Mama told me there’ll be days like this

When no one steps on my dreams there’ll be days like this
When people understand what I mean there’ll be days like this
When you ring out the changes of how everything is
Well my mama told me there’ll be days like this

Days Like This by Van Morrison

To be honest, days like that seem far away.

For sure, I never expected a day like today, when I made the hardest and scariest decision of my career.

The editor of a great newspaper called Monday about an opening for which I had submitted an application last week at the 11th hour. Plans were made for me to meet with that editor and others in his newsroom on Wednesday and Thursday.

I respectively respectfully withdrew tonight. As I told him, it  was a big morale boost to get his call Monday — two weeks to the day that I lost my job, as the corporate folks say, due to economic circumstances.

But after going on a bike ride tonight and giving it a lot of thought, I’m just not ready to pack up and move again — something I’ve already done far too many times in the past 23 years. And now I can’t help but wonder what in the hell all of those moves accomplished anyway. None of it seemed to matter to the people who have cast me aside.

So Muscatine just may be stuck with me.

If someone had told me 20 years ago I would walk away from the opportunity presented to me this week, I would have never believed them. It makes me wonder what my 25-year-old self would say. He would have probably laughed at me for being an old man and then called me vulgarities from which I will spare everyone else.

But there have been times when that younger me insecurely leaped at the first opportunity that came along — only to discover if he had waited, even better options would have appeared in the future.

So now, when I have no idea what the next thing in my life will be, I’ve decided against leaping at the first opportunity to present itself. For now, I can only hope to look back on the experience some day and know it was the right decision.