F*** You, Work!

Working sucks. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, and if you're lucky enough to still call yourself a student, hang on for dear life. The working world is a crock of shit. They lure you in with the promise of money and all you're left with is the nagging notion that you shouldn't be where you are, at least that's the feeling I've had for the past month or so. Yea the money's great, (well good at least) and I am happy that I have a reason to get up in the morning besides needing to pee, but WORKING SUCKS. If I'm not at work I'm getting ready for work, or driving to or from work, or sleeping because I have to go to work soon. I can't sit and read a book, I can't go to the beach, I haven't plucked my eyebrows in weeks and I'm single-handedly bringing the Brooke Shields 80's caterpiller brow back into style as a result. I'm smarter than the majority of my bosses (I edited an email for my manager the other day, and let's just say I felt like I was an elementary school teacher) and my pre-existing lack of respect for authority coupled with the idea that I could do my managers jobs better than they leaves me with the sense that I'm on the wrong path to success. In fact, my path isn't a path, it's a stoop and it's on the door step of life-sucking annoyance in the form of dead-end employment. At one of my jobs, the one that I usually have to be at at 6:15 am (my former drunken bedtime) I work with middle-aged women who are for the most part divorces who never went to college and smoke like chimneys and cough accordingly. Don't get me wrong, I'm not arrogant or rude enough to think I'm above these people; if anything I respect them for their life experiences and the fact that they've weathered them all so heroically. However, me ending up where I am now at the age they are now would mean an asteroid hit the planet and we all had to start back from zero: plainly said, I don't want to see my life turn out like theirs. The theory I've worked out to ease my fears is that they lacked a sense of direction which ultimately resulted in their present circumstances. Most of them got married really young, popped out some offspring and then ditched the guy for more sunny horizons. But they still work a minumum wage job and live paycheck to paycheck. This I credit to their lack of schooling. I know college isn't a get rich quick scheme but I also know that the more you know the more respect you garner, which would lift me up from the immigrant labor force that I've joined. I sometimes look around and laugh in my head that I'm vacuuming up a banquet hall or delivering pizzas and I have a college degree. My worry I guess is getting stuck where I am. So I need some direction. Roll in the truck-load of problems that accompany that statement and you'll see where my troubled thoughts derive from. I don't know what I want to do with my life, thus the reason I mostly drank my way through college. But now that I have all this time to sit and think about what I want to do (and a few experiences behind me that allow me cross alot off the list of choices) I realize that I want to do too much and perhaps need to be a little more focused. I've considered a myraid of options: dolphin trainer, professional traveler, teacher, record producer, boat enthusiast, etc., so you see my problem with varying interests and my nearly flawless fear of commitment. For me to say "I want to do ____ for the rest of my life" and then stick to the _____ is an obstacle I've been encountering for two decades now. Yea I have ideas, but most of them are so incredibly out of the box and so far-fetched that they're almost embarassing to admit. As a bartender people constantly ask me what I'm doing with my life, how I ended up behind the bar for them to drink from and talk to. My answers always lead to them lending their two sense: "You should go back to school", "Why don't you open a consulting business", "I'm a banker and I make good money" and bla bla bla and I usually tune out the minute they start throwing me ideas. It's not that I'm unappreciative of their help, I just can't imagine doing something so boring with my life as opening up a personality consultation business for employing hotel workers (a legitimate suggestion from a British landscape architect). I attribute my rebeliousness to my age and the fact that my parents are still basically supporting me so I don't actually have to worry about money yet. But I don't want to get stuck in some job that I loathe with unbridled passion: I'd rather focus that passion on something I'm actually passionate about. The problem with far-fetched dreams is that it takes more than minimal effort to achieve them. Go back to my catch 22 about needing money to follow your dreams and you'll land where I am: my dreams are slowly diminishing as all this working douses my passions because I'm so exhausted from working all the time. There's no end to the bullshit. You either need a job to make money or you have a job and are making money but can't do anything fun with it because you have to work all the time. The old fashioned mind-set that our country is based on is failing on me as I'm seeing through the crap and don't want to waste my life stressing about work and money, which apparently is the American dream. Everyday that I go to work I think about what I could be doing: going to the beach for instance or moving to India to make a documentary.Why am I settling for something so boring? Why am I wasting my time and my youth bartending at a hotel, seating people in a dining room so they can eat breakfast or delivering them pizza's after a long day at Disney? If I pride myself so much on thinking outside the box, why am I not doing that now? Why am I not dreaming up some scheme to make me money whilst I travel the world and see everything there is to see? I know I'm only 22 but there are people who are younger and doing more. I guess I just feel stuck, and if I'm collecting these nagging ideas after only a month of mind-numbing employment then I can't imagine my life a few months from now. I already feel like a part of me is dying, that young and happy-go-lucky attitude that I've attempted to covet for a few years now seems to be slipping away. I used to laugh myself to tears on the daily, now I'm lucky if I genuinely smile and laugh, as opposed to the fake smile/laugh combo that I've developed during my hours of talking to annoyingly corny tourists. I used to scoff at stress and responsibility and now it's become so familiar to me I almost can't imagine spending time without it. I don't mind stress if I'm stressing about something I care about, but I honestly don't care if your pizza is delivered hot and fresh in a timely manner. I'm bitter about being bitter and I find myself doing little things here and there just to stick it to the man: for example, last night was my first training night for my new career of delivering pizzas in one of my hotels. I sit in the dining room and wait for the phone to ring, then make a faux Pizza Hut pizza and deliver it to a guest's room. In between doing nothing and making our own food in the kitchen, the hotel bartender brought me and my trainer (a nineteen year of Colombian chicka who could care less if the pizza's even have cheese on them) a cup of tequila and some limes, which we took shots of in the back storage closet. Like I said, stick it to the man. It's the little things you really have to start appreciating. I think I need to make a drastic career move.