Midnight Jolt Run

Posted by Fiss on September 8, 2009

I read some good shit from the White House yesterday.  Ahh, to be a political speech writer…

loved or hated, at least you get a solid paycheck and someone else’s neck on the chopping block when the book burners and critics come calling.  Cherry jobs like that don’t just come along every day, and you certainly don’t get to them by writing about Snape and Dumbledor’s backstage sex romps or debating Twilight VS Hellsing!  Hell no!

The message that the great Super-Obama, his underlings and his team of fanfiction.net forbidden writers have come up with is a good one, nonetheless:  Don’t give up, do your best, and use the Education System to your full advantage, because you’ll be doing yourself a disservice if you end up as a Wal Mart Greeter at the age of thirty.

Not that there’s anything wrong with working at Wal Mart.  I’ve done my time there as a janitor, and trust me, while it sucked a whole lot of ass there were plenty of other things I could have done that were worse to pay the rent.  The truly terrifying aspect of it, though, wasn’t the barely-minimum wage, nor the long, soul-numbing task of scraping gum off the floor with a razor-blade.  No.  The terrifying part was when I sat down at the lunch table, consuming my Jolt and writing notes for Talking Moon Cat adventures, I was one of the youngest people at the table, and I wasn’t that young.

My boss was an ancient East Indian man that looked like his resume included about 20 years of farming on dry rock and/or salt-mining in some blasted waste of an alien planet only described in the Star Wars universe extended saga.  My supervisor was a 35 year old burly fat white dude with a trim office beard who got mad…no…physically agitated…because apparently I didn’t know how to use a broom to his exacting expectations and years of experience.  Everyone around me who had to slum it as a non-supervisor, non-important Wal Mart person started at the age of 30 and ramped quickly up to the age of OH HOLY JESUS WHY ARE THERE MUMMIES WALKING AROUND THIS STORE?

There must be a moment when you wake up, look around at your shitty apartment with 3 cats who poop everywhere, eat Kraft Dinner and Rice like a starving college student, then drag your ass out to your job stocking the shelves of Michael Bay Transformers action figures at the local K-Mart on the eve of your 50th Birthday and wonder:  Is this It?

Is this what a career is?  What you do to support yourself and others?  Fuel your ambitions and create your legacy in the universe?  Is this what God put you here to do? Opening boxes of transformable Camaros that have little buttons on them that make little beeps and explosions come out of the Camaro’s arse?  Cleaning up after the endless tide of consumer trash that spawns from the back kitchen of the Starbucks or Mickey-D’s you work at?  Scolding teenagers for littering at the movie theatre when they’re wearing jeans worth more than the car you drove in to work today?  I’m not the world’s most ambitious or money-focused individual, but there is the matter of pride and self respect that would make me rage should I ever wake up in any of these situations.  Is that just me?

Now, I’ve been pretty fortunate in finding good jobs and using my experience to get me ahead in life.  And for every teacher or parent yelling at you to earn a doctorate or masters degree, there will be a guy down the street that is making more money than you ever will by shovelling gravel.  But the facts are that even if it just sits in a frame on your wall in diploma or degree form, chances are that piece of paper was worth it and you’ll at least make your money back without having to shovel, cook, scrape, hammer or mop anything at Wal Mart or Wendy’s.

Applying yourself, using the system, overcoming the challenges in your way, learning how to think, how to act, how to learn…these things make up the true syllabus of a good education.  That piece of paper, your life experiences, those 4 years of High School, or that decade of internship does nothing to catalogue your experiences, your technical knowledge, nor your specific advantages.  No, my friends, it tells others that you can learn. You can adapt.  You can grow and excel in your chosen field and likely many others.  Learning shows others that you are willing to learn.  Succeeding shows others that you might just be good at it, despite all the shit opposing you.  If you were born with a silver spoon in your diaper and were handed everything on a silver platter, or if you were tossed to the wild, woolly woods and left to fend for yourself, either way you will have that one, perfect unassailable thing:  Your Brain Works.  At least enough to get by.  At least enough to fake it.

Your mind, your will, and your passions are what will propel you in life.  They’ll contain the skills that let you overcome; the abilities that earn you reward; the activities and events that help make you happy.  Isn’t that worth a bit of extra homework?  An extra hour or two to polish the resume?  The investment in a course for something you always wanted to learn?

I sure wish Mulroney and Bush Sr. had Obama’s writers back when I was in school.  No doubt I would have taken it all a bit more seriously and the lessons closer to heart.  But, then again, the best thing about learning is it doesn’t just happen from 5 to 25, and I have 30 years worth of education, experience, ups and downs to help me see the value in it all now.   I just hope that the kids of the day don’t have to suffer through threats of flipping burgers at 40, or critiquing broom-handling skills at 50 to figure it all out.  There are only so many lucrative Greeter positions open, you know…

Better get started on that Theoretical Astrophysics degree after all.

Posted under Manifestoes