The Lens Part 3: Those Jobs

I work with a fella who claims to have worked in 47 restaurants. I mean, what? Really? Wow! You'd think that one might get the idea after half of that amount of restaurant gigs, that maybe, it would be time to do something else.

I work a restaurant job. I do not work very hard, nor do I work very many hours. Sometimes I wish I could have one of those 'regular' jobs, the 9 to 5 and all that, but I doubt I'll ever get over the nonsense that goes along with the working world.

I have had a number of jobs in my life. I have had those office jobs, the suit and tie jobs, the executive positions, the salaries, the teaching gigs, the manufacturing jobs, retail gigs and I once spent a year framing pictures and another year changing light bulbs. As I think about all the jobs, the 'regular' jobs, the salaried executive jobs brought the most amount of pain and misery. I have to admit that some of my office jobs, like my time with both Colorado Department of Health and Standard Insurance were both good jobs because I spent most of my day at my desk writing in my notebooks. It's always nice to get paid to write.

In some ways, I wonder what my life would have been like had I just gone off to a career right after leaving college all of those years ago. As close as I can guess I would have been in a position, or a company for the last twenty some years. But would I? I mean, downsizing, corrupted systems and broken economies may have prevented such a long career. I also remember those more serious jobs and how they took all my time, my energy and my vitality. In those years, I was focused on a job and not focused on writing. Ultimately, it's pretty obvious what I chose to do.

I can't see how else it could have gone down for me. Nor do I see how it could go down any other way for all writers. I mean, yeah, writing is life and life is experience. The more experience you have, the more life you live and the more there is in which to write.

Perhaps that's the simple way to look at jobs and work and the like. For me, my lens is definitely colored by my life's experiences and those experiences are very closely tied to the jobs I've had, the skills I've learn, and the people I've met along the way. I do not advocate for job hopping, but I think a few jobs, and different types of jobs can really add to the wellspring of good writing.

I leave now with this notion with my impressions of Philip K. Dick and his work. What I have always loved about PKD is that you know from the first page who his protagonist is, what that protagonist does for a living and what that protagonist's problem is. Having a profession for a PKD character is pretty important. And he writes his protagonist's job very, very well.