a full life, with laugh lines, wrinkles around the eyes from squinting in the sun, wrinkles in the forehead from cares and concerns, gnarled hands and arms that worked their whole life long.

Now I’ve been home for just over two weeks, returning from the little town of Hillsboro in Ohio, the place where at least my body has resided some fifteen years now. But though I’ve spent more than half my life in Ohio, moving there with my parents and my younger brother when I was about 10, I’ve never really felt that Ohio became my home. My heart and some portion of my mind has continued to reside in Montana, my homeland, and I’ve continually thought about and wistfully longed for this rugged beauty again, those grassy plains and hills, this fresh wind in my face.

When you tell someone out east that you’re from Montana, their eyes go wide. That’s been my experience, anyhow. The typical first question after they learn you’re from Big Sky country is, “So what’re you doing here?!” From looking at pictures or watching nature documentaries (typically their only experience of Montana), they just can’t understand why anyone would trade this pristine landscape for the drabness of life in Ohio, or most other similar places.

When I came rolling into town again from North Dakota on March 17^th of this year, passing through Medora and Makoshika just as the sun was setting on the horizon, sky painted crimson, orange and yellow over layered, striated, rocky hills and buttes and boulders – I’d have had a hard time answering for why anyone would leave this rugged beautiful wilderness.

Now I’m also one of those who’s come from elsewhere to find a job, though my being a native helps perhaps alleviate some of the stigma of being an out-of-towner. I have a wife and four little boys back in Ohio that I need to work for now. It’s difficult to find a good job these days, at least in our neck of the woods. But I haven’t just come back to find work. I’ve also come home, and there’s a real sense of accomplishment in having made it back here, to this land of open spaces I have fondly remembered for most my life.

I somehow feel as though I am everyone here. My father and grandfather and great grandfather were farmers in this area. I was born here. But I, like so many others, am also migrating into this part of the country looking for opportunity, for work. I’m here looking for a job that will not just pay my bills (though that’s a good start), but perhaps help me to also pay off debts I’ve incurred, and build up savings, and maybe carve out a little piece of the Earth for myself and mine, maybe even a piece of Earth here in the wide open spaces of Montana.

God help me, it’s good to be home. So far, so good. There’s just something about having come back here. What is it I’ve heard in my spirit? “Go west, young man.” So did I and my ancestors, and so did you or yours. And because we have come west, we share in the privilege of breathing in this Big Sky.