Jobs

I was riding the Airtrain at midnight last night and an airport employee got on seemingly at the end of his day. Later in my trip, about eight MTA workers got on the subway and also appeared to have just finished up for the day. This got me thinking: what kind of life is that? The obvious answer is that it isn't any kind of life. Not to generalize, but these people, and many many more in similar low-level/odd-hour jobs, can't possibly have much to their existence outside of work. They work to live, to have enough money to eat and pay rent. What they do is who they are. And lots of them probably don't mind or just don't know any different.

The reason I'm mentioning this now is the same as why I think about anything: because it made me think of myself and because I'm extremely self-centered.

I don't work to live or live to work or any of that baloney. I work only so much that I can have enough money to live for myself, so that I can do the things I want to do, like go out on the weekends, take a few trips here and there, and basically just enjoy myself. What I do is not who I am because I don't invest myself in it that much. Maybe you could say that this is sad commmentary on me, that I don't have a job that I love or that I enjoy going to. That's not true, or rather, it would be true no matter my occupation because I'm not very much interested in any jobs out there, or anything that I would have to do every day. Also, I do enjoy going to work lots of times and even sometimes I anxiously (positive anxiety) think about work when I'm not at work. But I am not the guy who stocks the office with supplies or repairs the copy machines or yells at the vendors for doing a crappy job. I am the guy who hurries out of work so I can get to the gym before it gets too crowded, and flips over to The Tonight Show solely to see if there are any superhot actresses on, and spends most of Friday drinking plenty of water so I'll be nice and hydrated for the alcohol to follow.

So don't ask me "What do you do?" I live and do things and enjoy myself and in between that I go to work so I can continue to enjoy myself. I plan my summer around my dad's boccee tournament, not our office's HVAC shutdown. I think about extracurriculars at work all the time but work at home rarely. I guess this all means that I feel sorry for the MTA worker and others like him. And I guess I feel pretty fortunate that I have just enough money to not have to be a slave to a job.