I sat there at my desk day in and day out looking at the screen, no jobs coming across the line, looking at the screen, approaching the end of the internet each and every day, unhappy to say the least, but well informed. The screen flickered at a rate unknown, to large screens, too large screens, two large screens, with nothing. Coming home to the rip roar lifestyle that is middle age, fixing a home, loving a woman, raising a child. Enjoying the simplicities of life such as working with wood, or fixing odd objects to be converted for use into something else. writing the odd script or post, and trying to create a blog, but the screens suck at you, the nothing to do but wander, nothing to do but wonder if this will be the day they say enough and call you in to say goodbye.
Goodbye, they said, relief was a plenty, but worry set in, a felonious background isn't conducive to employment in the industry I reside. I must say it isn't about the money, the work I do, it is about the satisfaction. i solve puzzles, find answers to numbers that dance across the screen and compile it into something legible for those that read data and make decisions. I love the work, love the challenge of pulling one piece into the next and looking across it to build an array, then output that to the screens in pretty useful tidbits of information. But there was no work there. So relief, and fear, and questions.
Freelance is always an option, I take it here and there, selling myself much like the women on the corner downtown, we work some of the same hours, and I wonder if they tire of their work when it's slow like I do. But today isn't slow, it's a rush, something to do, something to piece together, this piece of data married to that and the humming in my chest that implies satisfaction egging me along, a long, alone, at the base of a smaller screen, 13 inches to be exact, and my first world problem is the difficulty of seeing my work in real time as I peel back the layers behind 13 inches of pixels that ebb and flow with the data I am orchestrating.
At 3:00 PM I will speak to a man about a new opportunity, I am qualified for this future in every way but one, the past. The past is a haunting fellow when it needs to be. I will speak to this man, I will charm him with my wit and ability, he will croon and want me, want like the man that drives past the women on the corner, he will ask me questions to which I will have all the right answers as experience has qualified me in this trade, but it may come down to the past, the every present past that blocks out the light and limits organic matter from growing. I desperately want to grow, to be a part of this thing, this organism made up of souls working toward a common purpose, we would like to think that purpose is creativity, but we know in our hearts it is profit. The same reason I was dragged away from the screens, profit can't grow in a vacuum.
Kind hearts and good words await, and I will overcome this burden of the past, I will become what I am meant to be. The stars have aligned in my favor, it is kismet, and good news will abound. The past is a dead flower, wrinkled and without a hint of what it used to be, ground into the dirt of nothing and rotting at the souls of my feet.
The past will be forgotten and I will find myself back before the screens, back in a place of comfort shining security on those I am responsible for. Security, yes, security, the very thing I wish to provide is the knife that holds me at bay. But love wins all, so they say, and love is a force, I know this to be true. I will. I will. I will. I will win the security battle and provide once more. Not in the confines of some hourly room, but in place where I am mean to be.
