I talk a lot of shit about how devastating jobs are.  Boring, time-killers where packs of pissy people huddle around one another; a grim place where misery loves to hold you hostage and the minutes are frozen and slow.  Unfortunately, now is the time where I have to get a job.  It doesn’t mean the fun ends.  It doesn’t mean the writing stops.  It just means the hours shift and the days get longer.  It’s like the groundhog seeing its shadow, and the shadow looks over and says, “get a job, you lazy goddam groundhog.”

I thought I’d be able to find some interesting work by now.  A job where I could learn, earn a paycheck, and not be forced to wear a name badge or shave my face.  At least if I was learning something at a job, it wouldn’t feel like bartering my soul for dollars.  I don’t need many dollars.  One of the benefits of being unemployed, you learn to require less.

Some people can get jobs no problem.  They show up, charm someone in the HR department, smile, pretend laugh, shake hands, and they’re off and running.  I never understood the whole schmoozing technique.  I’ve always been afraid to ask people for recommendations, because if I fuck up, then I disappoint two people instead of one.  Realistically, I’m probably not going to fuck up too bad.  Unless it’s sales.  If it’s sales I’ll gladly fuck up, repeatedly, until they fire me.

Maybe I’ll be a construction worker.  I’ll wear one of those big straw hats and get my neck to the point of real nasty blackness.  I’d rather do that than sit and watch a clock.  At the end of the day, I’ll come home dirty and sweaty, too tired to do anything other than write.  It’ll mean early mornings and boots, blisters, orange vests, shovels, bosses, breaks in the shade, dehydration, depression, overtime, but at least it’s a job, right.  I think I’m wired for physical labor.  Too much sitting makes me crazy.

When I find a physical labor job, maybe I’ll start smoking cigarettes too.  Why not burn it at both ends?  I’m not going to smoke any of those thin, faggy cigarettes.  I want something unfiltered and brutal.  I want to blow smoke the way a tractor engine blows smoke.  Big clouds of gnarly brown smoke.  Smoke that goes down instead of up and away.  It might even give my voice a little more bass and rasp – hidden benefits.

I won’t smoke in the mornings. I don’t want to be a morning smoker with bad breath and orange teeth.  I’ll wait until the first break, or maybe lunch.  Then I’ll pull out my pack of cigarettes.  The package will have a skull and crossbones on it.  On the back it might have a little picture of a power plant or a mutated baby.  It won’t matter though.  I’ll pull out a cigarette with my grungy, callused hand and I’ll shield the wind while I light it.  Then I’ll blow a big cloud of brown smoke over my shoulder.  If there’s not a strong breeze, that smoke will fall straight to the ground behind me, like a corpse.  I’ll stomp at it with my boots until it dissipates. 

I’d have a cigarette at every break after that.  Maybe I’d keep one in my mouth while I worked.  Chain-smoke them and smash the lifeless ends into the dirt.  I might smoke two or three packs of those skull and crossbone cigarettes a day.  Work all day in the sun, drive home, wash the dirt and smoke off of my body, eat something, and go right to work writing.  I wouldn’t smoke cigarettes at home.  Those are just for work.

That’s the plan.  Find a job.  Pick up a cigarette addiction.  Work my ass off during the day, write at night.  Or maybe work a night shift and write during the day, it doesn’t really matter.  If you know anyplace that might hire someone like me, send me a message.

So long.