7 posts tagged “work”
So today is my last day as an unemployed man.
I finished my last day of AT&T last week, and I"m about to start out on a new adventure.
A family business.
My brother in law, Justin, has started a new machine shop in the wake of the collapse Kolstrand. I am to start on there tomorrow and help out in any capacity necessary for the time being, with an eye towards becoming expert in product and client alike.
I'm really looking forward to it. I fondly remember my time at Kolstrand. Working hard every day and coming home physically tired but mentally alive, unlike my previous job where I came home physically alive but mentally dead. It was painful.
As a little window to my angle of the human condition, I would like to try and exposite my feelings regarding the curse of man.
As part of the fall of man, we learn of the following curse, (non-Bible readers, hang in there), '
17 To Adam he said, "Because
you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded
you, 'You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return." '
"You blew it. You have to work your ass off, and you probably will never enjoy it, for the rest of your life."
So here's my work theory. If you're single or married with no kids - find a job that makes you the money you, need to do what you want to do the remaining 16 hours of the day. This way you get 16 hours a day and 2 extra days a week to do whatever the hell you want. That's what I did at Beckman, that's what I did at AT&T. Put in 8 good hours. Get out, do what you want.
But once you start getting to the point where a family is in the near future, it becomes more important to find some satisfaction in your work. After all, if the 8 hours at work are horrible or at the minimum, irritating, then you might not want to find similar experiences when you get home.
So that's what I've started to do. Find something I enjoy, latch on, find a way to support a family off of it. I'm still at the point in my life where if it doesn't work out, I've the recent resume that's deep enough to get my behind a desk again...oh God.
But here's hopin. Tomorrow I start. And for the first time in my life, I'm looking forward to my first day at work.
Those of you who read my blog will remember me posting about my work environment when I first got the job at AT&T. If not, this is for you:
"The people are great. But all very liberal. The sarcastic kind of liberal, too. The sarcastic, without substance, kind. That is to say, easy quips without factual basis. We'll see how long I can keep my cover."
So, now that I've clicked my last click at AT&T, I've given out my contact info and blog link to my former co-workers.
The cat's out of the bag. The secret conservative has come clean. I must admit it was rather fun. I actually divulged my secret a week or so ago, when I accepted a facebook invite from a Jessi.
Once my other co-workers seemed occupied - I leaned over, and whispered, "Now that you have a link to my blog, you're going to find out my dirty little secret."
She leaned in as well.
And in the littlest, guiltiest whisper that I ever whispered, I divulged my true identity, "I'm a Republican."
The look of shock as astounding.
But anyways, there it is. Love all you guys and gals at AT&T. It wasn't necessarily a great place to work, but you all made it fun and I look forward our future interactions and I wish you all the best.
So today I went down to my normal place of work. Put in a couple hours of driving and dirt and shop grease. Cleaned up, changed clothes (which always makes me think of Ben Kingsley in House of Sand and Fog) and drove down to downtown Seattle. Spent a couple hours, at a much nicer rate of pay solving PC/Office Equipment issues.
So...at work again. Not too interesting, but not too boring either.
I've been keeping busy sparring with Kali over my Surge post. I must say, it's been thoroughly enjoyable.
I noticed something interesting tonight. People here at work are generally pretty cordial, nice even. But I noticed over the last two nights that they all do something interesting when someone heads home after their long shift. Someone always says, "Drive safe."
This is outside their normal day to day expressions. No one ever says this when you head home from a normal day. But it seems that everyone realizes that this sort of late shift or long shift schedule taxes a person. And they genuinely make this statement as well. They are very sincere. You can hear it in their voice.
Anyways. Something I noticed.
Well, I'm here in a conference room with a bunch of other folks, all of us chit chatting and typing and clicking and monitoring and calling...
It's not very exciting and I can pretty much do anything I want while glancing over at my tools every few seconds.
Not bad at all.
I found a couple Vox'ers outside of the gH neighborhood and have been amusing myself by commenting on their Vox's. (Plural of Vox? Voxen!) by commenting on their Voxen.
Anyways, if you want to imagine what it's like, imagine me at one laptop typing this. Then to my left, there's another laptop with an auxiliary monitor. Up on those are a dozen or so monitoring tools, I'm pretty much just looking at line graphs, waiting for one of these spikes to plateau, then do some research into why and then inform the appropriate people. Although, nothing past the "just looking at line graphs" phase has happened yet.
Ah well. Hopefully it stays this way. The night is going by pretty damn fast. It's already 6:30'ish. Only 5.5 hours to go.
And OMG, there is a ton of food here. Ridiculous amounts of food. Good food too.
I just found out that because of a large product implementation at work, I'm going to have to work second shift for most of next week.
Breaking the rules here, but this is my place of work. It's pretty homey. Also, this is the first test of mobloging on Vox.
A little bit of editing and it's beautiful. Bravo for Vox.
