On potential, and finding out what you want to be when you grow up...

[gridlore]

Give me a job, give me security
Give me a chance to survive
I’m just a poor soul in the unemployment line
My god, I’m hardly alive
My mother and father, my wife and my friends
I see them laugh in my face
But I’ve got the power, and I’ve got the will
I’m not a charity case

I’ll take those long nights, impossible odds
Keeping my eye to the keyhole
If it takes all that to be just what I am
I’m gonna be a blue collar man

Let me start with how passionately I hate the word "potential." kshandra admitted the other night that the only time she's heard me use it was sarcastically, and if it shows up in my writing, an editor put it there. I react to the word potential like fingernails on the chalkboard. I utterly loathe that word.

Because, you see, "potential" was what I had loads of as a kid. I was told this every time a report card came home with D's and F's. "You have so much potential" my parents would cajole/scream/rant, "why don't you apply a little effort?" Well, other than the fact that I hated school? That I saw no point in doing a math problem 30 times when I've demonstrated that I'm able to handle the concept being taught?

I had bad luck on two fronts when it came to school. First of all, I'm smart. No false modesty here, I'm a frickking genius. I'm smarter than most of the people I deal with. That does not translate into an ability to handle school! isomeme is just as smart as me, but he could play the game. He understood the rules I didn't grasp and had a spectacular scholastic career. (Forever marred by the infamous Library Incident and the C of Matrimony.) So I suffered for not playing the game.

My second bit of bad luck was hitting the California Public School system at a time when the goal went from providing a good grounding in basic education to churning out students for the UC/Cal State system. Unless you drooled uncontrollably and had to be led to your classes, the assumption was that everyone was going to college. Ha! Most of us accepted this as another case of adults knowing best, but I, as usual, rebelled. Four more years trapped in classrooms? Four more years dealing in abstracts? Four more years of pointless busy work to satisfy arbitrary requirements? Hell no.

I even made a case early on to go to the local vocational high school. I was interested in working with my hands, and was fascinated by how things worked. One of our neighbors built RC boats from scratch, and I would watch fascinated as he shaped the fiberglass, built the small engines, and soldered the control units. My best friend's father had a model railroad, and I helped to wire it up. It was a revelation.. something I had done with my two hands that had tangible results! This was cool!

Make me an offer that I can't refuse
Make me respectable, man
This is my last time in the unemployment line
So like it or not I’ll take those

Long nights, impossible odds
Keeping my back to the wall
If it takes all that to be just what I am
I’m gonna be a blue collar man

It's not that I'm anti-intellectual, it's just I'm not wired for professionally following that path. Take astronomy, for example. I love astronomy, especially planetary astronomy. I've taught myself a great deal, and can puzzle out most articles aimed at undergrad level readers. I follow each probe with interest, and read about every new discovery with joy.

But the thought of actually becoming an astronomer, and working on some office doing work on the latest downloads from some radio telescope array, filing budget reports, publishing, academic politics.. I'd run screaming. It's the same way for me with computers. Many of my software engineer friends have wondered why I never got into programming. Simple, it's not real enough to me. I'm typing this into the Semagic LJ client while listening to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Iron Maiden. I have no conceptual grasp of how strings of 1's and 0's come together to play me heavy metal while letting me go forth at length. People have explained it to me, I just don't get it.

So we come to the concept of what works for me. Eleven years ago, I was hired by SuperShuttle, and fell in love with driving. But I only had a year of good driving before I got sick. Even after I got back from my chemo, I was battling an ever downward spiral of health woes. These concerns eventually forced me off the road, and finally out of SuperShuttle altogether.

After that (and a brief stint with the worst security company I've ever dealt with) I finally took the time to heal. And went back to work at Cost Plus, which still wasn't it. So when CPWM went south on me, I first got the job driving for Atwood Dental (which was close, but no cigar) and then got picked up by PODS.

Which is what I want to do when I grow up.

Keeping my mind on a better life
When happiness is only a heartbeat away
Paradise, can it be all I heard it was
I close my eyes and maybe I’m already there

My reaction to PODS is much like my reaction when I first met Kirsten. "This is right." The camaraderie among the drivers, the hard work, the skills, everything is exactly what I want out of my work. And I now work for a company that realizes that their drivers are the most important thing. Everyone is supporting us. This is the first job I've ever had where not only am I getting full benefits but regular raises (both COL and merit-based) are realities, not just rumors that float around. I have a great boss, and good coworkers. Sunday, I'm being flown down to San Diego for three days of training.

There was moment Thursday... I was securing a pod to the truck. This involves hooking a chain to the pod then winching it tight using a four-foot pry bar. This takes all my weight. No shit, there I am. It's raining, I'm soaked to the skin, and covered in dirt and grease from the underside of the truck. I'm crouched down trying to get another ounce of pressure onto the bar and I realize something.

I'm happy. For the first time since I got sick I am completely, utterly happy with where I am in life. I'm a trucker, with the driver's tan and red neck to prove it.

Long nights, impossible odds
Keeping my back to the wall
If it takes all that to be just what I am
I’m gonna be a blue collar man

Blue Collar Man by Styx, words and music Tommy Shaw

Comments

[deathbytamarind.livejournal.com]

Potiential can shove it. I heard that endlessly too, except my report cards had Fs in math and science and A's in everything else. Didn't matter that I take to languages well, that I'm a good writer or that I'm a versatile musician. All the awards I won for foreign language and academic competition, who cares? Those Fs in math and science were OMG TEH BAD!!!2

It made me hate school for a long, long time. Now I'm trying to get it together to transfer and major in things I love. Now school is cool. :)

[kshandra]

Angel, I'm in tears. I am so goddamned happy for you I could explode.

...

And I think I finally see the man I married again when I look at you. (And no, I can't be more coherent about it than that.) I love you.

[lysana.livejournal.com]

That post and this are choking me up a bit. :)

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Rock on completely, man. Rock on completely.

[kat-box.livejournal.com]

Dude, you ROCK! I'm so glad you've found this. Sooo many people (me included) go for so long searching for what you've just found. You deserve nothing less than the joy and happiness you have and ever so much MORE.

hugs,
Pkat

[hopeforyou.livejournal.com]

It really doesn't matter what other people think makes people happy. When it gets down to it, what makes you happy DOES matter.

I have no judgment about what people do for a living, only that they find something to do that makes them happy, and hope that they find a way to meet their basic needs. I think everything else tends to fall into place in life once those two occur, and it might fall into place quickly or take some time -- but fall it does.

Good luck with your new job at PODS. Sounds like a great place for you to work!

[collie13.livejournal.com]

Huzzah on your new job and new-found happiness! Congratulations -- you rock! ;)

[thingunderthest.livejournal.com]

Excellent, follow your bliss.

Much of the problems of this world come about from people making themselves miserable trying to live up (or down) to others expectations. It meets your needs (Materially and in joy) and doesn't hurt others so rock on!

You so deserve this!

Amazing.

[opals.livejournal.com]

It seems I'm on the journey you've just finished. I have had health problems after health problems starting when I was 14 years old. I ended up getting my GED and my mother is still after me to go to college and live up to my "potential". I'm still recovering from some of the "help" the doctors tried to give me but I'm happier then I've ever been. I haven't found the right job yet, but I know I'm on the right path. Thanks to you, I know that I'm also not alone and that if you had the courage to go the hard way, so do I.

[kengr]

I understand about potential. I got that stuff too.

Unlike you, I was mostly ok with school, though I could have done without a few teachers and *many* of the students.

But because I was "smart" I got the "you can do better than that" alternating with "you aren't trying". And frankly by junior high I *wasn't* trying.

Why bother when your "reward" for trying was either being told you hadn't tried hard enough or getting handed something *harder*?

Little wonder that when I was in a "session" where the goal was to try not to react to what your partner was doing/saying, I just plain lost it when a partner looked at me and said "You're special". <shudder>

Wish they'd come up with a way to figure out how to handle kids, especially us "smart" ones *without* screwing us up by pushing too hard or in the wrong directions.

[kengr]

Oh, I can't resist...

"So, Mr. Berry. You are telling us that you *enjoy* being a POD[s] person..."

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Yes. It is wonderful. Come, join us.. joiinn usss...