Patch It Up
It never fails. At whichever point of our lives that we’re at, we always want to be at another.
When I was in fourth grade, I desperately wanted to be an adult, already. Make no mistake, I was a happy kid and found countless ways to have a blast. Yet, I also wanted to be in the adult room talking, rather than hanging in the backyard alongside the kids knocking themselves on the head with the plastic hammers. Always in a hurry to grow up and move on to the next step.
When I was in college, it was to already be in the middle of my career. In a house of my own, making a comfortable living as a columnist to those who waited to hear what I was going to say next.
And now that I’m a thirty-something adult, I fluctuate between longing for the days of watching Thundercats after school and being in some alternate life as a blazer with elbow patches-wearing English Writing professor at a college or a blazer with elbow patches-wearing psychiatrist. Just as long as it includes blazers with elbow patches, people.
It’s easy to idealize the past and the future, when the present is staring right at ya, daring you to blink first. What’s funny is that we’ll continue to do this, even until we become old, gray, and employed by Wal-Mart. We know the past was never the way we actually remember it – in both, the good and the bad.
Yet, ten years down the road we’ll look back at this point in our lives and say, “Wow, those were the days!” No matter what we think of them now. If the present is great, we’ll look back at these times because of just how great they were. If the present is a struggle, we’ll look back at these times fondly because of how we fought through them.
And it’s that same idealization that keeps us looking at what the future could have in store for us, still.
For me, that’s hover boards and blazers with elbow patches. And that’s enough to make past, present and future Bruce happy.
My Dirty Little Secret
Did you hear that sigh of relief? It sounds a lot like that which you hear after sitting on the couch and unbuttoning your jeans following Thanksgiving dinner. Ahhhhhh.
That’s how I feel now that I have a week’s worth of employment under my belt, again.
Since college, I had been blessed with gainful employment. And I have to confess, while elements of every position since then could and would annoy me on a situational basis, I’m the kind of person who actually looks forward to going to work in the morning. I don’t look forward to waking up in the morning, mind you – that takes me multiple cups of coffee and a shower that goes on twice as long as necessary. But the act of working comforts me.
Then I found myself out of work for nearly eight months. And the feeling was foreign to me. Meeting new people became frightening. One of the first questions you get, after what is your name and what kind of product do you use in your hair, is the “What do you do for a living?” question. It pained me to have to admit to every new person I came across, that I was looking for work. I fully realized many people are in the same boat, and the circumstances were due to relocation and not a measure of my job performance. But still, I felt embarrassed admitting that I couldn’t find work.
Obviously, during that time dating drops in the list of priorities.
Hi. I’m 31. I don’t have a job. Want to go grab dinner and a movie? No, literally – I can’t afford to take you out, so I’ll distract the video store clerk and you grab the DVD and run as fast as you can once you hear the alarm. I’ll choke on the steak at dinner, so we can get them to comp us, there. Can you pick me up? My gas tank’s low and I don’t wanna fill it up quite yet. All that aside, I think tonight’s going to be fun!
That kind of dysfunction may work on Lindsay Lohan, but it about ends there.
Being out of work became my dirty little secret. Everywhere I went, I worried someone would find out. During the day, if I frequented the same locations, they’d know I was out of work. Going out for drinks and turning down a round of drinks because I couldn’t pick up an eventual round; again, they’d know. Being out with friends I knew, but being introduced to one of their friends and the question was bound to come up. And then they’d know.
I tried my best not to let on that it was bothering me, that I wasn’t going to let it break-a-my-stride. But secretly, my swagger was gone. Eight months on the job snide will do that to even the strongest-willed personalities.
But I kept fighting. Every day. Kept applying for jobs. Kept writing. Kept laughing, both with and at myself. And it finally paid off. It feels like I just stood on a mountain top and shouted my dirty little secret to the world and got it off my chest.
World, I got 99 problems, but a job ain’t one!
The swagger’s returning. Life’s priorities are shifting and slowly returning to pre-out-of-work levels. The thought of getting together with old friends no longer frightens me now that I won’t have to answer their “How’s the job search going?” with the “Like shit, pass the salt?” response. I can begin chatting girls up in public again, without having my cell phone ready to answer a fake call the second they go the “Where do you work?” route.
And I can begin blogging about things that have nothing to do with work, again! Aren’t you excited? I know I am! The truth shall set you free.
Please Note The Change To Our Coffice Hours
I sit here in the coffee shop I’ve frequented nearly every week now for the better part of seven months. The baristas are the same. As are a couple of the regulars. But it all looks so different, today.
After using their free WiFi and $1.80 unlimited free coffee refills to fuel me through job applications and draft after draft of cover letters, today I sit here still with my wallet-friendly coffee, but not a Job Search Engine in sight. No resumes on my computer desktop. And Gmail loaded up not to write and send a cover letter, but to Gchat with friends inbetween my own creative writing ventures.
You can probably tell that yes, I finally start a new job (a week from today). And I’m ecstatic. About the people I’ll be working with and for. The work itself. Oh, and also about not having to talk about myself in cover letter form anymore. Do you know how hard it is for me to talk about myself and what I bring to the table employment-wise, without using bad puns and making sweatervest references? I felt like Michael Scott being tempted with great “That’s what she said” material, yet not being allowed to pull the trigger on them.
Trust me. It’s really hard.
I’ve spent so much time in coffee shops during the daytime over the last seven plus months, that I coined a term for it. The Coffice. It was my coffee shop office while I didn’t have an actual office to go to. It was the place that gave me purpose to wake up by alarm every morning with somewhere to go, so as to never allow myself to become lazy. It kept me socializing with people, so that I didn’t become a Unabomber-esque hermit … well, y’know, minus his love for all things pipe bombs.
As much as I love the Coffice, I’ll be happy not to have to be here during the work week anymore. Future Coffice excursions will be known as the Writer’s Coffice, and it’ll be to work on my screenplay or blog posts. Of course, while people-watching.
And hopefully, in time, over lattes again rather than just regular coffee.
If I was making one of those hand-traced turkeys, this would certainly appear on one of the multi-colored fingers of the turkey.
This is my blog. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My blog is my best friend.
