Seniors? WHAT seniors?

All spirits listen

when master or beginner

writes one-breath poems

Not much poetry-writing lately, as I'm busy learning my new job. I studied hard during classes, passed the Indiana health insurance licensure exam and have sailed through each required exam of the in-house training sessions. Now I'm "on the floor," on the phones calling out to our current clients and receiving incoming calls from those wishing to investigate other features of our insurance plans.

It's not as dry as it sounds. In fact, it's kinda fun talking with these "seniors," which is our niche market. The company I work for sells Medicare Advantage plans, those Medicare-approved insurance programs which work hand-in-glove with Medicare itself to more fully insure the elderly and other Medicare beneficiaries.

We're licensed, as a company, to do business in 45 of the 48 contiguous states, so calls roll in from all over the country. One minute I'll be talking fast with somebody from New York as though they're on a deadline and three minutes later it'll be a person with a thick Creole accent from Louisiana. One woman offered to cook me crabcakes if I came down to visit her - she lived actually south of New Orleans. Another woman had three cockatiels screeching in the background...actually, she said, it was only one who screeched when she was on the phone and the other two went quiet. "But," she said, "when the Days of Our Lives theme song came on, they all went crazy!"

The Medicare 2010 enrollment season begins 11/15, so I'll be busy from then to the end of March 2010 -- we'll ALL be quite busy -- so my blog entries may be short and infrequent (but I hope sweet, especially the verse). I will try to keep in touch, though, for the benefit of both of my fans .....

Tim

Heading off to lunch

robin with a worm in tow

small feet moving fast

What's new?

Flash and bang at night

rain falls in slim silver strands

I stand, mouth open

It's been raining pretty steadily for the past two or three days. Some streets hold pools of water half a foot deep, hazards for both drivers passing through as well as people walking past. I am much more insulated from the effects of driving in this kind of weather now that I no longer make the long trek down to Jasper. Yay, again!

My new job is going well....very well. After a week in school being exposed to the information I'd need in order to pass the licensing test and become an insurance agent, we were allowed individual study time. A number of us formed study groups to run through multiple variations of quizzes and mock tests. I sat for the actual licensing test a couple days ago and passed with a wide margin.

That out of the way, our time now is divided between getting a jump on the in-house product training and plugging into real-life phone calls to get a feel for the dialogue, Q & A, and screens experienced by agents already on the job. Both segments of this schedule over the next two weeks is going to be necessary and valuable. But in the meantime, I'm also assisting some of the people who didn't pass the licensing test their first time so they'll have a better handle on what they may have answered incorrectly and a better chance to pass it on their 2nd try.

I think I'll like this job, and not only because I feel I'm going to be good and therefore do well at it. It's a good group of people, very friendly and helpful since they've all been newbees. Now, if this rain would only stop so we can have a little more time in Fall. I just have to get out into Nature before we get locked into Winter!

Sunny wooded glade

squirrels chuckling in the trees

flash of a bluebird