Time For A Change
For the past eighteen years I have been a 911 emergency dispatcher. Last year, shortly before we started this blog we bought a bumper pull RV and started to go camping a couple nights a month. It only took a couple times for us to realize that we loved it! We had to ask ourselves then, “Is it time for a change?”
Four months later, we purchased a membership to a private RV Resort in the town that I worked. It worked out great! We could stay for three weeks at a time for about $250 a month. That is about the same as two weekends at most RV parks. On top of that, it was only a five minute drive to my work.
It worked out great for me and my job and my family because there was always something to do at the park. It was a gated RV park so there was that sense of security to allow our kids to roam freely in the park.
A couple months after we started camping there, I started working there part time as a maintenance person and my wife decided that she wanted to work full time as a security/escort person. This allowed us to live there full time. Again, it was time for a change. Unfortunately, part of that change didn’t stick.
My wife worked there for a couple months until we decided that we didn’t like our kids being back in public school. As good as the school was, we still didn’t like the way our kids were being taught and the way they acted while they were at home, so we decided to take them back out of school and home school them again. That meant that my wife had to quit her job.
Fast forward a couple months to September. For the past year or so I had been taking three high blood pressure medications and my blood pressure was still constantly running high. I was dispatching almost every night in my sleep and I didn’t like the way that I was acting towards my wife and kids. If this doesn’t scream to you that is was time for change, I don’t know what would.
So, it was time to call it quits and retire from being a dispatcher. From then on, I would work my 28 hours as a maintenance person at the RV park and do another 26 hours or so as a Doordash driver. I quickly found out that I made more money as a Doordash driver than I did as a maintenance person and it was a whole lot easier work. That didn’t deter me though. I enjoyed working with my hands and in the fresh air all day.
My father owned a construction business pretty much all my life. From about 14 years old, I would help him during the summer and after I graduated college on my off days until he retired in 2017. At the time I really didn’t want to do that type of work. I didn’t want to do manual labor my entire life.
Instead I went to school for computers which was a big waste of money looking back now and then had a long career as a 911 dispatcher. Now here I am some 25 years later back doing what I told myself at the time that I didn’t want to do. Honestly though, I am really enjoying it.
One of the main drawbacks of working in an office setting is that you don’t get the expercise or drink enough water unless you do it intentionally. I found myself getting up to about 315 pounds in 2022. It was the biggest that I had ever been and I hated myself for it.
I slowly made my way back down below 300 pounds, but I could get below about 285 still working as a dispatcher. Once I started working as a maintenance person, the weight just started to drop. I am now down to about 255 pounds and I am still loosing weight.
I quickly came to realize that working 50+ hours a week between two jobs doesn’t leave much time for family. That was one of the reasons that I retired from dispatching. So, it was time for another change. Between loving the campground life, and enjoying working outside and with my hands, I decided to pursue a full time position in the RV park community. It has been a challenge. I have put in probably 50 applications and, so far, had about four interviews.
My first one sounded pretty good on the surface. It was a new park, only about a year and a half old. It had a nice pool and a lazy river and a lounge area with a coffee and regular bar. The only thing that my kids would have to do outside of summer was a very small playground. The money was pretty good and the park looked nice, but we decided at the time that it probably wasn’t a very good place for us to move to then.
My next interview, I upped my game a little bit and applied to be an assistant park manager at a new Jellystone RV park in Georgia. It would have been a very long way to move, but it would’ve been a great opportunity. I went through the first interview and the person seemed to like me. At the end of the interview, she said that she would be in contact with me the following week for a follow up interview with her boss. That call never came. Another week went by and I got an email saying basically Thanks but No Thanks.
My third interview, I applied for a park manager position. This interview probably went the best out of the three. I spoke with the initial HR person and the interview went well. A few days later I had a phone interview with the VP of Personnel. We spoke for about 45 minutes. At the end of the interview, he said something along the lines of, “I have really enjoyed our conversation and I think you would be a great fit. Unfortunately, we have already offered the job to someone else and are waiting to hear back from him. If he doesn’t take it I will give you a call. We are also in the process of buying three more parks hopefully by the end of the year so once those close I will definitely keep your information on file and give you a call.”
After the interview, we looked at the park online and on the satellite view on google that I interviewed for and I am honestly glad that I didn’t get the job. It had absolutely nothing in the way of amenities other than a building that had showers and a laundromat. It didn’t have a playground or pool or anything that my family could do while I was working.
The last interview is ongoing. It is for a Maintenance Supervisor position in Amarillo, TX. I did the initial interview the week before Christmas, after three hiccups with scheduling issues. She said that she thought I would be perfect for the job and she would contact the manager there and set up an interview with them. Being that it was a few days before Christmas, it took about a week to hear back from her, but I finally did and now I have an in-person interview scheduled for the 8th of January.
So….
We have looked at this park online and the area. Looked at the reviews of both the park and the company. Everything points to it being a nice park with lots of things to do. I think the only thing that is going to be somewhat of a shell shock to us is the temperature difference. My kids have never really seen snow before, and we really don’t get temperatures below about 25 very often where we live now. If I get this job, we are going to be moving at the beginning of winter so it is going to be a massive change for us.
We will survive though and hopefully we will all love the park and the company. They have several parks throughout the US, so if we ever want to go somewhere else, it should be relatively easy to just move to a different park if a position opens up there.
We will see…
I will post again after our trip there for the interview about how it went so make sure that you check back in a couple weeks. Also, check out our TikTok and YouTube pages for some videos about our trip while we are there. Just search for Hitching Time on both platforms.
Until next time y’all,
Happy Camping.
