Square Peg

It's true.  Today is my birthday.  I'm officially kicking-off the 50th year of my existence.

When you're a kid that seems so old.  As one ages it becomes progressively younger.  Thanks to the miracles of modern medicine and the persistent immaturity of the post World War II generations, 50 really has become the new 30.  Thirty used to be the time for a person to sit back and think, "Gee.  What am I doing with this life thing anyway?".  Now that era of life is about paying off those student loans, trying to establish the career, popping out the kids ahead of the biological clock.  Not much time for reflection.

I also had the advantage of having a mom who came into her own later in life.  Having 6 kids will do that to ya.  I always told myself I had time.  If I didn't have a Master's Degree until I was 50, that was OK.  I'm only now going to be launching my youngest into the world this fall.  The new chapter is just beginning.

I think I've written about my work history before.  I liken my job history to people who repeatedly find themselves in unhealthy, unstable relationships.   The combination of having bills to pay, a fairly low boredom tolerance, and feminist guilt make being unemployed really uncomfortable for me.  As a consequence I tend to jump into the first thing that comes along, then am somehow surprised when it all ends badly.

First it was the DV shelter right out of college.  I got that job because I'd been an intern there my senior year.  The director at the time was incredibly lazy about hiring people and credentials were never a factor.  She hired me because, hey, I was already there. The director was actually pretty lackadaisical about every aspect of running the program, so at the ripe old age of 24 I was completely burnt out.  Tom and I had taken a month-long vacation (no children yet) and I had the opportunity to remember what it felt like to be relaxed and happy.  I knew I had to quit, and did.

This was followed by a stint with the Oberlin College food service which wasn't too bad.  But I was young and thought maybe I had gone to school for a reason.  So when the next offer came along, I jumped.

One day an attorney I knew in town asked me to stop by his office.  Since we were both very involved in the same church I figured it had something to do with that.  You have to picture the scene:  I had recently returned from vacation and had a friend who had corn-rowed my hair for the occasion.  I strolled into the office, my hair beads a-clinking, rocking a tie-dyed dress and moccasins.  I was the only one there who did not know that I was gong to be offered a job as a legal assistant.  Another boss who didn't really care about credentials. 

That job actually lasted 9, at times, tumultuous years.  But then the firm's partners underwent what was an essentially ugly business divorce, and I took sides in the client custody fight, and it wasn't with the guy who hired me.  We actually got into yelling matches.  I literally walked out one morning.

Back to food service.  Got myself hired at a quality local restaurant.  I was the oldest person there.  I also had small children and spotty childcare, especially since my boss refused to put me on a regular schedule.  We took an instant dislike to each other.  I took a lengthy vacation with very little notice.  I was not fired, but neither was I ever put back on the schedule.

After a brief fling with childcare, I used another personal connection to get a job in the kitchen of a nursing home.  (Yay!  Food service!  My years at Oberlin were not wasted after all!).  It was the physically hardest job I ever had.  I also learned I was not cut out for it at all.  I had great rapport with the residents, but I overthought everything I did which made me slow.  One year, right before Christmas, we had a staff meeting and learned that the dietary department had been outsourced and we were all working for a new (horrible) company.  I mean, these people were bastards.  It was clear that they wanted to run off as many of the higher-paid, veteran workers as they could.  It was all about how fast you could work, not how well you could work.  I was working with people who needed this job to support themselves.  I was doing it for the luxury of a 2nd income.  So I decided to go out in a blaze.  Once again I was having yelling matches with my superior.  The breaking point for them was when I hung signs in the break room and by the time clock saying what the new company was doing to my fellow employees and suggesting that the other departments unionize.  Once again, I wasn't exactly fired, just never put on the schedule.  My supervisor, the woman I knew who had been my connection with the job, was told that if someone called off SHE would be expected to cover the shift and NOT CALL ME. 

On my own again.

This led to another and much longer childcare stint.  I didn't stay home with my kids when they were babies and that may have been a good thing.  I loved the child to pieces, still do, but it takes infinite patience and a high tolerance for boredom and mindless, repetitive games to make it with children without going insane.  Plus the fact that little charges grow up.  My kids were finally big enough to be pretty independent and I felt I was done with my child-rearing days.

Now what?

I came full circle.  Through a chance encounter my husband had with the director of the new improved DV shelter I found out that she would be willing to hire me.  I knew her from the old days.  In fact, I had trained her when she was the new hire at the shelter.  Even though I never, ever thought I could do that sort of work again, I fell back into it.  After some initial terror, I even liked being back.  One of my strongest skills is dealing with people, all sorts of people, and it was like riding a bicycle.  I hopped on the seat and took off.  It felt like I'd finally found (re-found, actually) my calling.

But it's also stressful.  So stressful that not long after I started the director, the woman I knew who had given me the job, resigned.  Despite staff misgivings a woman who had previously been a manager of the shelter returned as director.  I had no history with her so I was willing to give it a shot.  And, I thought, we clicked pretty well.

But it's stressful.  It's painful to witness the inadequacies of what we call "the social safety net". Poverty is ugly.  People suffer.  Life is unfair.  People sabotage themselves.  And aging parents require attention.  And bad things happen to people I care about.  Sometimes it feels like it's coming atcha from all sides.  Then I started getting in trouble for not performing my job adequately, I wasn't meeting requirements I didn't even know I had.  I felt like I'd been set-up for failure.  I started to seethe.  I started ranting to co-workers.  I decided the healthier, saner, thing to do would be to express my frustration directly to the director.  I wrote her an e-mail and I didn't pull my punches.

And I was fired. 

Happy birthday to me.  It's my 49th birthday, the beginning of my 50th year on the planet.  No, I don't have my Master's degree.  I don't have a job.  Just a strong feeling of "here I go again".  Too spacey for waitressing, too slow for physical labor, too hard and hot-headed to swallow my pride for a boss.

It's a bittersweet birthday.  I do feel a sense of a weight being lifted.  I'm really not as upset as I expected.  But I have kids going to college and it's a bad time to lose what had been a pretty good income.  And if God slammed the door I'm having trouble seeing the window.  A window I can fit through, at any rate.

Feeling very much like a square peg who just can't bring herself to wriggle into those round holes.