The Best Seat In The House

I Need To Keep Reminding Myself How Much Work Sucks.

As I stand at the precipice of another week of searching for gainful employment in Mickey’s Paradise, all I have to show for my efforts is a handful of negative experiences and a new found respect for New York. It took only a week for me to land something pretty decent in Port Ewen of all places. One interview, one drug test and it was here’s your keys.

My experience with ageism in Florida is a lot like the experience I had with internet dating after I left my ex. I had successfully gone 47 years on this planet without once even thinking of myself as 5’ 6”. That is to say, I knew how short I was but prior to the “smartphone revolution,” I never even thought about it.

When I look back now, I’m sure I suffered rejection because of my height a few times, I just never made the connection. That is, until I started getting messages on Match.com that were like “You’re cute but I don’t date men under 5’ 10”. There were more of those than I care to admit.

In my twelve year career I have worked for five companies: Swift, JB Hunt, NFI, Yellow and Tesla. Every one of those places had drivers in their late sixties and a couple who were even in their early seventies. I figured it was a given, so I had never seen my age as a factor that was going to hinder my employment possibilities.

To add insult to injury, they want to pay guys with local jobs (those precious jobs where you actually sleep in a house every night) $18/hr. Think about that for a second. You are operating an 80,000 pound moving village capable of killing numerous people with one slight misstep; you are targeted and hunted down by a Department of Transportation that sees you less like a human and more like an easy source of revenue; you are dealing all day every day with people in cars that almost seem to want to kill you for sport—for $18.00 an hour.

Remember, people with this job have wound up in prison for screwing up. That alone is worth at least $25 an hour. It’s a shit ton of responsibility.

And no, Florida isn’t a more affordable place to live. The houses seem to be, but it’s all smoke and mirrors. Is a house actually only $78,000 if you’re taking home $600 a week? The groceries, the car insurance, the gas, the rental prices–they’re all the same as New York.

I suppose if it really was extraordinarily affordable here it would be even more crowded. Everybody loves the sun. It’s almost as if the business owners might take advantage of that. Plus, it’s practically a rite of passage for anyone over twelve to drive a rig, so the talent pool is overflowing. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone in Florida who can’t drive a tractor trailer.

I walked out of an interview yesterday feeling like Ali when he lost the title. I choked. I wanted it too much. I thought I was using my typical enthusiasm and it was probably read as fear and desperation.

I need to keep reminding myself how much work sucks. It makes me spend enormous amounts of time as a gear in an inhumane machine. It stifles my creativity. It makes me think only about money and I happily give away hours of my life for crumbs.

When I remind myself of all that, it shouldn’t be too difficult to convey the dynamic that just might work. Shit, even I believe me. I really don’t want their job.

I’ve always seen the need to work as some definition of who I was. I allowed my income to define who I was. And my prize for that was not wanting to live anymore when I was told that the money was stopping.

That was until Julie, who saw what was happening said to me, “None of that is you. You are guitar and performance and pen and notebook. That’s when you are alive and content. The money chase makes you cold and robotic and even, a lot of the time, angry.”

This will always be an inconvenient truth. For too many years, I have squandered away these god given reprieves with the fears and worries of when I will, once again, receive the gift of returning back to being another gear in a machine made to destroy me. I don’t want to that anymore. I’m pretty certain that time will come quickly enough.

So perhaps ageism is a gift where we get to spend a little longer being unemployed because we need it in our mid fifties, And sixties. And whenever we find ourselves behind the eight ball.

Because it just might be the best seat in the house.