Salud ocupacional de los tecnólogos dentales

I finished work on a Friday, and the following Monday I put all my tools in the car, and drove to the house to start working. It was exhilarating.

My wife helped me tear up the carpets, and I started clearing out all the junk in the house so I could get to work. We made a huge pile of rubble outside on the street. Fortunately the city services in Orlando will come and collect big loads of junk if you call them. So that’s what we did. Then it was time to set to work on my dream project. The fixer-upper was a little two bedroom, one bathroom house built in the 1950’s – and it was by no means a mansion. It was more in the line of a first-time buyer’s house, approximately 1,000 square feet in size. That didn’t matter in the least to me – it was my very own project, and I was finally living my dream.

I was in heaven as I set to work, turning that dilapidated old wreck into the vision I saw in my mind’s eye. It was very rewarding to watch it slowly take shape.

I did all the drywall work that needed to be done inside, and framed some walls. I needed to put in new windows and shutters, and I had to hire someone to help me put on a new roof. As the days and then the weeks began to roll by, one section after the next started to take shape.

The floors in the kitchen and bathroom were quite bad, so I put in new ceramic tile there. I installed a new vanity and toilet, and

replaced much of the lighting. I altered the front section of the house, which allowed me to make it into another bedroom. Then I re-

screened the back porch and put a brand new back door in. I also replaced the front door, and spent a little bit of money on it, adding a brass kick plate, and a brass door knocker. I even spent $160 on a nice new door pull, just because I felt it really made a difference to

163 the way the house displayed. It’s those fine touches that make the difference between average and exceptional work.

It was great to see the transformation happening in front of me, coming from the work I was doing with my very own hands, but I was cutting it extremely close with the timing. About five or six weeks into the project I hired a contractor with an airless spray gun to do the painting – that was a job I really didn’t want to do myself, and time was running out.

I had seeded the lawn, and kept watering and tending the plants as I went along, and finally it started to look good enough to put on the market. In fact, it was better than ‘good.’ It was immaculate – it looked like a brand new house, and smelled like one too. It showed well, and so I was confident that it would sell quickly.

This has been one of my core values throughout my working career. Whatever you’re doing, you need to be adding value. To do that, you need to give your best, work with passion and commitment, and the results will be sure to follow.

I was confident, but on the other hand, there was no time to lose. I had sunk all my available money into this venture, along with a second property that I had bought, and pretty soon my mortgage payments would be due. I no longer had an income from my job, and so the stakes were high. I was all in, and the moment of truth was fast approaching.

My father and my father-in-law were both very concerned about my choices. They thought I was stupid for going about it in this way, quitting my job and taking the plunge. They warned me that it might end in bankruptcy, and put a strain on my marriage. There wasn’t much support from that end.

This came at a time when the relationship with my father was just finally starting to improve, after all the trouble we’d gone through in earlier years, and although he didn’t support me directly, at least he

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backed off and didn’t bust my balls about it too much. He could see how I felt about it.

I really believed in myself, and I believed in my dream too. I was willing to take the risk, and if it didn’t work out, I would figure something out.

The company that had helped me find and buy the property also helped me sell it once I was done with the work. After just two weeks there was already an offer to buy the home. Two sisters were

interested in buying the house – and the thing that sold it was that expensive brass door pull I’d added. When I found out about that detail, it made me chuckle.

The timing of the sale was getting critical, though, and there were concerns that the buyer’s loan wouldn’t be approved in time. If everything went according to plan, there was only a matter of two or three days between when I would get paid, and when my mortgage payments were due. It was a tense situation, and everything was on the line.

Ever since my early twenties I had experienced a recurring pattern with nightmares when I got stressed. I would dream that I was still working at Chuck’s Steak House, suffering from bar-rot, and really hating my job and my life. Even worse, I often dreamed that I hadn’t studied for a test – Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for

Buildings, Part II. It was one of those classes I had to re-take because of all the delays. If I failed, I would have to wait another whole year before I could take that class again because it’s only offered during the spring semester. I would wake up in a cold sweat, and realize only after a few minutes that I’d finished college years ago. There was no test to study for. In reality I had earned a good enough grade on that exam to pass – I think I got a C. I had ended up with a 3.0 cumulative GPA when I graduated college.

165 It’s a typical anxiety dream, but it felt very real. All these emotions were tied up in my life’s dream, my business, my success and failure – and it was intense. Any time I got really stressed or worried about something, the feeling would return.

I remember sitting in my little office at home in Davenport, Florida. It was three or four in the afternoon, and my wife was at work. We lived up on the hill overlooking a marshland area, and from where I sat I could see the pool, Jacuzzi, and look down over the forest. I was thinking to myself: If the sale doesn’t close, by this time next week I’m not going to have enough money to make my mortgage payment. It was a curious mixture of peaceful acceptance, helplessness and tense foreboding.

When I left Centex Rooney, Mike Wood said some words to me that haunted me for a long time afterwards. I still remember that

conversation quite clearly. He told me that he had always pegged me as the entrepreneurial type, and had often wondered when I would make a go of it on my own. He said that he was willing to take me back if my solo venture failed, but what he said after that really hit a nerve:

“You can come back if it doesn’t work out for you, but remember this, if you do decide to finally come back, I ask that you come back

for good.”

I thought about those words many times after hearing them that day. I could imagine becoming a lifer in the construction industry – like many of the people that I’d worked with along the line. Many of them seemed to be stuck in the same line of work until retirement. It was as if Mike was telling me to go out and get this ‘entrepreneurial’ bug out of my system, once and for all, and then return to practical reality, and security. He was expecting me to return to Centex with my tail between my legs, and give up on my big dreams.

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One of the things I struggled with when I left the company, and made up my mind to start out on my own, was a feeling of self-doubt. A lot of the people that I had been working with were much smarter than me, and had done better in college than I had. There were questions in my mind, along with doubts and insecurities. I was undermining the belief in my abilities and my determination to succeed –

sabotaging myself.

Wasn’t it arrogant of me to think I could do any better than those men who had so much more experience than I did? Who the hell was I to think I could leave, start my own business, and become

successful? My managers and peers had more experience, more knowledge, and many of them were smarter, or more qualified than me.

I had been preparing for, and building up to this dream for eight long years. It was an all-consuming passion and a burning desire in my life. I had this dream that had shaped each and every one of my choices and my daily activities. I loved building things. I loved the construction industry, and above all, I really wanted to buy, fix and sell homes.

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