I developed a bad habit in middle school.
Any time I failed a test, got embarrassed or just wanted to check out of reality, I called my mom (who thought she was doing me a favor by tending to her supposedly 'ill' child), and she would rescue me from the depressingly tan walls and mold-infested restrooms of Douglas MacArthur Junior High School.
Unexcused absences weren't as much of an issue in those times as they are now, so I spent the majority of my eighth and ninth grade days, catching up on science homework over rounds of penicillin at the kitchen counter.
Moving into high school, it was the same story: unless I had a tennis match or a really thrilling art project to work on that day, I saw no point in being there. I could legitimately pull almost any ailment from my library of medical excuses, and I exercised this ability regularly. In college, I offered no reason for my absences, but my instructors repeatedly warned me against such slacking.
Even at my last dead-end design job, I had the liberty to take days off. Excuses involved "research," "creative exercise," "beauty therapy," "the flu" (or whatever illness I could conjure), and so on. There was no record of missed days. There was no pressure to schedule a day off two weeks in advance.
Now, I have five sick days per year and I think I've already used two of them. The questions increase with age. Is this what life is? Eat, Sleep, Work? Is that all? Is a job - is MY job - meant to be taken so seriously?
I have trouble adjusting to the idea that a career defines me and infinitely more trouble understanding the concept that life is 70% work and 30% paid vacation, holidays and weekends. When I was in school, I worked double the hours but never felt so isolated and enslaved to any job. I never thought as much about quitting as I do now.
According to an article on Yahoo two days ago, U.S. citizens work more hours than citizens of any other nation. (I suppose such statistics exclude slave and child laborers.) My qualm, however, is not with being overworked, but with this societal conviction that one's worth should be calculated into a job title.
Job shmob. I want to have a party. Or go to the park and draw pictures of dead trees. Or something.
Every day is a better day, when given the opportunity to smile.
We took advantage of the reduced price Valentines Day candy, as usual. Last night, I opened the box, selected a chocolate, took a bite and spit it back out - then I repeated the process about three times. They giggled that they had already eaten all the good ones and left the nasty orange and yellow filled ones for some lucky gambler. I threw the box of spit-covered, half-chewed candy into the trash and then the four of us sat on the kitchen floor and laughed until we cried.
I was right when I once determined that working is only justified by the fun I can have on the extra amount of money that doesn't count toward bills. Perhaps the real problem here is that I'm not mature enough to handle the responsibilities of adult life. I don't understand why being an adult has to be so boring. Is there nothing to look forward to?
Yesterday, he said, "I want to run away with you." He was probably kidding - making light of my never-ending search and constantly revolving plans to find the perfect locale and escape to it - but it was the first time I'd heard that sort of thing in years. Someone was actually encouraging my childishness, as opposed to admonishing me for being unrealistic - even if he didn't mean it.
Every time my dad gives me the evil eye for talking negatively about my work environment, I remember how dumb I am. It isn't that I can't hold a job; it's that I'd rather be willfully cleaning toilets in Peru than wasting my life away, doing nothing, here. Still, there is a constant war in my mind between what ought to be right and what I believe to be right, and I can't decide if I should suck it up and be a boring adult forever or live free and reap the consequences of a less-stable lifestyle.
Are there only two options?
A sleazy salesman came into the office today, carrying a briefcase and passing out very chic business cards (cards designed by some underpaid employee, no doubt). He said my name about ten times, insisting we had met previously, but I didn't remember. All sales men look exactly the same. Double chins, gummy smiles, receding hairlines. As he rambled on about whatever he was selling, I considered the notion that he has likely been a salesmen his entire life. Hell-bent on taking the opposite route of his divorced, alcoholic father, he married young, sold door-to-door beginning at age nineteen, and never looked back. His plump wife sings in the church choir, his kids are brats, they drive to the Florida panhandle for a vacation once a year. I'll pass.
Then I thought about the recently fired, middle-aged receptionist. She was doing what she could to get by on her high school education while raising six kids when she was fired for lacking the experience of a "career receptionist." I thought about how that could be me: the washed up, wannabe musician who couldn't stick to one boring career path early in life. She was too free-spirited to settle down, so she bounced from temp job to temp job until she was forty years old and still making six dollars an hour. She missed a lot of days before she got the can. That picture does not give me thrills, either.
There is no moral to this story.
No comments:
Post a Comment