Something happened this week that brought a thought to the front of my mind which I have been thinking about for a while. Here's the story.
I work as a data enterer for the university hospital. It's not an interesting job, or an important job but I get to listen to CD's and work part time and I get paid okay. So I am pretty fast at data entry, in fact very fast. I work on a special project that enters data into the database a lot faster than most data entry and the computers can't keep up with us. So my boss, her boss and 2 people from information systems came by this week to watch me work and improve the software to better serve me and the others working on this project. I was chosen as the subject because I'm so good at my job.
So I'm sitting there with 4 people standing behind me watching me and I'm entering this data at a superhuman pace. They are all impressed. I felt like a research monkey in a lab, punching buttons for bananas in front of a 2 way mirror. But in reality I'm like that chicken that beat me at tic-tac-toe down at Klondike Days. At least you can learn something from a test monkey, the only thing the people watching me learned is how fast someone can do something mindlessly repetitive.
In the movie fight club tyler durden says that you are not your job. That's a nice thought, but I'm not sure I agree. If I was a VCR repairman and I was stranded on a desert island with a doctor, he'd be the fucking doctor. Other indications are that although I may not consider myself a data-enterer, the facts that I go to a place every day and enter data and I keep receiving paychecks as a data enterer contradict my theory.
This guy I work with who is 19 asked me a good question. He said "I'm 19, I have a high school education and I have this job. You are 27 and you have 2 university degrees, what are you doing here?" I have a well rehearsed and convoluted answer that reduces nicely to "I have no idea".
Well there was one reason. I wanted the free time to pursue my design company and write. But I'm barely doing either. I'm just entering data and sleeping. So maybe I need to focus on a new career but the trouble is that I can't think of anything. Other than peanut butter tycoon I can't imagine a job that will give me the freedom to fulfill my unstable ego while still being shackled to some wall making money for someone else. The best I've come up with is selling donkeys on the side of a volcano in Guatemala.
In my city's phone book there is a man named Mike Christ, in fact there are 2 Christs. That means I could potentially pay them to have a chicken wing eating contest or some other existential duel which would only stamp my ticket to hell should I be wrong about the universe. A chicken can beat me at tic-tac-toe, but I can mentally construct an elaborate cosmic mousetrap that results in chickens being eaten by a pair of Christ's.
If I can think of something that bizarre I really should be able to think of something useful to do with my life. Wasting it was never my plan and I haven't, I got a fancy education, run a fun little business, its not like I have nothing to show for it. But it's beginning to look like this comfort could become habit, and habits are bad reasons for any behaviour.
I consider this little dilemma of mine is shared by a lot of you people out there. Do you like your job? Is this what you thought you would be doing now? Does the idea of still doing it in 1 year make you feel like going back to bed? Obviously your job isn't your entire existence. You may have a family, people that love you, or hate you. They are your life. But the way you occupy yourself sinks into you. Anything you spend that much time on affects how you see yourself.
If I am still working at this job in 6 months I better have at least half of my novel finished. If not, I'm quitting my job and moving to Barcelona. I think the idea for my novel is good. With 6 months I think I can be on my way into it. Let's just hope in 6 months you're not getting a postcard from Spain. Sangria and abandoned dreams, no me gusta.