Job

So I'm down at the main Con Ed office looking to pay my power bill. As I have a bike and hate the idea of wasting forty cents when I can get the arrow to the target faster on my own, it just made more sense. I just happened to forget what time of the day it was. Lunchtime. The place was packed!

As I'm on vacation, this fact didn't bother me too much. But as I waited I made note of the white boy whose nine to five is to be the information desk for Con Ed customers. I mean this fella was the posterboy for burnout. Mid-50s, probably a wife a kids at home. He wore this glazed over expression as person after person came to him with their questions and answers and receipts for review. No one was different than anyone else in his eyes. Just another face standing before him. Another account running the risk of being suspended. I couldn't do his job for more than a week without losing my mind, or at least without a nightly dispatch of resumes and any and everyone who might find me a something a little less monotonous.

When I think about it, there are far more jobs that I think I would suck at than those I could do. I had this idea in my head that I wanted to be a cop for awhile. Then Negarra reminded me of the uniforms with the 20-pound utility belt and the fact that entire hoods would hate me on general principle. Then I thought about the idea of having to actually stop someone for carrying and open container of beer or to write out a ticket for loitering. While my reason for being there would have been solving murders as a detective, there would be years of petty monotonous days I'd have to go through first.

The same deal goes with the postal service, or being a parking attendant, or even driving a cab for that matter. The prospect of spending my days rolling through the same streets hoping to find people with their hands stuck out probably wouldn't be my way to go, though out of the above list, cabbie would make the most sense for me. I think I could handle being a bartender, a legal investigator, working in any kind of marketing outside of telemarketing, a cook, a librarian. Hell, custodians make big bank for what they do, though I don't like cleaning enough to make it a profession.

Such thoughts are merely brain teasers to keep me occupied while I await the verdicts on my scripts, prepare to start a new ghosting gig and begin plans for the Cake launch party for D. As I go out into the world, eavesdropping and still glimpses of the lives of others, I try to think of all the other places I might fit in the world were this writing racket thing to go bust.

But in the end, as a good friend told me last night, "Spirit is never late." If this business wasn't my business I wouldn't still be in it.