It is the day after Valentine's Day, and the love is gone.
This is not a news flash, but I’ve never put it down on paper before. Writing it would make it more permanent, more real, more final. Even in pencil, which I rarely use, the thought would take on weight. Feelings, like thought balloons, should float just beyond our reach, even when the emotions are heavy. Like hate.
And those last four letters hurt as I watch them appear, one after the other, quickly on the computer screen. I've never been one to compose at the keyboard, preferring the feel of longhand--more writerly, more literary, less of that nasty clerkish inputting feel. But now, February 15, 1995, feels more like a clerical grunt moment anyway. And watching the words appear gives me a rather nice feeling of detachment, like it isn't really my life...like it's not really my career that's coming to an end.
I've just looked over the endings of the three paragraphs I've written: "...love is gone." "...hate." "...career that's coming to an end." That about sums it up. I used to love my job again. I used to see it as a calling. It's not that way anymore. I'm no longer having fun. But I want to. I want to love my job, I want to have more fun doing it than I’ve ever had before. And I'm hoping this journal will do the trick, a way of purging all the bad feelings and bad taste I have for what I see around me, a way of coming back into touch with what I loved about my job in the first place, a last chance at falling in love again. But I’m not sure if that's even possible now.
When I first came to this job, a return to the county of my adolescence, I was mentored by a former high school English teacher of mine. Noting and stoking my enthusiasm, she heaped upon me every possible opportunity she could (at the time, I saw them then as opportunities, not duties). She plumbed my idealism and fired my drive by asking me where I saw my career leading. I saw no end. I was young. I was a new breed. Cocky.
I told her, "When I stop loving what I'm doing, I'll quit. I don't see it happening, but if I ever become one of those burn-outs," I nodded my head toward her door, "when I just pick up a check, when I hate my job," I nearly spat out the phrase, naive then, "then I'll know I'm doing more damage than good. And I'm outta here. I'll quit."
She smiled and lit up a cigarette.
That was nearly nine years ago. She's dead now. And at this exact moment in time, I feel like a short-timer.
This is my journal.
I was a teacher.
1 comment:
Not a bad beginning, if I do say so myself...
'Bout sums up where I was thirteen years ago.
It's interesting, too, that even then I was especially enamored of the power of simply writing down a thought. That would come back to me again some four years later.
After I left the classroom, I started web developing, first getting a job for Learning Tree International, then for a network device manufacturer in Calabasas, Xylan. Xylan was purchased by the huge French conglomerate Alcatel in the spring of '99, and by fall we were sent to Paris to discuss our future.
Midway through a working lunch with our entire staff and the world-wide VP of Marketing, I could see that this was no longer a place I wanted to be. So into my Palm Pilot, I scribbled:
"Call dad, Call Carlos (a friend with whom I had worked at the Tree), Call the headhunter. Get me out of here..."
And the simple input of those words freed me, not just to leave, but to open my big mouth and put forth a simple proposition to the assembled. It would end up getting our crew a major perk (possible redesign of the entire Alcatel site)... but I wouldn't benefit... I was truly out the door...
Post a Comment