Hit By A Brick Red Truck
News update the first:
I got a new job as a delivery chick last week. I thought it would be really cool, but in reality, it pretty much sucks. It’s like driving around in an oven all day (my old chevy has no air-conditioning) trying to find - on tight deadlines - all these poorly marked places in a totally fucked up city (built off an old mining town that was just thrown together and has no logic to its layout whatsoever), getting scammed on gas costs, practically passing out from the heat, dealing with rush hour traffic every day, fighting my own road-rage tendencies and risking my ass, all for nowheres near enough money.
News update the second:
I got hit by a truck yesterday while on the job. A brick red truck. No, it wasn’t my ‘fault’, but on some fundamental level I believe I brought it into my experience, and for a reason (I believe in the idea that life is a dream). More on that later. Anyway, bottom line is it jarred me awake and got me really looking at this job and realizing that yeah, I’m quitting. Gave my notice last night.
Oh yeah, and I’m fine. My truck didn’t even get wrecked, just banged up a little. The left front corner is smashed. My left headlight got knocked out. The bastard who was speeding and hit me totaled the front of his truck, so it had to be towed, but he was unharmed.
Speak of the devil, I have to go to work in ten minutes. I’ll update more later.
Meanwhile, you guuyyys… what’s a good job? Give me ideas!
News Update the third:
Tonight was, of course, super slack, it was nice and cool out (not the usual oven situation), and I enjoyed myself. If it was like that all the time and I didn’t drive a gas-guzzler, it’d be quite alright. But this is the exception, not the rule. It’s weird, every time I get fed up and decide to quit a crappy job, it all of a sudden gets better. It’s the devil, trying to tempt me to second-guess myself. Stupid devil. I’m not gonna.
BUT, I befriended the night dispatcher tonight, while we sat around being dead for the first hour (by ‘dead’ I mean no orders, but that is a great sentence), and as it happens, she’s leaving next week and they don’t have a replacement for her yet. Her job is about as slack as they get. She spends most of her time dicking around on Myspace. So she’s going to see about training me and having me switch to that. Word.
Think happy thoughts!
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17 Responses to “Hit By A Brick Red Truck”
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Well done for quitting… people put up with far too much crap from work. As for a good job - freelance web stuff works OK for me. Good pay and interesting if you’re that way inclined - but lots of juggling, kind of mind-bending at times, and a hell of a lot of stuff to learn (on an ongoing basis as well as up-front).
Past that - happily, I’ve precious little experience of the work world! But many things will trump being baked in a box and smashed about by trucks (I hope). Good luck!
Dream or no dream, Brooke, it’s just extremely good to know you still call this side of the sweet hereafter ‘Home’.
but yeah, nothing quite like the life-affirming jolt one gets from several tons of speeding metal to make us wake up & smell the coffee & melted brake pads. at least something positive came from the ordeal; your lead-footed, dubiously-intentioned angel of destiny managing to knock you into another lane of thought, whilst possessing the good grace to not kill or horribly disfigure anyone in the process.
your delivery gig sounds, as Winston Smith would’ve put it, ‘decidedly doubleplusungoodish’.
wish i could offer you some first person dreamjob testimonials, B. but i’ll spare you the fireside reading of my rather impressively lengthy resumé of stinkers.
do you like working with plants? nursery work is normally pleasant-smelling if not always pleasant. let’s see…hmm…you’re already working on the rockstar thing, y’got that covered, so what else?…hey, didn’t i read somewhere here that you’re a juggler? AAAAND a trained hypnotist? my god, woman! what are you doing driving a delivery truck? holy wasted talent, batman! ok babe, here’s what i’m seeing. walk with me, talk with me.
big neon sign that reads…well ok, best to start off small…bristol board sign with the lettering done in pink dayglo magic marker that reads:
”Madame Brooke’s academy of Juggling Through Hypnotism”….(you’re getting co-ordinated, veeeeerrrrrry co-ordinated).
‘right, Brooke..’nuff said. i’m going to walk away from my computer now, before i start pitching you my ‘Ninja neuro linguistic programmer’ scheme’
best wishes for your continuing good health
& job search. shine on. :)
Glad you’re not harmed. Seriously.
As for job ideas… please excuse me a sec, the word “job” just sends me into howling fits of laughter these days… ok, all better now.
I’ll save some space by seconding everything boo said. Particularly the laundry list of stinkers, and in my case, burnt bridges.
I’m sure your guides, who prevented you from becoming a heap of organic matter in the shape of a condensed version of the inside of your truck, will probably also prevent you from becoming a bag lady in a cardboard box. They’ve probably got something lined up for you already.
Boo, you’re the shit. All three of you guys are the shit. That’s so weird, I didn’t even read these comments before I added that ninja dispatcher picture just now. Ninja neuro-linguistic programmer would be way cool. I’ll ponder that. When I can incorporate juggling into my ‘living’, and hopefully breakdancing, and hypnosis, and rock, damn. I’ll be able to die happy. I swear I’ve been in the circus in at least one of my lives. It still calls to me.
Anyway back to my so-called current life… Plants could be good. Animals could be even better, but my dispatcher buddy warned me against being a groomer. Shitty pay for dealing with people’s poorly trained or altogether out-of-control pets.
Anyway, we’ll see how this dispatch thing works out, but I mean, it’s not exactly my dream job either. But what is? All the things that are (my own projects - one of which in the near future will be making hypnosis CDs, btw) are slow-builders. I am by no means resigning myself to the rat race. By no. means. whatsoever. Right now, though, I just want some extra cash for instruments, and to pitch in with my boy for a new (more economical and air-conditioned) car, should the opportunity arise.
Bla bla, excuses excuses, I know, but the earth dream is often mundane that way.
Gyrus, I emailed you about this, but yeah, I’d love to do freelance web development. I just don’t know what all’s involved exactly, and whether I’m qualified, how steep the learning curve would be, etc… Email me back!
Keith, I think you’re right about the guides thing. That was too lucky. And I just found out today that the girl that worked my shift before they hired me, the reason she quit is that she’s on disability. Why? She got in a really bad wreck while on the job. She got really banged up. So I feel even luckier, knowing that, and also that much more disinclined to keep doing that job. You just can’t trust other drivers. I swear, 95% of good driving is just being on the defensive and avoiding the bad drivers. Why increase the odds of disaster by being on the road amongst them 4-8 hours a day?
PS: While we’re on the subject of “jobs”, and going into fits of laughter at the mere thought, I have to super-highly recommend Anxiety Culture.
You and your persistent website recommendations that I come ever so close to actually heeding. ;)
sister, that job is just NOT for you…but if you feel you just HAVE to persist a while longer, then do yourself a favour and do it in a totally flippant and unique way, e.g.
(to your boss) “What, faster deliveries? Sure, let me just fit these NOx canisters to my ride and try and freak those sleepy cops on the main drag”
(to cute customer) “Uh, I’m sorry, I forgot to bring the champagne with this…where should I drop it? and where can I change into something more comfortable?”
(to annoying stingy customer, as she’s about to close the door on you) “Oh, and, I guess it’s GOOD LUCK eating that - hope you make it through the night”
on a more serious Ninja note (if in fact, that’s even possible) should you ever truly wish to one day afix ‘Ninja’ to your Dispatcher job title, here’s a little breadcrumb trail (which btw, bears an uncanny resemblance to the trail that lead me to your YouTube site & subsequently here…but that’s another run-on sentence for another time)that may tempt your tootsies, Brooke.
my brother, who still resides in Vancouver, has been taking ninjutsu for about 7 or 8 years now. like you, he had a previous background in karate (ju jutsu as well). this is just a little FYI crumb to put in your pocket for the next time you get up to Vancouver to visit your peeps. their dojo inconspicuously assembles, rain or shine, 3 or 4 times per week at Trout Lake (usually somewhere behind various clumps of foliage). drop-ins are enthusiatically welcomed (albeit summarily thrown to the ground & presumably laughed at). wear one of your little black numbers ;)
and good to hear you’re pulling off onto the shoulder of the highway to hell. if anything, the intermittent yawning pockets of slack in your dispatcher promotion (?) may at least afford you the leisure to surf the webwaves for something more to your liking. + energy 2U.
shine on, brooke :)
Manu, good suggestions. :) I have pretty much embraced a slacker mentality with it at this point. I’m taking my sweet time, and I really don’t care. And the funny thing is the managers are really trying hard to convince me to stay with it. They’re actually really nice, but that isn’t enough, considering all the other shit. It’d be cool to work for them as a ninja dispatcher though because most bosses are dicks compared to these sweeties.
Boo, interesting ninja+vancouver facts. My ‘background’ in karate is second-hand, so I don’t have any belts or anything, but I could kick someone’s ass if I had to. Probably not those guys you’re talking about, but.. someone’s. :)
Thanks for the shiny energy!
Thanks all you guys for caring.
You weren’t tampering with that “the secret” bs, were you? I mean, did you “manifest” a shitty job, or a car wreck into your “reality”, did you? Well, if you did it’s all your own fault — that’s what you get when you try to control the universe with your thoughts. :)
Oh I can control the universe with my mind, but my mind consists of a hell of a lot more than my conscious mind or my little ego. “The Secret” is total BS, but I do believe some ‘out there’ shit, it’s just not retarded. You might think it is, but I’ll like you anyway. ;)
yeah, i’m just being facetious with you. And any time I come across an opportunity to poke fun at “the secret” (or anything else anointed by the great oprah) I’m all over it. And about your job. — look into office work, it generally pays above average, and you can fart around on the internet when you have nothing better to do.
Yeah… I’m so burnt out on office work though, and office-bullshit-politics. That’s the potentially good thing about the dispatcher job, is it is in an office, so I can dick around on the computer, but I’m by myself so there’s no dumbass supervisor I have to keep trying to conceal that fact from every five seconds. But it doesn’t pay very well… Grr, I just want to be self-employed. There are all these things I can do but I don’t know how to go about capitalizing on any of them, or which to focus on. That’s the thing I’m really trying to figure out. That’s why I just want some slack-ass part-time job in the meantime. I need all my energy (and physical intactness) for my art.
I drank a wine the night I got back called “Red Truck”. It seemed appropriate somehow. I forgot about this incident
Your unconscious didn’t. It forgets nothing.
The truly weird thing is the fact that there’s a wine called “Red Truck”. :)