Moany, Moany...Steady Jobs, Shit Jobs
My friend Limbozo says he sometimes thinks he's not really being who he was meant to be. He explained, "I work hard every day at a decent job. It's not what I want to be doing, but it's really not so bad, either." In his spare time he's a musician and a songwriter, but keeping things in balance isn't easy. "[There] are...times that I imagine myself cutting everything loose. Where I think about dropping everything and running off to Paris or riding across the country on a motorcycle. I...long for chaos. I have dangerous notions at times. But, I know that I need this life as it is, in order to fulfill my creative needs. I have starved before. I don't think I was any more creative at the time than I am now."
I can relate. Working a steady day job for more than six months makes me feel like a pent-up cockroach. (I realize putting this in print won't help my future employment prospects, but will any perky human resources types really read this book anyway?)
Here's something nuts: to get out of going to work at a waitressing job I once seriously considered breaking my own arm—the left one since I am right-handed. I didn't want to wait tables even one more subservient day, and I figured they wouldn't make me if my whole left arm were stuck in a cast.
Partly, I was sick of Chili Man. He was a small man with shiny, dyed black hair who came in at 7 p.m. every day to order a bowl of chili with extra crackers and a glass of water, no ice. He always sat at the same booth in my section and left cracker crumbs everywhere. It wasn't that I had anything in particular against him, but the predictability of it all—not to mention the smell of bleach water—was wearing on me.
Evading my desk job would require more serious injuries. While I was a library circulation clerk, I considered running my car off the road or, worse, swerving into oncoming traffic just to have some extra free time. I realize other people just feign illness for a day or two, but I am much too honest for that. I could've just made myself throw up so I could call my boss and say, "I just threw up," but that never occurred to me until just now.
The job itself wasn't bad. The people were really nice and the work was pretty easy, but I long for large chunks of uninterrupted time. The funny part is whenever I do have large chunks of uninterrupted time I begin to feel confused and purposeless. Like everyone else has Somewhere to go, Something Important to do. And I don't have anything at all. When all my time belongs to me it doesn't seem quite as valuable anymore. I eat too much and sleep too much and watch all of those forensic science documentaries on TV. That's why I try to be gainfully employed at least part of the time. And, like Edward Albee, I choose my work carefully. He said he was willing to work "any job so long as it had no future." (I'm going to remember that line for my next job interview!) He worked in an ad agency, sold books and records, and worked for Western Union for a while before he became a successful playwright.
Provided you are serious about your creative work, I recommend the shit job over the corporate job nearly every time. There's nothing wrong with selling 64-ounce buckets of thirst-quenching soda at your local filling station while you try to get your band off the ground. True, you may have your family worried sick and things for you are quite difficult at times, but you probably aren't going to starve to death. Some icky day jobs actually turn out to be pretty good.
When he was in the Army, my friend Doug had the ultimate shit job—literally! Aside from digging holes, unloading trucks, and setting up and tearing down tents, he was occasionally tapped for "burning the shit" during Desert Shield/Storm. To avoid the spread of disease in the encampment, it was necessary to incinerate everyone's poo in a 55-gallon drum. Three parts diesel to one or two parts gasoline (Doug can't quite remember) had to be poured over the whole mess and set ablaze. He said it took four hours of intermittent stirring to powderize the poo, but the job wasn't nearly as bad as it may sound. For one thing, no one wanted to be around the flaming vat so it had to be dragged some 75 yards away from everyone else. In between stirring Doug could sit back, read a book, write a letter, rest. He told me, "I went into it thinking that I had hit bottom, but to my surprise it was like a refreshing visit to a spa." You never know.
But plenty of other jobs are indescribably horrible. My friend Benjamin made two dollars an hour working as a groundskeeper for a hospital back in the 1960s. He said, "The day I finally quit, it was a windy day, and it was Malathion day. They used to spray that all over the trees and bushes.... The stuff was blowing back on us, and I was quite relieved when I got the call to go down to the morgue.
"They needed me at the morgue lift. It was an amazingly hot, humid day. Apparently, at the morgue lift, a corpse had exploded. This caused the excrement that had been in the dead person to literally paint the walls of this morgue lift. It was quite thick, copious stuff. So I had to get down below this big scissor lift with—to his credit—the head of the groundskeeping crew, a gentleman by the name of Mr. Baggett. I think we just had cloth rags and our bare hands, and we were trying to scrub this tarlike substance off the walls. The stench just made your eyes roll back it was so heady. And it was so powerful that this groundskeeping guy started coughing uncontrollably and, at some great seizure of a cough, his teeth went flying out, and they stuck into the wall in this corpse shit. I didn't even know he had false teeth until then. The whole scene of it there in the oppressive heat...the dreadful remains of somebody dead and this wheezing...and my boss...his teeth. I said, 'I need to go.' I laid low until 3:30 and got the hell out."
If you think your job is bad, it looks to me like things could always be worse.
And you're in very good company too. Did you know that John Candy sold paper napkins door-to-door before he became an actor? That Steve Buscemi drove an ice cream truck? Jerry Seinfeld even sold light bulbs over the telephone! In an interview with GQ's Alan Richman, Seinfeld said it was a "tough job. There's not many people sitting home in the dark going, 'I can't hold out much longer.'" He also sold costume jewelry out of a little cart in front of Bloomingdale's.
Having the desire to "make it" is, of course, not enough. You have to have talent too. In addition to working hard at their day jobs in order to sustain their dreams, these guys had real talent. You'll need that too.
Provided you have raw talent and plenty of moxy, the next time your folks ask you what you're going to do with your life, you can tell them about John and Steve and Jerry and all the hundreds more just like them. Better yet, tell them this: "Susan knows it's just a matter of time before I get somewhere with my creative work!" (Of course then they'll say "Who the Hell is Susan?" and your house of cards will collapse...but I really do think you are on your way.)
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