To paraphrase Forrest Gump, I've worn lots of hats.
On one hand, it's made for an interesting life. Over the years, I’ve been a carwash attendant, a meat cutter’s apprentice, a convenience store clerk, a gas jockey and a disc jockey. I’ve washed dishes, flipped burgers, fried chicken, delivered pizzas and delivered newspapers. I've unloaded palettes of shrink-wrapped electronics off of trucks in pouring rain, loaded cases of ice cream bars onto trucks in a 30 below freezer, and faced items on store shelves for what seemed like 40 days and 40 nights at a time. I’ve worked in telemarketing, print publishing and website design...dabbling just enough to legitimize being paid or once in a while starting my own concern.
I wouldn't change the spastic nature, nor the entrepreneurial bent, of my work history for anything. Sounds cheesy, I know, but it really has made me who I am, colored my outlook, in a good way, as I make this crazy transition into mid-life. But on the other hand, all that varied experience, all those different types of jobs, has left me a little jaded, with an unhealthy (as in disheartening) knowledge of behind the scenes everything that interferes with my ability to take things - anything - at face value.
Because I used to publish books, I can't pick one up anymore without casting a critical eye. I judge the cover, spine and interior pages on their functional and artistic merits rather than the story they're supposed to be enhancing. I scrutinize the placement of the author's name as it appears in relation to the title, wonder about the use of a wrap-around image, proofread the back cover blurb (itself the most important aspect of the publishing process), more or less unable to process, or accept, the book as an aggregate piece of entertainment.
Because I published a weekly newspaper for a number of years, I can't just sit down with a cup of coffee and read one. I try, for God's sake, I try...but every page winds up getting sized up to how I would do things, or once did things, or how they're supposed to be done. There are certain tenets regarding the 'building' of a newspaper page, and websites for that matter, and I cannot help gauging those I view on the sum of their parts, rather than the whole.
I worked in radio for six years, and same goes. I can no longer absorb the chattering DJ and the prattling commercials as part of a media package. All the little facets of the industry that I know exist behind the scenes (behind the mic, as it were) - tension between office staff and on-air talent, tension amidst the on-air talent (oh yes, egos run amok, no matter how small the market) - play out in my head, even while listening to something as simple as the weather forecast being rattled off. For a significant part of my life, I was the one rattling off the weather forecast.
When a telemarketer calls, memories of my year locked in a boiler room cubicle making the very same type of calls ignite in bright flashes. I can't help but wonder what the individual calling me now does to help pass the time when sales are sluggish, which I know from experience they usually are. I remember all too well that heavy, heavy boiler room pressure to make quotas, get through as many calls as possible. I would juggle (seriously...three rubber balls) as I slathered my voice with the finest used car salesman lacquer I could find in order to hock substandard electronics, angel and animal porcelain tchotchkes, and ratty bath towels.
Going through a drive-thru for a hamburger, I empathize heartily with the worker who appears in the window to confirm my order and take my money. I know full well, in painful detail, what goes on there, what that noise is all about.
I was once the gas jockey sweating balls on a summer afternoon, having to rappel up the side of a Hummer to clean the bug-slicked windshield in hopes of being tipped a dollar. And what's worse, I did that job in my hometown; meaning, I cleaned bug-slicked windows for people I went to high school with.
I published my own newspaper and pumped gas...and all that that implies. Not only have I worn lots of hats, but I've held lots of positions with those hats on. I've been the grinning lackey, the chairman of the board, and everything in between, and thus been privy to all levels of workplace drama. I'm well trained in identifying the stereotypes - the corporate tool, the kiss-ass, the slut, the dunce, the joker, the horrible worker, the crap talker, the whiner, the gossip - and interpreting the depressingly predictable machinations of each.
Yes, it's been a real tapestry for me over the years. But I'm not down with any of it anymore. It's all mind numbing, and at my age (perhaps the point I'm really trying to make), uninspiring and uninteresting. Money and security keep me at it, we all have to keep at it, keep moving, but I am not one of those who 'wouldn't know what to do with myself' if I didn't work. There aren't enough hours in the frigging day to do all the stuff I could do with myself if I didn't have to work. I'd strongly prefer not to be part of any work force at this point, and being 'in charge', as I am currently (thank God) isn't enough. I'm actually a good manager of people; it's one of my stronger skill sets. I excel as a motivator and a mediator, knowing when to crack the whip, when to practice diplomacy, and when to leave well enough alone. But in the end, it doesn't really matter. Being the 'boss', as The Office's Michael Scott once said, just makes you the jerk in charge.
Never before have I so needed my days off, my free time, my 'weekends', to decompress, re-set and feel wonder again, to not feel jaded, and more importantly, not let the jadedness turn into frustration, or worse, anger.
14,000 nebulous miles really will be a kind of escape, from work before anything else.
