Ranting of a Lifeguard, Secretary, Wilderness Guide, Nanny
I'm restless. It's not that I dislike work. I just hate useless work. I guess that's ironic because I'm expending energy to write these rantings that nobody may ever read. Then again, who knows? Perhaps someday someone might find them and draw wisdom from this sequence of regrets, relentless hopes, and realities. I didn't start out this way, hopping from one job to another. I had a very detailed plan at one time. So detailed I had pegged down to the day exactly when I would graduate from college with which degrees and where I would go from there. From about seventh grade I knew I was going to be a journalist. From kindergarten I knew I'd be a writer. My mommy told me so. Seventh grade found the advent of the Journalism Club by Mrs... no it was Miss... what was her last name? Smith? That may well have been it. Miss Smith. She was a young, sassy, Catholic teacher with creative ideas and the hard-ball attitude to inspire any young seventh (or maybe it was eighth) grader. In any event, she was someone to whom I looked for wisdom and courage to break out of my shell. Our little junior high school newsletter was unprofessional, to say the least, but at least it got us writing. One time, my former next-door-neighbor's autistic son climbed up an electric tower as he was want to do, but this time he got to the top. His height-phobic older brother, Peter, had climbed up after him to keep him safe. The local news was all over it. I heard it on the radio and saw it on the news. I proudly told Miss Smith that I could even get a personal interview with the older brother, who was suddenly a close friend of mine. I called him up and held my first interview. Peter was very obliging and answered all my questions and I wrote them all down and reported the story like a real pro on paper. One thing bothered me, though. Peter told me how the news helicopters had refused to pull back from the scene when his mother went into a panic because his autistic brother had a tendency to flap his arms wildly whenever he saw an airplane or helicopter. That disturbed me. It was the first of the many disturbing pieces of information that eventually dissuaded me from pursuing journalism as a career. But that comes much later. For quite some time, I held onto my dream of becoming a journalist. I was going to change the world with my informative, heart-wrenching journals about life for the poor in Africa, all while living in Africa and helping to build safe houses for the AIDS orphans and improve the schools there. I would probably even win a Pulitzer prize and a Nobel prize, too, though that wouldn't matter as much as the satisfaction of helping people. So, you can see that I had it all figured out from the time I was only fourteen years old. But this isn't the rantings of a journalist or even the rantings of a nobel peace prize winner. It's just the rantings of a tired and despairing woman who expected the world to move over and make way for a well-intentioned do-gooder. So, you can see that I didn't have it all figured out as a grade-schooler. But I sure thought I knew a lot. I knew what work would be fulfilling and meaningful to society and what work would be selfish and pointless. It was obviously those business-obsessed speech and debaters that would suffer in the long run. Their goals were all political and financial. It had nothing to do with spirit for them. I would not be like them. I was destined for greatness. A bit hubristic, I know. Well, I don't actually know if hubristic is a word. My Advanced Placement U.S. Government teacher in high school used it all the time. But he said a lot of things. At any rate, I recognize that my idea of having a great destiny was a bit self-important. In fact, I have since recognized that same quite unattractive expression of self-importance in several acquaintances and some dear friends. In a way it's endearing. I think it's always a bit endearing to find someone who suffers from the same disorder you once suffered. It makes you feel connected to them by a larger ideal, even if it is a delapidated one.