learning about one's self

That seems to be what I am doing a lot of lately. Most of the time we/I rarely ever do that but as of late I have. A lot of it is that Kelly and I have been talking about what she has been reading and processing through. I am learning more about who I am and who other people are. I still try and figure out where I went wrong (maybe wrong is the not the right term) and try and compare it to where I was before and where I am now. Before: a dairy farmer who owned and operated my own business and also had a part time caretaker job on the side. I have often wondered where that would have gone; I was buying and selling a lot of cattle when I decided to sell out. I enjoyed it; yeah it was a gamble every time. Maybe that is what I enjoyed, the gamble. I think more what I enjoyed it taking sub-par herds and turning them around into something people wanted, it was a challenge. I like to be challenged, and I like to be my own boss. But the herds I would buy, I would pray about before I would buy them. Well, not every herd-there was one I didn’t and that was the one herd that I broke even on (it was also the herd that almost crippled me). Even the guy that I was working with that would find the herds commented once “I think the good Lord must be looking over you because I have never known anyone to be able to do these kind of deals.” He may have used a few 4 letter adjectives in that comment when he said it but that didn’t/doesn’t bother me. We had some great spiritual conversations driving around buying these herds he would find. Years ago I worked construction (shortly before Kel and I got married) and the one thing I learned there is I do NOT like working with certain people. I would get so frustrated working with some people because common sense was not something they had been taught or at least learned; and there were others who were in authority and liked to abuse it. Now, I am sort of my own boss (again). I have clients that I need to satisfy. I am a caretaker for lack of any better term. I take care of several private residents and also the common areas on a private development. I mow their yards and I take care of literally 1000’s of perennial flowers. I do landscaping and irrigation or whatever they want. I guess what I like is they value my input to what should be done or what would look good in an area. They trust me to do whatever needs to be done and to do it well. They do not tell what to do and how to do it. They just say “I would like this done “and I do it or I just look around and see what needs to be done, set the priorities and then do it. One of my main clients received a complement the other day. She was hosting a group of women and when they drove up they told her that “they thought they took the wrong turn and wound up at the arboretum”. I don’t care if this group of women ever knows that it is me that takes care of this property, I was just happy to see that my client greatly appreciated the compliment. What I am trying to say is they do NOT micro-manage me and I do my best work when I am not micro-managed. That is one type of environment that I have learned that I cannot function in. To micro-manage someone means you do not trust them (at least that is how I see it). Or you have an obsessive compulsive disorder which does not allow you to give control to anyone else; which if that is the case, then there is probably a whole host of other issues for that person to deal with and they should probably not be in an authority position of any kind. I am learning that there is more than just one environment that I can thrive in and that there is at least one environment that I know that I don’t. And that is good. I’m learning and that’s good. The tough part is the lessons can be pretty hard.