On Working The Same Job For A Long Time
It's not something I feel proud of. Not really. In today's world, it's more an admission of failure, a lack of ambition, to admit that you've been at the same job for over sixteen years. Political cycles rise and fall, friends marriages come and go, other friends careers go up, nowhere, around - anywhere - at least they move. But mine stays frozen in stasis. I am in an unfrozen caveman of a job - the same one I walked into sixteen years ago. Or maybe that qualifies as a frozen caveman job?
This is an odd thing today, considering todays outsourced world. I am a bit lucky to be part of such a stable, small company. In the working class, it is a mark of honor to be steadily employed this way for so long. It means I am a "good worker". I have a working class background, so maybe this attitude is all to easy for me to accept. The destiny of class? Argh - I hope not.
To the middle class it is a bit shameful, a mark of sloth. I am just not trying hard enough to improve myself. There must be something wrong with me. I feel a bit embarrassed to admitting it to my middle class friends. As for any upper class people I know (or don't, for that matter), it means I am a nonplayer, an ignorable worker bee - a cog, a maintenance man. I am below the radar of the upper classes, as much as a box of Kleenex.
The job, as it is, is at times engaging. It can be varied, with lots of access to computers and the internet and media - so I can amuse myself in down moments, and remain in the occasional illusion of sanity. I have gone through long periods of boredom and intense dissatisfaction with it. I have abused it at times, as at other times it has abused me.
The cycles, though, in their own way, may have helped keep me there. They became my life, my context, as i moved through phases, moods, fads. It was my constant.
Now I feel mortally trapped. What does that mean? Well, i feel Sisyphean, and the cycle is not stopping. It will take a large wrench, or a misstep and roll of the boulder for this clockwork to actually stop working and release me into a new life. Perhaps I will need to be flattened and killed to be reborn into something new. Change seems so distant, unattainable.
Where is my hope? Perhaps my hope is in bolluxing up and starting over. Perhaps it is in getting the gumption to move on, to break my class expectations. To be bold and break out of my working class sheep timidity.
But for now - baaaah! Baaaah!
This is an odd thing today, considering todays outsourced world. I am a bit lucky to be part of such a stable, small company. In the working class, it is a mark of honor to be steadily employed this way for so long. It means I am a "good worker". I have a working class background, so maybe this attitude is all to easy for me to accept. The destiny of class? Argh - I hope not.
To the middle class it is a bit shameful, a mark of sloth. I am just not trying hard enough to improve myself. There must be something wrong with me. I feel a bit embarrassed to admitting it to my middle class friends. As for any upper class people I know (or don't, for that matter), it means I am a nonplayer, an ignorable worker bee - a cog, a maintenance man. I am below the radar of the upper classes, as much as a box of Kleenex.
The job, as it is, is at times engaging. It can be varied, with lots of access to computers and the internet and media - so I can amuse myself in down moments, and remain in the occasional illusion of sanity. I have gone through long periods of boredom and intense dissatisfaction with it. I have abused it at times, as at other times it has abused me.
The cycles, though, in their own way, may have helped keep me there. They became my life, my context, as i moved through phases, moods, fads. It was my constant.
Now I feel mortally trapped. What does that mean? Well, i feel Sisyphean, and the cycle is not stopping. It will take a large wrench, or a misstep and roll of the boulder for this clockwork to actually stop working and release me into a new life. Perhaps I will need to be flattened and killed to be reborn into something new. Change seems so distant, unattainable.
Where is my hope? Perhaps my hope is in bolluxing up and starting over. Perhaps it is in getting the gumption to move on, to break my class expectations. To be bold and break out of my working class sheep timidity.
But for now - baaaah! Baaaah!
posted by K.Webster at 1:41 PM
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