Superbowl Sunday

Last week I bought a shredder. I've had a lot of time to think about things and lately, I've been thinking about identity theft. I have financial records going back thirty years, but I have been reluctant to just chuck boxes full of cancelled checks, credit card statements, pay slips, tax forms.
Many of these items have important account and SS# on them. (If I was planning to go into the identity-theft business, I'd bribe someone who was working at a dump, to peruse the landfill for documents containing valuable identity info.)

So, when I saw that Staple was selling a shredder for $29.95 (after rebate) I decided to buy it. Since then I have been busier than an Arther Anderson Auditor at Enron, going through dusty shoe boxes of ancient and forgotten papers, shredding anything that had a SS# on it and dumping old bank records and receipts. In those old shoeboxes, I found many items that reminded me of events that had long ago been forgotten: Dr Bill for birth of first child in 1970 ($400); Hospital bill for 5 days maternity confinement ($350), Bill of sale for 1970 Dodge ($2,130), papers on the purchase of our first home - a 5 room ranch in Waltham ($24,000), stuff like that.

There were reams of old resumes, job descriptions, essays on the nature of work. Most of these I am finally relegating to the landfill. Among the papers was a list of all the jobs I had done from High School to about 5 years ago. The list started with my military experience (warrior, painter, cost accountant, disaster control specialist) and included part time jobs (Bus Boy, Ranch Hand at a dude ranch). Jobs that helped pay college expenses (courier driver, bus driver, painter, UPS package handler, clerk in a mountaineering store, mover, lawn maintenance). Then, "real" jobs (Headhunter, Registrar, Sales Administration, MIS Analyst, Marketing services manager, program manager). During the last recession in the early 90's, I did lots of different stuff: Resume writing, doing surveys for IDC, selling refrigerators and stoves, testing software interfaces, researching sales automation tools, freelance systems analysis, writing for Computerworld. Then, back in the mainstream at Bull Express - managing a direct marketing database system. I added to the list, my more recent engagements: the University (where I learned about ERP, data analysis tools,and started the Data Warehouse), finally to the staffing company (where I learned the value of managing relationships with business partners).

Ok, it's a pretty tedious list, but the point is that I learned something of lasting value from every one of those experiences and organizations.
The prospect of learning something new energizes me to look forward to the next stop on this bus ride that I call my career.
Go Pats!