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Controlled Chaos
I sit here at my keyboard eating pistachio nuts, casually throwing the empty shells into my over-flowing ashtray. I light up a Marlboro, take another swig of my Ballantine’s neat, and I wonder how the the hell did I end up here.
It was not so long ago that I was in charge of a USS nuclear fast attack submarine. Well, to be honest, the Captain was in charge but I ran the engine room on my watch. It was me and the engineering officer of the watch who determined what would happen in an emergency. And truth be told, as most engineering watch supervisors will tell you, it was our word that mattered. Billions of dollars in materials, and 120 lives rested in our hands. I never felt so alive.
After the navy, and during if you ask some folks, I was also engaged in more “immediate” life and death situations. I trusted my training and my innate abilities to get me through, which they did. I’m not going to lie. There were times when I was not so sure I would see another sunrise. But survive I did, and in doing so I, once again, never felt so alive.
Now I’m just another poor schlep out looking for work. Work. Something to make money. I can make money using my old skill set, but… Work. Holy Christ it hurts right now. I get rejection notices from people I don’t even know and yet I hate them. I light another smoke.
I’m caught between worlds. Too old to do what I am truly good at and yet too young and poor to retire. I watch old movies and laugh at the inaccuracies. I laugh at the movies, but I know that I still have the fire in me. A fire that isn’t a warmth to someone on a cool winter night, but a fire that burns with the intensity of unbridled passion for adventure. It’s not a good fire, it’s also not a bad fire. It just is. It’s a fire that knows what it knows. A fire that knows how to burn brightly, in a no-fire society. It’s not wrong, it’s just out of place.
I’ve tempered this fire with work in the past. Never really quenched, but soothed. Left smoldering, it burns to this day, a constant reminder of my past. I’m proud of my past. I may not be proud of my actions in all cases, but I’m proud of the outcome. It was real. Hard. Cold. Ugly. But it was real, and it mattered.
Now I sit, begging at the floor of big corporations, hoping for a job, a scrap, a mere ort left by some other has-been. “Yes sir, this is a fine organization.” “No sir, I don’t understand why you aren’t making more money. ” It’s killing me.
My God. What have I become?
Gregor
Posted on February 1st, 2010 in Banter by Gregor.
Ala Carte: Philosophy
Mark,
I was watching “Long Way Down” the other day. Don’t know if you’ve seen it, but it was the follow-up to “Long Way Round”, where Ewen McGregor travels on his motorcycle with his best buddy from John O’ Groats, Scotland, down to South Africa. They obviously have tons of money, obtained sponsorship, etc., and I was completely jealous of them.
However, there was a point on the first DVD (still waiting for the 2nd and 3rd DVD’s from Netflix) that was the real killer for me. While riding through the Sudan, they happened upon two sets of people. Now, while you think that it’s just Ewan and his buddy, they have a support team (and camera team) of something like 6 other people.
So, in the middle of some god forsaken road in the Sudan, they come up on this guy on a bicycle. His bike was pretty much loaded, and he also had a trailer he towed behind his bike. The guy said he left England 13 years ago and was cycling around the world. My jaw dropped. Then, they came upon another couple, who were on motorcycles, also just riding. It reminded me of Forest Gump, where he just starts running, and never stops.
My point? Hmmm…what the hell is my point? Anywho, these other riders didn’t have any of the logistical support and were truly on their own. It was inspiring to think that people could do that. That they could give up everything, to do something they had a passion for doing. In 2004, while I was in India, I was thinking that I could cash out my 401K and live very well in India. Would I have the balls to ever do it? Probably not.
I was very fortunate, in that the 2 times I have been laid off, I had the twins to look after. So, it still felt like I had a “job”. It’s a time that we’ll never get back, so, in the voice of Tim Gunn, “Designers, use your time wisely” and “Make it work.”
Find your passion. Find your voice. Take the opportunity to Live. When the time is right, the job will find you. It’s not that you are not worthy of a job…it’s that right now, no job is worthy of you.
Daren