Dispatch From The Trenches

You can only either win or lose…

It’s been some time since I have written anything for Substack. Or worked on the second draft of my novel. Or wrote music. Or picked up the guitar. And if you know me—even superficially—you know that my stumbling onto this mysterious pattern (or lack of pattern) was exactly the sort of thing I loved to sink my teeth into.

I thought, “Let’s find a stupefying and heart breaking through line—an underlying reason for all of these blocks that expose the truth I’ve been artfully avoiding!

Is it substance abuse?

I wish. I don’t even have the access to establish a halfway decent dope habit if I wanted to.

Is it work?

No. At least, not in the traditional way that “work” robs us of our souls.

Ah, it must be the compensation.

What compensation?

Exactly.

I have been taking home a little more than half of what I was making at Tesla. But it’s not even just Tesla. Before then, Yellow Freight and JB Hunt provided between $85-95K per year, decent health insurance, benefits and pay.

This new job I have in Lake Katrine is…not that. It’s a $55K/yr job with useless health insurance that carries a $4000 deductible. This is what I reaped as a result of a failed drug test.

Unfortunately, I’ve come to realize that the amount of stress I put up with as a Class A driver was of greater consequence than the pee test. In other words, if stopping THC was the lone barrier to my lifelong happiness, I could find the energy to rectify that.

I experienced a “Dark Five Minutes of the Soul” and came out of the closet as a non truck driver. Say it loud, say it proud. With the people on the road, the way they drive their cars, I just cannot put myself in such a no win situation day after day. Statistically, it was only really a matter of time before I witnessed or experienced something that would alter my machinery a little too much.

The problem with that is that I constructed a $105,000 a year life and that deficit is winding up on credit cards. A wonderful system of finance where the poorest of the population pay $2 for every $1 they borrow.

I don’t want to spend too much time lamenting how terrible it is that we are expected to work seven days a week if we want to survive, but that’s what it’s come to. I think that’s the hidden factor, really. Those other jobs I mentioned, while they may not have been seven days a week, they might as well have been. By the time you woke up and felt like doing anything, it was time to go back to work.

And I can feel this in my body. I’m not working enough to survive. Too much contemplation and not enough action. Unfortunately, it’s the action that keeps the landlord from hounding you in the parking lot every time you come home from work or go to get your mail.

Last week, my boss sent me a message regarding my working a few hours every single day to add to my schedule. I nearly cried with relief. This was obviously the answer to all of my prayers.

That idea lasted four days. Now he’s ignoring my texts. Me and Julie are just laying here in bed trying to figure out how it’s all going to happen.

If I learned anything writing for Elephant Journal, it was that one should end every piece with a payoff. A call to action. A lesson. A moral.

With this in mind, I will end this valiant effort by saying:

To be continued…