The North Dakota Legislature had unpleasant news last week from the State Supreme Court. It seems that during this last legislative session they tried to squeeze into the budget bill too many non-budget things which is contrary to State Law. The State Supreme Court negated the whole budget bill, so the legislature has to come back in special session and redo the budget bill.
One point of contention in the bill was the provision that more members of the legislature would sit on the committee overseeing the State Employee Retirement Plans. I guess they had some issue with them. State Employees in this State are maligned as lazy no-goods, which is pretty disheartening given how hard we work for lower pay than we would receive in the private sector. I know this attitude is prevalent in many States. I have worked for the State for almost 25 years, and my coworkers are dedicated and hard working. I don’t really feel sorry for the legislature. They should have done the work right the first time.
When have you had to start over from scratch on some work or project? Who are the government employees you appreciate the most?
Trail Baboon 
My favorite computer game, Civilization 6, has a difficulty level of Deity. It’s hard to defeat a God. The only way I’ve been successful is by seeing that the moves I’ve made were wrong and then hitting the Start Over button.
I live above the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and those folks are terrific. We’ve all heard horror stories about DMV’s and likely there’s truth in some of them but not this one. More than once, people have told me that they go out if their way to get service from this office.
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Almost started over from scratch on “Straight River.” I hired a developmental editor to figure out why I never hooked an agent with the mss. She suggested deleting a full one-third of the chapters. That was almost like saying, “Throw it all away and start over.”
But, stubborn me liked the basic story too much, so I tossed the offending chapters and rewrote the damn thing from there. Took 2.5 years to rewrite and revise, but I guess it worked because the reviews and sales have been up there with my other books.
I most appreciate the laboring government workers. The people who do the heavy lifting, the dirty work, the dangerous work. Mostly on the local and county levels here in Owatonna. They’re the folks who keep our civilization running.
Chris in Nova Scotia (the Bay of Fundy was amazing. Arrived near low tide. Ocean floor was visible for maybe a half mile from shore. We didn’t stay around to see the tide rise, but we walked out about one-fourth of a mile just to say we’ve done it.)
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The county people who work with me for Sandra are excellent.
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Moving to Winona in 2016 was a form of starting over, even though we had lived here 30 years prior to that. The few friends who were still around had largely moved on, and we really had to find new people, new things to do and join. The town had changed so much it even felt like driving in a different place. At one point 3 months in, we looked at each other and said basically, “What have we done?!” But then we gradually found our people and places.
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I am often amazed by the staff at our senior center – the quality and quantity of the programs offered, the advocacy…
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Though I’ve “hung up the collar”, memories of having been a preacher for too many years remain with me. I cannot remember the sermons that I totally abandoned part way through writing them, but there were more than a few. On those occasions, deleting the whole thing, walking away from the screen or page and only returning when my mind was clear was the only way out. Trying to salvage even a phrase was a trap thet I didn’t fall into more than a time or two. I’m glad that phase of my life is over.
Insofar as government employees I appreciate, they are the ones at the “point” of customer service, who put up with angry, disgruntled, confused or clueless people who come for service, and who put up with us in style. Whether I get what I was looking for or not, I appreciate their skill.
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I’ve started over on many things, including my career. I missed my nurse coworkers so much while I was at the DNR. So I returned to that job and it didn’t take long to fit right back in. It was like correcting a huge mistake.
I’ve also started over on various art, craft, or writing projects plenty of times. Some projects were completely abandoned. Others redesigned.
My favorite government workers were my nursing coworkers, both in the hospital setting and in community services. They are hardworking people with kind hearts and I’m grateful for those experiences with them. They are unseen and unknown, and sometimes villainized as being lazy, stupid, or a tax burden. Most people have no idea what they do every day. I guess it’s easy to pass judgment on people when your tax dollars are paying for them. I will always advocate for government employees. You have no idea how hard it can be if you have never done it.
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I perceive that reports of lazy, good-for-nothing government employees, are overblown. For a certainty, some anecdotal episodes are true but in the main those folks are doing their jobs admirably.
Now about those elected people…
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Rise and Shine, Baboons,
The city employees of the Eden Prairie Community Center do a marvelous job running a complex facility with many activities. My hat is off to them.
Start over? Yes. Many times in life. Writing projects, writing projects, a failed tiling project, art pieces. Marriage. The second time usually makes it work better after learning lessons.
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Meditation. I have started over from scratch many times over last 20 years but my ADD mind does not behave. The little bit it does happen has helped me with stress and anxiety. So every day I start over from scratch again. I am trying a whole new approach. We will see.
Clyde
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I’m sure I’ve had to scratch some projects, but I’ve put them out of my mind. We joke in the theater, that the most expensive, time consuming project or effect will be the one onstage the shortest amount of time.
I made a piano rolling mechanism for a player piano, spend a lot of time making it work just for that ‘bit’ in Music Man, and it was cut by the director. Of course it was.
Oh well. Que Sera Sera.
Local government, of which I’m a part, is pretty effective, usually. I can get a road graded or sanded, or a tree cut down pretty quickly. I appreciate my fellow township officers.
What slows us down, is just the usual bureaucracy. Right now that issue is with a drug treatment center in the township. We can’t control anything about what happens inside the facility. And we only meet once / month. And we can’t do anything without a full meeting or vote. So, it moves slow. Too slow for the residences who think we aren’t doing enough.
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Nobody has mentioned it but your local librarian is also a government employee.
Back in the early 2000s, I had secured a recurring gig as a book designer/producer. I was assembling books on computer for Home Depot through Meredith Press (the Better Home and Gardens people) and I was producing books for the Handyman Club of America. These were each long-term projects taking months. Basically I would get all the inputs—the text, photos, chart material, etc.—and I would deliver print-ready files of the assembled pages.
Traditionally, this sort of work had required a team of employees and cost many times what I charged working alone at home, even though I charged plenty. A win-win. I thought that I was set for the rest of my working life.
Then came the recession. Publishers pulled back, cutting the number of books they would develop to what could be produced by the in-house staff. At the same time, the market for how-to books, which is what I primarily dealt with, was shifting toward DVDs, which can be manufactured on demand and more cheaply. Overnight, it seemed, my business had disappeared. That was a lot of income to replace.
Many successful design firms were buried by their capital expenses during the recession. Fortunately my overhead was low. Eventually I was able to cobble together alternative employments. For a while I was mostly writing business-to-business copy for an advertising agency. Later I worked freelance for a design firm, doing marker renderings, finished illustrations, writing copy and helping out with package design.
The last few of my working years I sketched on site for idea-generating sessions at General Mills and 3M as well as designing and producing materials for their internal use. I still get the occasional project through those connections.
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Nice story.
Sandy used to be the lovely gracious welcoming afternoon and evening front desk librarian. libraries attract lots of lonely people. She drew them in as well as the children. Everyone loved coming to the library to see her. But over the years three men misunderstood. All were in therapy. We got through it but she did not change her demeanor.
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Twins win! Twins win!
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I’ve started over a couple of times career wise. Baking and cake decorating moved to retail management moved to Group travel planning. All fine careers but obviously with 30+ years, Group travel planning won out. Of course, for me the biggest leap of faith into something new was leaving the US as a nonparent in July 1995, and coming home three weeks later as a parent.
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Ah, you remind me of all the times I’ve started over with a new career – the bookselling one was the most dramatic, but didn’t last that long. And then a stab at professional organizing… my sister would say, “Well, my sister has reinvented herself again.”
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About 20 years ago, I made a meal consisting of mostly African dishes for company that was coming over. I normally cook by smell. Things smell right to me or they don’t smell right. I rarely taste as I am cooking. This was a night I should have tasted. I kept adding things to this dish because it didn’t smell right and it turned out just awful. Spices that mesh well and too much salt. Luckily it wasn’t a long recipe so I was able to get it done right the second time before company showed up. But that first whole pot of stew went right into the garbage.
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My BIL was a government employee for most of his working life, testing water quality in streams and rivers. He was a part of a large team of workers that transformed the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers over a couple of decades in the latter part of the twentieth century. One measure of the success of water quality programs is that we now have mayflies in large quantities again, after they nearly disappeared in the midcentury.
Some people are irritated by a mayfly hatch, but I thank our water quality workers.
https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/minnaqua/speciesprofile/mayfly.html#:~:text=Today%20because%20of%20modern%20sewage,to%20most%20of%20our%20waterways.
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Agreed!
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