Missives From Obscurity

Nuclear Holocaust Awareness Week

Well, wasn’t that last entry a real let down? A list. A LIST! The last resort for uninspired bloggers. “I know, I’ll feign being witty and evocative by making… A LIST!” Ugh. And such a list, too. 100 items. I really DO get bored at work. Well, it doesn’t help that I have no idea how to throw myself into my work, no matter what the benefits of working are. I haven’t the faintest clue how to elevate my paycheck to such awesome heights of stardom status to warrant the 7 to 8 hours of sheer tedium that is my job. Whichever job I happen to be in at the moment. Whichever job one could choose to focus on in my spotty employment history.

This has been a problem since I first had to look for work. I just did not fucking want to do it. Summer of 1985, the summer I graduated from high school. I remember being hounded by my parents (my mom in particular) about getting a job. Any job. You could work at McDonalds! It got so annoying that once while my mother was stopped at a stoplight, in the middle of traffic, I got out of the car, yelling at her to get off my back, she yelling at me to get back in the car, me firing back “Just go home!” and stalking off through downtown Longmont, Colorado.

Jesus. Teenage temper tantrum with a capitol T and some extra, drama ridden exclamation points at the end.

Since then, I’ve had some jobs I genuinely enjoyed, and some jobs I completely fucking DESPISED (hello Samuel French!). I have yet, however, to find any job I’ve felt completely devoted to. I can’t fathom celebrating my 20 year anniversary at a job. Or, shit, for that matter, my FIVE year anniversary! Nothing has held my affection or devotion for long enough. It’s usually the rules of whatever workplace I’m in that kill it for me. “The customer is always right”… pheh! “We allow you two fifteen minute breaks and one half hour lunch break”… jeez, don’t go out of your ways to do me any favors! “Your schedule is from 8:30 to 5”. The schedule’s usually the big one that trips me up. Even if all I had to do was be at a place for 1 hour a week, I would completely resent the intrusion on my personal by the end of the second week.

But then again, I’ve never been one to comfortably capitulate to expected norms and social conventions. Not, by any means, that I’m a rebel, or a visionary, or so super secure in my identity that I flout social conventions and refuse to be limited by them. Mostly, I think it’s because I grew up a sensitive, introverted kid who got so involved in his own inner world that I wasn’t really capable of maintaining attention and adherence to anything going on outside my own head. If I did follow the crowd or the rules, it was just coincidence.

Which brings to mind this one time when I was in first grade. We were having a drill of some kind. I’m real fuzzy about the nature of the drill. I have a vague, hazy notion that it was one of those nuclear war drills. “In the event of a mushroom cloud, dive under your dinky, non-enclosed, not reinforced steel first grader’s desk. This will save you from certain nuclear annihilation.” But, given the Pomona, California locale, the drill was more likely to be an earthquake drill. I remember the bell ringing to indicate when we should get under out desks. But more vividly, I remember being under my desk, giggling.

Yes… giggling.

Mind you, no one else was giggling. Javier, my friend in the next desk, from under his desk, even hissed at me to shut up and stop laughing. Earthquake/nuclear war drills were serious business! To him, if not me. I have no idea what I thought was so hilarious. And I suppose, even though my mind at the time was obviously not on the business at hand, something of the drill sank in because in February 2001, when a 6.8 earthquake rocked Seattle, I immediately dove under the lunch room table of the law firm where I was then working. And I wasn’t laughing then. I was just worried that the cupboards full of glass above the table might crash down. Or that the building would collapse if the rocking got worse and I COULD DIE!!! Not so funny then.

Still, I think of and react to employment very like the way my first grade self reacted to that nuclear holocaust/earthquake drill. While everyone else seems to take this employment business so seriously, I’m snickering away under my desk. The idea that grown people sit for hours on end cubicled in front of computer screens with nothing to do all day but fill in online forms is completely ludicrous! Grown ups in all seriousness allow other grown ups to go into overwrought detail about how to make their overpriced cappuccino with soy milk spritzed with a light dab of almond syrup and sprinkled delicately with fine ground cinnamon and peppermint without the least hint of irony! College educated adults, in positions that require a college education, spend 40 hours a week bored out of their college educated skulls sitting at reception desks, answering phones and deftly routing calls between moments of playing Solitaire on their Macintosh computers and typing up holiday card lists for businesses that are more concerned about making sure the clients are not offended by the picture on the front of those cards than about offending the college educated individual whose mind is turning to a pink and marshmallow like substance! And why do these adults of all walks of life willing press on with endeavors guaranteed to bore and frustrate them?

Comfortable retirement!

Life and creative forces sacrificed on the ecru colored, pre-fabricated corporate altar that won’t even remember their life long contributions fifteen minutes after they leave for their treasured retirement to a broken down body and depleted spirit and then death.

THAT is laughable. THAT deserves a giggle.

posted by Joseph T. Lopez @ 4:00 PM