Thursday, February 28, 2013

A career of shit

 I am working in the office this week and you know what I am doing? A bundle of shit, shoving that shit into a folder and shoving that shit into a filing cabinet. In alphabetical order or course.  In January, I was handing out shit. I  also watched a guy and handed him some shit. Now, when I was working in a factory, it was pretty much the same. I was shuffling shit, labeling that shit, shoving that shit into an inner box, than shoving that shit into an outer box, shoving that shit on to a pallet and finally, wrapping that shit up.
  
Now when I was at Hyvee, I worked in three different departments. First was night stock. I took shit out of boxes, shoved shit on a shelf, packed up the remaining shit and palletized that shit. Then I got moved to Pharmacy. There, labeled shit.  I counted shit out, labeled that shit, put that shit into bottles, passed off that shit, put that shit into a bag and sold that shit to customers.  Then I got moved to wine in spirits where it was pretty much a combo of the two but it was move about moving shit around. 

See a pattern here?

I do, it’s a lot of shit.

Really nothing. But it’s all shit and therefore a lesson in humility. You see we all like to think that we are better than the jobs we work. I’ve won awards and felt as if I have always deserved better than the jobs I have ended up working as. Much like the departed Norma Jean, I’m the smartest dumb person you will ever meet.  I’m guessing education, award and life time accomplishment don’t amount to anything but problems.
They say that intelligent girls are more likely to battles depression. 

I can agree with that. The more I know about the world, the more I want to keep myself separated from it. Something seems like an “through the looking glass.” Like I’m living someone else’s life and just going through the motions rather be fully integrated into m] the job. Flip a switch and BOOM auto pilot. However there is this sense of awareness that seems to plague me in each job. It says, “Really? Really… Uh man fricking really?”

But I figure writing is my only true love when it comes the career field. But like every starving artist, I can’t really make much of a living off of the love of my life. I can, however, carry around a note book and write down all of my ideas and dream of a tomorrow where I can get paid while traveling the country.  But somehow I figure that I will keep paying the bills by doing the shit dance, while stuffing and rearranging shit.  It’s simple but maybe because it allows to dive into that sense of humility, I can really pump through the rewrites and focus on the story instead of focusing on work.

Or is it the prowess and desire that writing has to give propels me forward to succeed. Either way I have a choice keep putting up with a career of shit or be consumed from work.

2 comments:

  1. Think of the shit jobs as writing fodder, someday when the dream job does come along, you may find that while the shit jobs didn't reward you at the time, you still learned some important stuff along the way. At least that's how I've rationalized it for all these years.

    ReplyDelete
  2. And it completely is. I mean at the very least maybe people can get a chuckle or 20 million! And fodder it is, How did you know Ben?

    ReplyDelete

Chasing Wanda and other strange tales: LOCKDOWN

Chasing Wanda and other strange tales: LOCKDOWN : Greetings! I understand that it has been a long time since I've used this platform o...