It's Not Just a Job...

or is it?

I've been working for this same company for going on 21 years. That's like eons. I had a temper tantrum at my old job doing room service/waiting tables and walked out. Determined to get a desk clerking job (which looked really glamorous from the breakfast shift of a hotel dining room), I hit the mean streets of Gatlinburg. Nobody would hire an ex-waitress to man the desk, so I moved down to the next town and was hired by the now defunct Carlstown Inn. It was fun for a while, learning new stuff. I can say without bragging that I cleared the best board in town. That's motelspeak for making sure the check-outs are out and in the check-ins are in the correct rooms on the board and on the property. Dealing with the public gets old. Quite quickly. The guy who hired me told me to let him know when I finished college. And, foolishly, I did. The next thing I know, I'm demonstrating to an evil woman named Kathy that yes, indeed, I do know how to operate an adding machine. Heck, I can even balance books and set up 3-D Excel spreadsheets!

So, that's how I became a payroll clerk. Or Payroll Queen, as I once signed an IRS return. It wasn't really anything I planned, it just happened. I think that's 98% of my life right there: unplanned, just happening.

I always believed that it would be more.

More interesting, more absorbing, more fulfilling, more something. More.

Growing up I alternated between wanting to be an archaeologist and wanting to be a writer, and I've pulled off a perfect double fault: I'm not either one! I don't even write letters anymore. And I'm sooooooo bored. I want to be engrossed in what I do, not watching the clock and thinking 'when I get off, I'm going to...' and never really doing anything with the possible exception of bitching, which, of course, I'm really really good at. Is that too much to ask? To get something out of eight-plus hours a day besides a vague headache and a paycheck?

I don't know. All I know is that my youngest child will graduate high school in the year 2016. Assuming, of course, that she doesn't end up in reform school. And I'll work in Mickey D's if I have to, but I'm not going to spend one more minute wishing I were somewhere else.

Like Lucinda Williams said, is it too much to demand I want a full house and a rock and roll band? Pens that won't run out of ink, and cool quiet and time to think? Shouldn't I have this?Shouldn't I have this? Shouldn't I have all of this and passionate kisses ... ?

The cool quiet and time to think part sounds like heaven.