my keys are lighter
At 35 years old, I’d never been “let go” from a job. But hey, there’s a first time for everything.
My keys are lighter.
Gone is the brass one for the warehouse that’s a dead ringer for my house key. Gone is the plastic fob that turns off the alarm. When I pick up my keys, they practically fly out of my hand. Such lightness! Now I have room for a bottle opener keychain, I note to myself.
With every application I submit, I imagine my new life.
That national beverage brand? I’ll bet they pay a lot. Shit, I’ll be buying a house soon. I’ll probably work with a lot of really basic people, but I’ll be the quirky one. I’ll be the one everyone thinks is really cool and exotic. I’ll make more money than anybody I know and still live in my same reasonable apartment in my semi-reasonable neighborhood because I’m humble as shit.
Be still my bleeding heart, maybe I’ll devote myself to the nonprofit around the corner. I’ll be overworked and underpaid and yell even more about income inequality than I do now. I’ll regale my friends with tales of Gloria, the single mother who 18 months ago came in pregnant and jobless, and now is “coming alive” in our evening workshops. I’m so proud of her, I’ll say. But secretly inside, I’ll pity her. I’ll never understand Gloria, and I’ll hate myself for pretending I do.
Working at a startup is a lifestyle, I’ll say. Sure it’s hard, but the payoff is incredible. I’ll convince myself that the success of Loco Emotive (insert train logo) is my success. That the Founder and and “Chief Excitement Officer” Gregg really is brilliant, and even though he’s a 41 Year Old Baby With a Trust Fund, he’s one of the good ones. Plus, everyone drinks beer at 3:00 on Fridays. What does this app do again?
“Let Go”
When you catch a fish, you let it go “so it can go get bigger”, my dad used to tell me. It would always amaze me that after chomping down on the barbed nightmare that is a fishing hook, these fishies would hit the water and hightail it out of there like nothing happened. But sometimes, despite best intentions, you through that sucker back in the water and it just kind of bobs there. Is it stunned, or dead?
And which one am I?
