Grumpa Joe's Place

During my lifetime I have worked in many companies and at many jobs. Often, I see a job that strikes my fancy, and then ask myself if that is what I would be able to do, or better yet what I would want to do.

A lifetime for some people is a long time, for others it is way too short, but a working lifetime can be an eternity of drudgery or the opposite an eternity of bliss regardless of how many years are spent doing it.

I’ve wanted to do this for a long time so today is the day I list some of the jobs that I will never do:

1. Drive a truck long distances. I’ve driven across our country at least a dozen times and I know how long it takes and how boring it can be. In the beginning I thought that being a truck driver would be a nobel profession that I could enjoy. But, as the miles added up I changed my mind. There is no way that I could survive driving a semi-tractor hauling a trailer across the country day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year to make a living.
2. Operate a molding machine. I worked in a place where we made things from plastic. I spent my career designing ways to eliminate the person from the process. The main reason was that the company didn’t want to pay the price of employing people to open and close a molding machine door to remove the plastic part. Yet we had many young men who thrived on doing just that. I would lose my mind if that is what I had to do to keep my family alive and well.
3. Make art for a living. I love art, I love creating artistic pieces, but the pressure of doing it for a living just doesn’t appeal to me. Making one of something can be exciting, but making a hundred of the same thing turns me off. My creativity flourishes the best when I don’t have the pressure of trying to make a living doing it.
4. Acting is another profession that appeals to me until I begin to analyze what life would be like doing it. It is one thing to act in a play for a few performances then get on with another, but the idea of being in a hit play that runs for months or years can be monotonous. I don’t think I could maintain a character different than myself for too long. Yet, the best actors and actresses can become someone else and play their roles day after day with a degree of professionalism that is commendable. To me it is like Ground Hog Day and after a week I’d rather listen to finger nails scratching across a black board.
5. Policeman. A no brainer for me, The idea of trying to control the behavior of other people by writing tickets or mediating domestic problems or getting shot at by a bad guy is not appealing.
6. Doctor of Medicine. Although I love science and learning about things I don’t like the idea of spending twelve years of intense study and practice to get there. I had actually considered becoming a doctor when I was fifteen, but decided against it when I thought about the hours involved and the intensity of the learning required.
7. Priest. No way! I love God, but the prospect of becoming a celibate priest does not work at all. I spent a lot of my boyhood years on my knees as an altar boy and hated learning Latin prayers and responses. Most theology, and philosophy courses that I took just scrambled my brain and dumped me off.
8. Flea market vendor. I like going to flea markets and the idea of making money by reselling stuff appealed to me. I did experience a few garage sales and enjoyed the activity of negotiating and selling, but mostly I enjoyed the kibitzing I did with the people who dropped by. Selling junk is okay, but accumulating and storing junk turns me off. The reason I loved my garage sale was because I was clearing my house from a lot of unnecessary stuff that just cluttered my mind and my real passions.
9. Accountant-Keeping track of my debits and credits is the last thing on my list of enjoyable activities. Every year I struggle with completing a tax return. The wierd thing about it is understanding all the vocabulary that accountants use in their work. Reading an Internal Revenue Tax return is like reading an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic tablet. Not my language at all.
10. Write User manuals for a piece of technical junk like a computer or a printer. This is another world where the people who live in it use a special form of communication which only they understand. What is scary is that so many young people can actually make sense of it. Although I have learned that young people don’t really read manuals, they use repetitive activity to solve problems by trying and failing many things. Me, I try things too, but I stop doing it after failing a couple of times. My patience level for learning all the cute and tricky features on an Apple iPhone is about as long as the time it takes a balloon to deflate after a pin prick. They have also mastered the strange language of phone technology.
11. Statistics-I understand the importance of using statistics to make sense out of data that on the face appears a jumble, but I can’t stand the mathematics needed to unjumble the data.
12. Furniture making requires an intense focus on details and a knowledge of wood cutting equipment. I have just enough skill in this field to believe I could succeed, but in reality I don’t have the patience required.

I can go on and on listing the things that I can’t or won’t make a living doing, but making this list is beginning to bore me.

Filed under: Biography, Education, family | Tagged: Happiness, Jobs, Labor |