Thanks. Sometimes I have to step back to see how lucky I've been, and realize that much of the time, you make your own luck.

I was very lucky to get to work for the same company for 31 years, but then, companies don't keep you around for that long if you are a shitbird. So, that's some luck I helped make for myself. When I retired, I got a job as a service manager at a Kawasaki shop, and that was a fun job I'd have like to have kept, but the economy tanked after I'd been there a little over a year and they had to cut back, so the guy that made the most bank had to go, so off I went.

Then I got hired by a company doing work similar to what I did for 31 years, or so it seemed before I started. They claimed to want a professional to correct a wide range of problems, which I was eager to dig into. But alas, those problems were created by middle management cutting corners, and they didn't take it well when I refused to cut those corners, since I was hired to correct the original problems caused by... cutting corners. I stood my ground and told them I would do it correctly and professionally, or not at all. We parted ways after 7 months. They prefer quantity over quality. I don't work that way. I didn't build a career and reputation of being one of the best there is by doing what I do half-assed. The world has changed and it has passed me by.

I guess my point is that things are going well for me now because I spent decades hustling, upgrading my skills and education, making hard choices, doing the right thing when I had those hard choices, sacrificing, and just generally building myself a reputation of being dependable, reliable, (I have not missed a day of scheduled work in many years, at least 10, because I don't really remember the last time, and it's probably sometime in the early 90's) and getting the job done through hard work, creativity, and tapping experts if I didn't know the answers. And especially, if I didn't know the answer, be humble and admit it and then go out and find it.

With driving the school bus, my employer's name and my bosses phone number are plastered all over the bus. I drive it over 25,000 miles per year, and I have never had another motorist call my boss and complain about anything I did wrong on the road. The key is to be as passive as you possibly can when driving a bus. That, and knowing the rules of the road. Road rage or driving aggressively has no place behind the wheel of a bus. Now, with the right mindset, you can really see what idiots so many other drivers really are. Take a deep breath, smile and chill. If you are within eyesight of a school bus, the driver can see you and will know right away if you know what you are doing, or if you are an idiot pretty quickly. Two weeks a go, I had a sub riding with me, and as a kind of awareness exercise, I counted every illegal thing the drivers surrounding me committed, and counted 87 things during a 50 minute run.

Wow, sorry for the pseudo-rant.