This should be brief, I just wanted to mark the occasion. I left the job at Boston Scientific. I woke up after nearly no sleep at 4:54 AM to hop in my coffee van as my truck is full and acting questionable. I park at the BFE end of the lot, show up a minute late, and take my spot on the line. The next-in-line manager wasn't in the building, but I opened with, “If it's going to be a problem my only 3 days a week schedule, I can just leave now or put in my two weeks.” I was assured things would be fine. After an hour and a half our first break to shit from our morning coffee started. I walked up to the floor supervisor and said, “I've been over there for an hour trying to rehearse a good way to say that simply, this job isn't for me. I'll stay if it's going to fuck up your line or if you anticipated me being here, but I have to be honest with myself.” He said he totally understood and that as far as he's concerned, he sees it as I have the whole rest of the day to find something new.
I'm now home, thinking about how happy I was to be driving back, singing, whistling, and preparing to get my new little shed shell built. I'll get to go to a birthday party on Saturday. I'll get to unload my truck and get it dropped off to be looked at. For lack of a better way to say it, I thrive in a certain kind of “chaos.” I don't know where the next appliance is coming from, but I'm betting I have the time, search habits, and inclination to pick it up before the next guy. I don't know how much my truck is going to cost to fix. I don't know how many houses are going to appreciate verses judge my door-to-door pamphlet regarding my hourly rate or DCS concerns. I do know that I've never been served better than when I acknowledge and work through what's most pressing and frequently on my mind, and I'll make no greater impact nor set a better example than in doing so.
Part of me regards the ability to just step out on a job, any job, as something of a privilege. At the same time, I worked a fuck ton for my floor, both in my physical location and acquired tools and my disposition. Part of me was more concerned with going out respectfully than going out at all because I appreciate the difficulties of being short-handed, constantly training new people, and despair that comes with a lack of investment and appreciation for the different skills and people available. At the same time, every several thousand dollar piece of equipment workers make equals 0% more to their bottom line or next paycheck.
I think both socially and psychologically you have to own your effort and have a sight set on the future, or you destroy significantly more than is often spoken to. You have to build the right kind of pressure to succeed where only you can. I need to have the fire under my ass of not having enough savings to ride it out until I'm 100. I need to be mildly stressed about my next good find. I need to weather the injuries (I burned my thumb yesterday), sound a little precarious in my thought process, and continue to show what I built. There's two modes of being, do or don't. I absolutely need to do me. I need to keep demonstrating that I can make decisions in service to what I want and not what I'm putting up with. You do too.
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