DEAD END JOB

I'm a constant victim of the “grass is always greener" syndrome. I always find myself in a position where I'm missing something I took for granted.

When I was in high school, I longed for the excitement of college life. But when I got there, it was nothing but the same old shit from high school. Same classes, same books and lessons being hammered into my hard head. I took a script writing class that moved so slow I read the entire text book one weekend and quit the class the following Monday. Then I took a UCLA extension course in comic writing, but the lessons were so elementary, things I'd already learned through trial and error, that I got nothing out of it.

When I made the decision to quit college and work nine to five, I remember the conversation I had with one of my friends about how I felt like life was passing me by being in school. I wanted to be out in the work force, doing something every day. Then I got there and wished I were back in school.

At my hospital, I was originally stationed in the outpatient clinic that was so stressful I almost had nervous breakdowns on three different occasions and came too close to cursing at the doctors when they became too demanding. I thought it was a blessing when I was promoted to clinical research, the learned they were eliminating my job and need to place me somewhere else or fire me. Now part of me wishes they had, or that I was back in the clinic where things moved at a blistering pace and my responsibilities were finite and ended at five o'clock.

Don't get me wrong because I do I have things to do in my current position. I just don't want to do them.

Sometimes you can stand in the eye of a tornado and feel like you're standing still. I have all these things going on, but still feel like I have nothing. Mostly because none of it is what I really want to be doing. I come into work five days a week, when I'd rather be at home writing, working on a novel or screenplay. I only have a job so I can get paid every two-weeks and while you'd think that would be motivation enough, it's not.

I have a book in production and it's coming along nicely, there's a lot that needs to get done, but I can't do it because I'm stuck here during working hours. By the time I get home, it's too late to do anything. So I try to balance hospital work with personal business and find myself stalling with comic book stuff so I can avoid hospital business. One gives me this incredible feeling of fulfillment, while the other is boring as hell.

It's not like I hate working, I just hate doing the work I have to so I can support my family. If I had to work, I'd rather it is at Tower Records, at least subculture zealots and music would surround me. Or a bookstore, where I could talk to customers about the latest bestsellers and why they’re great or full of hype. Anywhere, but stuck in a hospital where we're gearing up for the latest research audit and I'm forced to review patient charts for the next two-weeks.

And even though my comic is getting done, my artists are all outside the country, being handled by an agency. My only contact is thru emails where I get updated bit by bit on the book's progress. I'm not complaining, the company handling things are great and have great people. But it's not like seeing everything unfold in front of you and actually getting involved.

Now that I'm closer to my goals than ever, I'm looking back on my past years when friends and I would meet every Saturday to discuss our studio, Danse Macabre, and our plans to self-publish our comics. That's all it was, talk. We never really went anywhere or did anything and in hindsight we've all accomplished more apart than we ever did together. But I miss it, the comradeship, the laughter, knowing we’d get together that weekend and plan for the future.

I guess I just feel...alone. Here in my cubicle, day after day, in silence, surrounded by people who seldom share my interests. For them, nothing is more interesting than medical science. But for me, the only interesting thing about it is how I can spin a story out of it.

Sometimes I wonder why I even want to get in this business of being a writer. Used to be, there was nothing else I was suited for and then I wanted the fame and fortune that could come with a successful book.

Now, I just want to get out of here, the nine to five grind. I want to wake up each day, seven days a week, and sit at a computer typing away on an article, short story, or script. I want the stress of business calls with artists and publishers or the bind of meeting a deadline that's only two hours away.

This hospital shit is killing me.

I feel like my book, or even this blog, will open doors for me I never thought attainable. Before doing Speaking In Tongues, I never thought I had the balls to be a columnist. And while I wouldn't shit on the accomplishments of journalist by implying that this even compares, writing these posts and actually receiving positive remarks from people who've stopped by has made me more confident in my abilities, that I could do a column, that I do have something to say and views worth somebody's time to read.

And that makes it all the harder to work here, nine to five, Monday through Friday, doing hospital work.

The only downside to having a family is being here, because I have to be for them to have a life worth living. If not for them, I'd be a bachelor, living in a single and working part-time to pay my $500 monthly rent while eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal every day. But I'd love it. Hell, I just love thinking about it...

Sitting at a crappy old desk, smoking to my malfunctioning heart's content, slamming down on the keyboard to some piece of shit computer while the dvd commentary from Michael Manns' HEAT plays in the background. Only stopping to flirt with fat chicks online, read comics or pop a hundred bills for a massage from some big titted forty something latina "masseuse" that'll end with a her attempts at a hand job, but I'll have to take over because ONLY I know how to jerk myself off properly. I'd get high on Fridays and drunk on Mondays, drinking to all the poor souls who're exactly where I am now. And if I'm lucky, I'll have a girlfriend, probably my wife (because how she found me isn't too far off from this description), and she'll crash at my place whenever she's tired of hearing her Korean mother yell in her ears or try to set her up with some fifty year old dentist from West Covina. We'll fuck and sleep all day and I'll fall asleep with her nipple in my mouth. Those kind of peaceful slumbers only babies have until the television becomes God and sleep is an ignored luxury.

But I can't live that life. I have kids and responsibilities that will never go away, because as sure as I fuck up, so will my children. And I'll get a call from one or both of them forty years from now asking for something.

The hardest part about this whole facade is I have to act like to DO care about my job, because if they (my boss) learn the truth, I'd get canned. But a part of me doesn't care if they find out and fire me. I think a part of me is hoping they will fire my ass, and then I can claim unemployment, have kids and collect on welfare while I work on my novel and the rest of you pay my living expenses. But that won't work because I'm an elitist snob and being on Section Eight housing would embarrass me to no end.

All I can do is dream and keep working, playing "beat the clock" with my employers and hoping my writing career takes off before I get my ass kicked out the door.

Wish me luck.

JPG.