Giving Thanks

I'm going to depart from my usual mode of market commentary this week, because it's Thanksgiving weekend and I want to get a little personal and sentimental. So indulge me a little bit.

I'm a lucky guy. I'm not going to sit here and list all the things that I'm thankful for, because you'd stop reading after the first few pages. Heck, I'm married to Diane. 'Nuff said. Suffice it to say that I'm loving life, and I hope that comes through once in a while. What I want to tell you about today is why I'm thankful for my chosen profession.

I worked for 18 years doing computer support in a large corporate environment. It was an OK way to make a living. The money was good, had some good benefits, I was getting 4 weeks of paid vacation every year. But truth be told, while I didn't hate my job, I never really loved it. It was just something I did for money. I knew a lot of people in that field who really did love it - major techie geeks, couldn't get enough of it. I just wasn't one of them.

I watched the corporate culture change a lot over the years, and it got more cut-throat and less employee friendly with every passing year. Maybe that's not true; maybe I just tuned into it more as time went along. Coming up on about 6 years ago, the company I worked for outsourced my job to a vendor, and they let a lot of us who had been there for years and years go, figuring that they could get our jobs done by less expensive employees. By that point, I was really OK with that. A couple of other life changes led Diane to make a move into real estate sales, and about a year later, not liking what I was finding in the job market, I followed her into the business. Seemed like an interesting way of filling my days.

And interesting it is. In spades. Selling houses is one of the most challenging, difficult, and occasionally infuriating enterprises that you can find. Especially now, with REO's dominating the market and the lending side of the equation being as turbulent as it is. Every deal is different, and they're all white-knuckle rides all the way to the end. And you know what? I wouldn't do anything else. And a while back, I realized why that is. I actually care about what I do for a living now. It's part of me. It's who I am.

Ask anybody who sells real estate what their favorite days are, and most of us will tell you it's closing day. And for those of us who really love this, it's not just because we get paid (although that's a good thing, too). It's because we've just gotten a nervous client through a stressful period in their life. It's because we get to hand the keys to those first time buyers that we've been working with for over a year while they worked out some credit issues. There's a sense of accomplishment on closing day that I'd never gotten before, even at the end of a big project, or after I had solved a particularly vexing problem at work.

About a year ago, we hosted a morning at the movies the weekend before Thanksgiving. We didn't get that planned in time for the same time this year, but we hope to put together another one pretty soon. I told the crowd at the movie then that it was appropriate that we were doing that right before Thanksgiving, because it was our way of thanking them for their business and referrals. I told them that when you get to do what you love, every day is Thanksgiving.

And that's my wish for everyone. May every day be Thanksgiving for you.