I Love My Job

"I love my job, I love my job"

"What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to convince myself to get out of bed."

There are days when I have to use an excessive amount of will power to get out of bed. Actually what really happens in my brain turns on a mind movie. I'm lying in bed dreaming about the shark documentary my wife made we watch before turning in last night. I'm wearing a giant seal costume and find that I'm an excellent swimmer, but a lousy shaver. I seem to have nicked myself and I'm bleeding into the cool blue Pacific. It's at that point when my mortgage and electric bill dressed as a great white shark come zooming towards me. Why is it that everything always seems to make sense in a dream?

Anyway I wake up and realize that if I don't get up and get to work, my wife and two daughters will not have anything to eat, any place to live, or any clothes to wear. I'm still in bed. I also realize that we would have to sell the computers. So I soon find myself getting ready for work.

My drive to work everyday takes me past a poultry processing plant. It's hard to not appreciate what I've got as I chug by it. The smell of the place is quite distinct and while I imagine I could get used to it, I doubt I could get used to the enormous vat of leftover chicken parts. Sometimes I see them forklifting it to the dumpster during my few second glimpse into plant operations. The forklift has a makeshift cellophane canopy stretched over the top of it. Something I didn't understand until I saw a loose chicken head fall out of the vat and get deflected from the driver. Talk about unusual work hazards!

I really do like my job. I have a lot or responsibility and flexibility to do my job the way I see fit. Additionally, while my boss knows the end result he wants, he couldn't do my job.

"Whats wrong with the network?"

"A loose gandor bar slipped a notch during that last upload and I have to realign the phase matrix..."

"oh..."

Do I do this often? Well...more often than I should. I always fix the problem, but its fun to think that somewhere in the building a division manager is relaying this information to a director and they're both nodding and feeling good that the problem turn out to be something as simple as a gandor bar. Why didn't they think of that?

It's a good job and I'm lucky to have it, but there are still days I would rather be anywhere but at the office. Lately three big projects all came to a head, which will require me working over the upcoming holiday weekend. So this morning was a little harder to struggle out of bed then the last few mornings. I believe this is mostly owing the the fact that I knew I would have to do it again tomorrow morning and possibly Sunday and Monday as well.

As Longfellow once said so aptly, “Into each life some rain must fall” and in the end I must admit that I have it pretty good, and that I really do love my job.