Work

For most people, myself included, work is a requirement of adult life, but generally not enjoyed. Some are able to do what they love for employment, but it's unfortunately not the norm. As I posted a few weeks ago, working during the quad life is part of a balancing act between priorities.

After I graduated from college, I took the first few months to look for work and had interviews at a number of businesses. During this time, I signed up with a temp agency and shortly after was called in to work at a place in West Des Moines. After bankruptcy, an airline was restructuring how they handled employee benefits. We would take phone calls from employees, pilots in flight, mechanics, stewardesses, and get them signed up for the benefits package of their choice. Phone operation and data entry wasn't what I had in mind with a degree in Information Technology, but it was my first real job. I worked forty hours a week, or more, for a month and a half. It was a great feeling supporting myself and living a regular adult life.

A few months later I had another temp job, but this was one I found on my own. For this one, I did data entry for job counselors at a division of Iowa Workforce Development. I commuted from my apartment to downtown Des Moines and again did a forty-hour work week, generally. The work often ran out before the day did, so I had a few times where I left early. Once again though, the time ran out on the assignment and my position was complete. A few years later, it was found out that the CEO was taking out large sums of money for herself, so it ended up being liquidated and work done by a local university.

It has been over ten years since I worked those positions and I can't see how I did it. Now, if I was working a traditional job somewhere, every 45 minutes, I would have to stop and reposition in my chair for fifteen minutes. In an eight-hour day, that adds up to two hours of tilting. When I'm tilted, I can't run a computer, at least not the way I do it now, I've tried before. At the last temp job I did, job counselors would take fifteen minute smoke breaks every hour, so the time would be similar, but I wouldn't feel right getting paid to do nothing. When I did work full-time, I adjusted when I could, or for longer periods, but not so far that I couldn't work.

Back then (that makes me sound old), my body was more forgiving, so I could get away with it. Now, with chronic pressure sores, there's no way I could. Last month, all of January, I worked a total of about 26 hours. If you divide that into the 22 working days of the month, that's not much more than an hour a day, and that was a busy month. Granted though, I don't record my time as I would in an office, I only record time I'm actually working on a client's site. If I'm emailing clients, on the phone, putting together proposals, working on book work, none of that is recorded. If I did, then I may get up to a few hours per day average.

Worst of all is not doing anything, not having a reason to get up in the morning and do something productive with the life I've been given. Maybe sometime this body will improve, and work increase, to levels more toward real work. Until then, that's this week for the quad life.