"You think too much," my oldest sister told me several years ago.  Bear in mind that I am many things.  First and foremost, I am a carpenter.  My father was a carpenter and I could "build a house while blindfolded" as I like to say.  However, a person evolves over time and I've had nearly 63 years to do my evolving.  Therefore, I can confidently say, "I am a plant nursery laborer, a janitor, a lab assistant, a library floor manager, a grocery store clerk, a graduate research and teaching assistant, a salesman, a concrete form carpenter, a preschool and elementary school teacher, (I'm less than 30 years old at this point, mind you), a home remodeling contractor, a gas station clerk, a nurse's aid, an intensive care hospital ward clerk, a school bus driver, (still only less than 40 years old and have not found my real career), a wetlands delineator, a botanist and ecologist, an auto parts sales clerk, a garden center sales clerk, and a professional writer and editor, and even semi-and-now-officially retired, I still work. That is, I've had 47 jobs in my life, but I've decided to take on a new title.

Why? Because it is who I am.  I've been listening to various recorded college courses lately with titles such as "Barbarians of the Steppes," "The Fall and Rise of China," "From Yao to Mao: 5,000 years of Chinese History," "Buddhism," and others.  One course in philosophy taught the ideas of many philosophers including the Native American (previously called "American Indian," and excluding "white folks") philosopher Lame Deer.  Lame Deer and others have influenced me.  Specifically, Lame Deer says the white man's world makes us into all those things, carpenters, teachers, etc. but that prevents us from thinking of ourselves as people.  So, I'm going to become a wandering aesthetic, specifically, a philosopher.  That is, I don't want to be seen as a job but as a human.  I want to help people understand the meaning of their lives and to understand the meaning of my own life.  Actually, I've been doing this for a long time, at least ten years.  In my last job as a botanist/ecologist, my high paid colleagues were asked to describe each other in one word.  I found my co-workers used words like "deep" and "deep-thinker" to describe me.  So, I might as well take on the title!  After all, they named the science of philosophy after me, Phil!