Do we choose our jobs or do they choose us?

In Cici McNair's book DETECTIVES DON'T WEAR SEAT BELTS in the beginning we find her looking for a job and basically making a career choice by going through the phone book. Yes I said the phone book where she in allot of ways stumbles across her career until she became an amazing writer of course! From the very beginning I started to wonder if this was a brave, daring choice or a less that well thought out one. What I decided was that making a decision out of the phone book on how to spend your days making money is as sensible as going to college where at 18 you make a decision that will potentially alter your entire existence and spend a ton of money pursing this dream that I will bet you never really end up working at. How can you conceivably know what you want to do with your next 60 plus years at an age where you greatest accomplishment is flipping burgers or passing Spanish? You can't know unless you have a calling which most 18 year olds truly don't have unless you count the one on around how to get anyone to buy you alcohol. When Cici gets involved with the PI life she finds it beyond a calling and more a defining moment than she expected it to be. It sounded interesting, somewhat intriguing and maybe a little fun. By taking on this way of life she frees herself to look into other people's lives in a way she was not quite ready to explore in her own. When you are analyzing why people act in a certain manner you begin to figure out that there is more behind every closed door and that is why we all keep the doors locked. It is as much to keep the secrets in as to keep the outside world away. In the end it was a good decision and one she should be proud she made but I am not sure it is for all of us who are not quite that adverturesome!

Come Join the Discussion

We are talking about Cici McNair's book Detectives Don't Wear Seat Belts. This is a great book and what we are discussing is passages and the thoughts I have taken away from the book. My thought for today is do we change with the times or do the times adapt to our change. I think we do change to fit the time and place or how we fit into the place we are at. When we are small we learn to live as a sibling, then you grow up and get into relationships that we work our time and energy around and then their is our jobs. Unless you are very lucky we are all at jobs with people that get on our nerves, situations that are unacceptable and expectations that are unrealistic. I love my life but there are days and quite of few of them where I wish it truly were "all about me"!

Family - Fact and Fiction

Our parents always rewrite the past of the family in terms of how they wanted it to be. The kids don't fight, the house is always clean, mom and dad got along. The problem with making up a perfect past is the children from the past grow up to be adults unable to forget that none of the fantasies the parents weaved was true. There were hurtful words, horrid acts of neglect and on occasion abuse and when children becomes adults they drag all the baggage with them. Cici McNair explores this in unbridled detail throughout her book and does so in details that at times can make you cry when you remember this was her life not something written for entertainment. Her siblings grew up to be selfish and inconsiderate adults after having a father that basically wrote the textbook on how to be a horrible parent. What I also feel came through in this discussion is that you don't have to drop your baggage just put the dang thing on wheels and make it work for you. Cici became more daring and adventuresome in her as a result of her father's cruel and insensitive words. She pushed herself to become better than expected and outdo the pressure from the past. We swear we are better parents and I hope we are because if not then this world is in trouble.

Toxic relationships and knowing when to cut bait!

I have never been one for memoirs and have for the most part thought people wrote a more interesting life than they really lead. But while reading Cici McNair's life unfold you realize no one could make this up and would never want anyone to find out that her life is as messy and complicated as everyone else's. Her jobs have been chaotic at times, her love life out of control and fielding the mine field of family dynamics incredibly emotional. While others look for someone else's life to make them feel better I feel more comfort from knowing that somone else out there knew when to cut out of bad situations and move on. Family is a difficult mine field to maneuver especially when one portion of it is so disfunctional. My question for today's blog is - when do you leave a toxic relationship regardless if it is your family, friends, jobs, etc. Please comment because I would love to hear your thoughts.

Detectives Don't Wear Seat Belts by Cici McNair

This is the first blog for our "Reading Renegades" blog discussion about this book. I am going to start this discussion off by asking the group what they thought of a woman who up and quits the life she had that was fairly successful and looks for a new job in the yellow pages. At first that made no sense to me but part of that is my own inhibitions toward change and the fact that I was truly never single and on my own. I went from my parents home to a house with my husband. If I had been encouraged to have a career and chart a path without a man in my life would I have made different more daring decisions. I would like for Kim to address this because she is truly the most adventuresome friend I have. She has traveled the world extensively and served our country in the Air Force. These are things I say I could not do but who knows. This first section is interesting because it draws you in on a personal level to think about the life you have vs. the life you might have discovered!