I swore I'd finally write something today, but it's later in the day than I wanted to attack this, and at this point its as much a labor of pig-headed resolve as a labor of love.
I haven't spent any time in the cave lately because I've been working. I wish I could say it had worked out...
Back in March I took a job as an Admin for an employment agency in Orange County. I thought I was being hired to write reports and help management build the business. In all honesty, I think that is what I was originally hired to do. Unfortunately, that's not what I wound up doing. Then our payroll clerk flipped out and quit. I don't mean Two Week's Notice- 'thank you ma'am but the situation isn't quite working out so I'm leaving for better opportunities'- quit, but 'take this job and shove it up your #@*!' quit.
Which left us with no way to pay three hundred employees...
So I became the payroll clerk. No training, no experience. No clue.
Payroll is one of those jobs that is mentally taxing, but not particularly stimulating. A payroll clerk has to apply a complex set of rules to an infinite set of individual circumstances, with no ability or incentive to improve upon or alter the system. Timecard to late? ... Sucks to be you.
So of course I sucked at the job. I didn't screw up badly enough to actually get fired. I didn't even screw up enough to get yelled at. But I hated the work, and the abuse, and the misery of a job that offers no reward for accomplishment, but plenty of misery for every little mistake.
And It ate at me. I started getting sick in the morning. I started to get nasty. I was always tired and worried about what I had fucked up this week... So I quit.
It's really hard to get up in the morning and drag yourself to a miserable job when you don't need the money, and I don't need the money. I see why people do it, one of my problems as a payroll clerk was too much compassion. I'd bend the rules for a sweet kid who just bough his first car and needed to make sure his check would clear. Need that check a day early? No problem.
And I just couldn't find a reason to get up in the morning, so I gave my Two Week's Notice- 'thank you ma'am but the situation isn't quite working out so I'm leaving for better opportunities', I found/ hired two people to do the job that I had been doing, and I'm once again unemployed. Honestly, I think everyone is the better for it. The receptionist/ admin I hired has the bubbly personality needed for a job like that, and the new payroll clerk is a competent, unambitious, bitch who knows the rules inside an out and cares more about her office's books than the contractors' sob stories.
Oddly, unemployment feels really good. I'm reading again, writing, and shooting (new pictures soon). Too much busyness, too much concern over trivial things destroys the mind's ability to concentrate on more complex problems. Don't believe me, ask the Pope (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/20/AR2006082000183.html).
It's axiomatic in American society that anything but hard labor must be a sign of corruption and weakness. We all know it as the vaunted protestant work ethic, a philosophy that may as well be interpreted as "Arbeit Macht Frei". Success, freedom, and worth in our culture are based upon your position in the job market. The next time someone asks me "What do you do?" I may give them a truthful answer. I eat. I drink (probably too much). I write a bit. I take pictures. Of course I'm expected to give a more relevant answer... to tell them what I do to earn money to buy food and shelter. But food and shelter (and drink even!) are not in immediate peril. Sharon and I could stay the course for months without a dime and not feel the pinch of 'short-rations.'
I don't know what I am doing at this point, but I am going to avoid selling my days to boredom at all costs. It's not worth the early grave. There has to be a better way to support a body and soul. I am planning to work with the camera some and shoot places that have been on my list for months. I'm sweeping out the cave, and promise new rants every few days. I care again, and am willing to lend my talents to anyone who is willing to provide just compensation for product. But get this clear, my time is not for sale.
