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Day 167 – Ups and Downs

dramatic roller coaster photo

Here’s one way of looking at how I’ve been feeling for, oh, the past four or five years.

On Monday, August 24, I begin training to become a TriMet bus operator. This move represents the biggest “career” change in my life and I’ve been churning the reasons for over a month. The main reasons for trying this new tack relates directly to my inability to cultivate new friendships and my disastrous experience at Southern Oregon University amid lingering feelings I’m somehow damaged that simply won’t go away.

At SOU I saw, up close and personal, such ugliness I simply can’t shake it off. It’s like that ST:TOS episode with the Medusan ambassador that must be kept in a box lest he be seen and cause irreparable insanity. Well, at SOU I got a good long look at some serious ugly… and I admit to being damaged by it. In one regard I’m no longer capable of looking at another person and not feeling at least a tinge of anxiety because I know that if the shit comes down, when budgets become tight, that person will likely become my enemy. Plus there were moments where “colleagues,” one in particular, himself seriously damaged goods, offered such helpful counseling as this: “The reason you’re a failure isn’t because you can’t do the work. The work is easy. You’re a failure because you’re terrible dealing with people.”

Don’t misunderstand, he wasn’t wrong, quite the contrary. My problem with his statement is it’s really not helpful to psychological ass-rape somebody when they are already flailing. I came home many nights from my SOU job feeling so bad I’m consistently amazed I’m still married to the same woman and still have a functioning liver.

I’ve managed to put some distance, emotionally and physically, between then and now, but it won’t go away. I once told a head of HR “I judge meetings kind of like I judge nightmares: if I can remember the details 12 hours later there may be a problem.” Everybody has bad days at work. Everybody. But the dream/nightmare analogy is apt. Sometimes you wake from a nightmare just feeling horrible. You wonder how your subconscious could ever concoct such disturbing imagery. But four, eight or maybe 12 hours later you can hardly remember it. Events from the day simply wash over the nightmare and it dissolves. There are many moments from my previous job that aren’t like that. I can’t remember them without feeling like I’m reliving them. Years and miles have blunted the feeling, but it’s still there. The fear, the seething anger, the hopelessness, feeling trapped, suffocating, worthlessness. Man, it was a bad time on so many levels. No surprise I felt relief bordering on giddiness when the word came down I, along with my boss, had finally been cut.

So. TriMet. Here is my rationalization, aka The Top 5 List, for pursuing what could be my last job where I go to work with other people.

  1. I honestly enjoy driving. Since the age of 16 I have enjoyed driving. I have been driving for 36 years from six different home states and have no convictions for anything beyond parking tickets. Driving has always been on my evolving “5 Pleasures of Life” list. It’s something I’m good at.
  2. I support public transportation and believe in TriMet’s mission. Plus I was born in Brooklyn; public transportation is a birthright.
  3. I am the worst, seriously the worst, at playground/office/business politics. When it comes to conniving, plotting and scheming I am beyond worthless. In a group I will always be the chump who gets played. In any business situation where ego wins out over substance I am doomed. In a job where advancement demands ruthless ambition paired with an eagerness to knock others aside to make a play I will never succeed.
  4. I want to try a job where there is no room for emotional interpretation regarding the quality of my work.
  5. I want to try a job where, for once, when I’m not doing it somebody else is.

If nothing else the next six weeks commencing on Monday (not to mention the years that could ensue) should provide some serious blog-fodder.