Love Life

One of my heroes is my great uncle Frank.  Since coming to work full time at Willmar Electric in 1991 to be groomed to take over Frank's role at Willmar Electric I have used him as a valuable resource.  As far as I am concerned he is a truly great man.  Open, honest and frank. 

Frank's wife Shirley is currently extremely sick and in all likelihood is very near the end of her life.  Although we pray that she will rally or that a miracle will turn things around.  As our family shares the news of Shirley's health and my hero Frank and his children struggle with the health of their matriarch, I can't help to reflect on two things I consider to be reality. 

One reality is that life is precious and should never be taken for granted.

The other reality is that our day to day activities should always be kept in prospective.  Often we tend to worry about things out of our control.  I often tend to think things are in crisis mode when the truth is the event or detail is just a minor item that can be easily be weathered.

I have respected Frank over the years because I consider him a wise man.  Certainly the Frank Chapin family understands how precious life is and is keeping day to day activities in prospective.

The lesson I take away from both of those realities is that I should make sure I have my priorities in line and that make sure our loved ones know that they are in fact just that, loved!

As I pray for a miracle in Shirley's life I also pray that Frank will lean on God during this time and I pray that God will be at his side as he deals with what for most of us would be the worst days of our lives.  Decades of time together and over a half century of wonderful memories build a bond that can't be broken.  My heart goes out to Frank, Shirley and their family (Mike, Bruce and Deb).

I am glad that the next 9 days of my life will be spent with the 4 people I love the most and hopefully I can convey that to them the entire times.  Hopefully when I return from my vacation I won't let my priorities get out of whack just because I have returned to the real world.

Vacation

Next week I am taking off work to spend time with my family.  I love to spend time with my wife and 3 kids.  It is also nice to get away from work.  We are planning to spend about 40 hours driving around the southeastern part of the USA.  My daughter is going on a college visit and our kids have never seen that part of the country.  It will be a blast.  And by blast I mean fun, not furnace although it will likely be extra hot as well. 

Don't get me wrong I love my job and the people I work with.  It is just that I like my family more.  I also find that it is easier to come to work every day when I get a break every now and then. 

I think the same is true of everybody.  We all need to take long breaks every so often.  Hopefully everybody looks at the number of vacation days listed on the lower right corner of their paycheck and uses their vacation time.  The key is to keep it above zero and not to be continually running against the ceiling.  My guess is if you find yourself bumping the vacation ceiling on a regular basis you will find yourself "climbing the walls" at work.

When I come back I expect to be a better, more refreshed Dave Chapin because I have taken a long break from my day to day tasks at Willmar Electric.

Why a blog?

Communication is a popular topic these days.  Everybody would like to be better informed about the things the affect their daily lives.  As an employee of Willmar Electric, Willmar Electric is one of those "things" that affects your life.

One of the facts of life in a company with more than 250 co-workers it is hard to stay in touch.  So we are going to try a few things to keep communication open from our end.  I have started a blog and plan to update it on a regular basis.  Most of the time I will cover things that directly involve Willmar Electric but from time to time I may get into more personal topics.  What I would like to ask of you is that if you blog or tweet account, send me information about about your blog or twitter account I will start too follow you to see what you have to say.

I understand that these methods are a little less than personal but as a company that is spread out over such a large area these methods can help shrink our world.  I wouldn't suggest you start up a blog to communicate better with your spouse or children but between the two of us it could work.

Hello again

I am trying to see if I understand how to do this process.  Hopefully future blogs will be more interesting.  It would be hard to be less interesting then the first two.

Getting Started

I would love to make sure that we are doing a good job of communicating so I have started a blog.