Author: darkpassport
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#9: Orientation
“A 55-year-old garbage man is a million times smarter than a 28-year-old with three PhD’s. Especially smarter than him, because this idiot has been thinking about three things for like 15 years.” -Comedian Louis C.K. during his Oh My God special in 2013. …continued from Blog #7 Packed into a secure government auditorium is a…
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#8: Sold!
“I’ve always felt very temporary about myself.” -John Cusack, portraying the character of Martin Blank in the 1997 dark humor film Grosse Pointe Blank. Several years ago one evening I was at the local grocery store after work, quietly debating with myself the importance of the word “organic”, when I received a call informing me…
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#7: “What would you say…you do here?”
Title quote taken from the movie Office Space. Thousands of U.S. federal government employees, representing a very wide array of disciplines, are not just working but also living overseas at any given time. In over 175 countries there are U.S. citizens tasked with spreading peace and prosperity while preserving the American way of life. Many…
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#6: A Close Up View of Our Nation’s Capital
“Wherever the American citizen may be a stranger, he is at home here.” -Frederick Douglass, speaking of Washington, D.C. in 1877 Nearly two decades ago this very week, I stood atop the marble steps of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial on a gloomy winter day in Washington, D.C. My thick jacket, gloves, and beanie felt foreign…
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#5: Day 1…Or Day 776 – On Government Time
2 Years, 1 month, and 15 days. That’s how much time passed between the submission of my application and my first official day on the job. Federal government. I swear the clocks move slower and the calendars are longer in Washington, D.C. That being said, I know the next few years of my domestic assignment…
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#4: Move Your Life: Packout
The doorbell rang at 8:00am sharp, but I didn’t need to look at the clock to know it was the movers. I could hear the massive 14.8-liter Detroit Diesel idling under the hood of the sparkling clean 2016 Freightliner Cascadia semitruck parked in front of my soon-to-be empty house. After the veteran driver gave me…
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#3: Measure Your Life: Preparing for the Move
“And you’re really spread out now, you’ve got s—t all over the world! You’ve got stuff at home, stuff in storage, stuff in Honolulu, stuff in Maui, stuff in your pockets; supply lines are getting longer and harder to maintain.” -Comedian George Carlin at Comic Relief in 1986 They say you don’t realize how much…
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#2: Happy [Unemployed] New Year!
Sixteen days of peace and quiet. That’s what I talked myself into as I closed the book on more than a dozen years of serving the community I grew up in. I figure that ought to be enough time to prepare for the sequel, which begins with uprooting several decades’ worth of a life I’ve…
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#1: All Roads Led to Here
Euphoria. Because it all makes sense now. Every bad decision I’ve made has become a good one. Each mistake, a success. The relationships were not meant to be. All the jobs I weathered my way through were necessary for experience. Everything happened so I could reach this dream career. In psychology, this concept is called…
The Dark Passport 