Blood, Sweat, and Nervous Diarrhea

I went on a job interview last week.  It was depressing.  When my friend had first told me about the position, we agreed that it was perfect me; in fact, the more we thought about it, the more perfect it seemed.  Not only was the position at a company that I liked, which engaged in an enterprise I respected, but it required skills I both was good at and enjoyed using.

Or so we'd thought anyway.

After a week or so of thinking about the job, though (having sent in my resume, etc.), I started to get a really bad feeling.  First I thought of the commute.  It is true that I have a terrible one now, but I get to work from home half of the week, so who can complain? This commute would be less horrible but horrible nonetheless, and I'd have to do it every day.  This meant there was definitely no way I could go for a run in the mornings before work like the spoiled person I had become.  (How had I ever done that at a normal job anyway? My first full-time job was a 15 minute walk from where I was living, but I was also 23 when I started it.  Didn't I go running every morning before the next job I had -- that required me to be there, all the way on the other side of the universe, by 8:00 every day? My memory is foggy.  I know I got home earlier from that position, but still; had I been superwoman then?

This new job I was considering, I was thinking, would require me to probably stay late, and even though there was a gym on the premises (and even though Central Park was around the corner), I figured out that I would basically have no life and not get home until 9:30 every night.

And despite the fact that I'd believed that this was the rare position that would allow me to step off my current career path for a year or two while the market was bad and then transition flawlessly back, in reality, I seemed to be simultaneously overqualified, underqualified, and terrified, all at once.

At the risk of falling into a state of undeserved self-pity, I think I'm feeling this way because I've had so many crappy jobs in my life already.  I've worked in fast food and warehouses; I've waited on tables and been paid $2.00 an hour to clean the toilets at the end of that shift (considering that I wouldn't be making tips once the customers were gone).  I've done temp work, including one day of making up hotel beds.  I've been overeducated part-time underpaid exploited labor with no health insurance.  I've worked other jobs to support my addiction to that job (whatever was keeping me clearly had not been the money).  I've worked with rowdy children at the farthest outer reaches of the outer boroughs.

The summer before my ex and I bought the house, my daily schedule, which included three jobs, was as follows:  1) I woke up at 5:00 p.m. (That may at first simply sound astoundingly lazy, but don't interpret that until you see how late I had to work).  I got dressed and was off to teach a class that went about 2 1/2 hrs.  

2) After class, I would go out on a run, take a shower, and the company I was working for would send a car to bring me to Manhattan.  (Don't judge THAT luxury until you find out how late I had to work and doing what).  I would arrive at a downtown law firm at 11:00 p.m. and start proofreading the most boring corporate law documents you will ever see in your entire life.

The job was so blatantly boring and the schedule so outrageously unnatural that the supervisor really didn't care if we occasionally collapsed on our desks for an involuntary nap.

I would take my "lunch" break around 2:30 a.m., and since the nap closet (I don't know what else to call it, but they did have one) was almost always already occupied, I would set the alarm on my cell phone and go to sleep for a bit on the cafeteria floor.

3) Around 5:30 or 6:00 a.m., I would walk up Wall Street to the investment bank where I was filling in until the CEO's assistant got in at 9:00.

4) I'd grab a cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese on my way home and collapse in my hot, sweaty bed until the alarm went off for my teaching job.

5) Rinse and repeat.

And it wasn't like I was 25 years old or anything.  I was 30.

And now I'm tired.

Well, I'm lucky I still have a job, but the clock is ticking, and it's not going to last. I could get an even more unstable position doing what I'm doing now elsewhere and piecemeal, but it would be for about half the money.  Because of the noncommittal way I would be getting paid, it might require a little more mindless busy work and be a bit less taxing, but I wouldn't exactly say HALF as taxing to merit such horrid pay.

Wouldn't it be nice if I could  just say, fine; I could just have a tenant for the other half of the income I would need? But what do I do, I ask myself over and over again, when the douchebag brings home some cool, ironic bug-infested tchotchka from a flea market and I have to drop everything to explain how they have to wipe even their toothpaste tube down with rubbing alcohol and keep it sealed in plastic and cross my fingers that they'll actually comply -- so that the exterminator will actually validate the waranty on the thousands of dollars worth of work I've just had them do?