A Glimpse Inside The Mind Of A Madman

Are you back in the bathroom again? What do you do in there all the time?

Figure it out.

No, I mean like before. Like every morning before you leave you're in there for like a half an hour and all I ever hear is water running.

And?

You're not in there touching yourself, are you?

I was wrong about you. You're crass and retarded.

What do you do in there?

You really want to know?

I asked, didn't I? I'm playing the role of the concerned guy.

I cry.

You cry?

I cry.

Any particular reason?

Hey.

I think about the people that make decisions that affect our lives. The doctors who make advancements in curing diseases. The engineer that designs skyscrapers. The guy that maps out a plane's flight path.

The navigator.

I think about how those people are out there every day making a difference, leading big lives. And how they refuse to be intimidated by the tremendous odds of failure they face. And how they only concern themselves with peers and company that apply to their goals and noble causes.

Jesus! I'd hate to tell you what I think about when I'm in the bathroom.

I think about all that and I cry. Because I have nothing better to do than fuck you.

The above is a part of the script from Mallrats that has come to my mind a lot in the past few weeks. I feel like this passage explains how I feel about my job. There are people out there who go to work everyday and make a difference but I sit at a desk all day, invisible to most people (unless they are lost and confused and need to find their noses), generally doing nothing and when I do actually do work, it is meaningless mind-numbing tasks.

I don't know why I chose to write about this at this time. Maybe it has something to do with others around me pursuing their dreams or achieving something they had wanted for years. Or maybe it is because this subject was touched on brieflywith some co-workers of mine (I can't even call them colleagues that is how meaningless my job is; I would be degrading them all by referring to them as colleagues).

The problem lies in the fact that I have no real skills (I might have had some at one point but being where I am has seemed to destroy them all). I also work for the government so it is near impossible to find a job I am qualified for in the private sector that will pay anywhere close to what I 'earn' now. In fact, my equivalent jobs in the private sector pay at most $15 per hour and those are very few. To top it all off I rely on public transit to get to and from work and you all know some of the troubles I have with that.

Many of you out there will likely tell me to find something else, maybe in a different field altogether, and I would agree with you 100% but the trouble is what field. My hands seem totally out of my command some days and I can barely hammer a nail let alone construct a house or build a fence so construction my not be in the cards for me either. As my co-workers can testify, my people skills are lacking or rather non-existent and my brain seems to run on dollar store batteries that are nearing the end of their useful lives at times. Anyone hiring?

My only interests are video games (and I only beat Mario Brothers once, the original Nintendo game), sports (bush league skills at most and way past my athletic prime anyhow), and photography (but who isn't into photography these days). Oh yeah, don't forget music but I am as tone deaf as they come. So I have no skills and the few interests I do have won't lead to financially stable careers without dropping about half a million dollars in education, which I never liked the first time through...or even the second time.

Someone once told me that I am living in the wrong era and I am beginning to believe that. I keep thinking that once my wife goes back to work everything will be okay but I don't know if I can last here that long (I told my supervisor this morning that I am a prime candidate for 'going postal', I bet she spent the better part of the day trying to find a way to let me go...nicely). My wife has a better chance of finding a well paying job but it will come at a huge cost, less time to spend with baby Alan, and I don't know if she really wants to make that sacrifice.

This situation has made me think a lot about the past and the choices I have made to get where I am; the things I would have lost had I not chosen the path I did. I would have made some small alterations but other than my current employment situation, I can take solice in the fact I would not change a thing given the choice. Since this post is getting away from me I shall leave you now with the closing of the poem 'The Road Not Taken' by Robert Frost:

'I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by.
And that has made all the difference.'