Like a bad penny, or maybe a cursed penny, Monday has returned. Seriously, the fact we have to spend the majority of our lives wasting 40 hours out of the total 168 hours we get in a week at work is preposterous. Nearly a quarter of our week is spent doing something we really don’t want to do. And that’s not even putting into account those that HAVE to work overtime. More money, sure. But less time to spend it or enjoy it. Big old Catch-22. Unless your job is a career or your passion. If so, hats off to you. Me? Nah. This job is 100%, Grade A for paying bills and providing health insurance. That’s the only thing keeping me here.
It could be worse, I could be working in a foundry or dirty factory where not only am I doing something I really have no passion for, I’m breathing in carcinogens on the daily. Leaving work covered in soot and grime and then having to waste another 15 minutes washing all of it off before I can even go home and enjoy what little time I seem to have there.
No, where I work is reasonably clean and somewhat climate-controlled. I work at a desk, but I also drive a forklift and unload semis when it’s needed. So I’m not quite a desk jockey, but I’m sitting more than I want to. Honestly, I’d rather be sitting anywhere than where I am on Monday morning. My job has left a bad taste in my mouth, figurately speaking. I’m dead center in the whole manufacturing hornet’s nest. I’m seeing firsthand being in the orthopedic industry what automotive has been seeing over the last 40 years, which is jobs being pulled from US plants and dropped in other spots…NOT in the US. Our jobs in-particular are starting to head south to Mexico; as well as east…FAR east to China. And the big ones are currently Puerto Rico and Costa Rica. Not just our company, but all of the big ones are sending their jobs to places where they can pay a quarter of what they pay workers in the US and think they’ll get the same results.
In our case after three years of transitioning and planning for our jobs to go to Puerto Rico and Costa Rica they realized it wasn’t going to happen. You can’t just will 30 years of “manufacturing excellence” into a group of people. So it was decided to backtrack that plan and leave our plant open. But that good news turned sour pretty quickly when it was apparent they were going to invest in front office feng shui but not new shrink wrap machines for packaging, or updating 25-year old machines on the shop floor. Or go to replace some of the people that left early over the last three years. They’re treating this plant like a body on life support, not one worth investing in and saving.
And then there’s the whole political shitshow happening here to add even more stress and upheaval. I truly see everything just going to hell in a handbasket, and yet people still shrug their shoulders like “Meh. Whatever.” That kind of apathy is what created the Third Reich, genocides, and reality TV. I mean, I admit I’m not really doing much either. But I can acknowledge it and point it out and in my heart I know what is happening in Washington D.C. and abroad is incredibly wrong. And we’re at mega levels of hypocrisy right now. Bullshit meters are zinging in our ears, yet there’s a large portion of the population sitting around like “Ha ha! Cool! Anarchy in the USA!” Or worse, they agree with and support the dismantling of our democracy. We’re so not the US I grew up in. We always had factions of fundamentalists and ideologists wanting to turn the country into some kind of Christian extremist compound. Islam, but instead of crushing our hope with hate and terrorism they crush it with God’s love. But it was in check.
Now, much like measles outbreaks in Texas becoming rampant because “you can’t make me vax ma kids!”, we now have rampant Christian Nationalism and ideology poisoning the country, turning former apolitical people into hardline soldiers of misinformation. How? By tipping a hat to their underlying bigotry and racism and normalizing outward hatred of other Americans that aren’t like them, don’t look like them, and aren’t the same color. Or don’t follow their religious beliefs. And the worst part is that those in power that are using religion as a means to bring them into their fold, it’s all just a shell game because none of them remotely believe in a higher power. If they did they wouldn’t be doing the shit they’re doing because they’d be scared for their very souls.
But hey, other than all that it was a good weekend.
My son and his girlfriend had their birthdays this weekend. Both born on March 2nd, but a year apart. Crazy, huh? My son is now 20, while his girlfriend is 19. I remember what a big deal birthdays were when the kids were younger. I especially enjoyed my son’s birthdays. Why? Because I got to go out and buy cool action figures or Lego sets, plus usually a Marvel movie on Blu Ray. We never had huge get-togethers for him because he never wanted them. I remember two birthdays out of 20 where it was more than just us, his grandparents, and his aunt and uncle. He liked to keep it small; taco fiesta, cake and ice cream, and then spending the remainder of the day putting together some mammoth Lego set. Or putting some new Marvel Legends action figures through the ringer in imagined battles.
Those were fun birthdays.
At 20 the birthday was like this: He worked from 8 to 4, got home, we gave him and his girlfriend their gifts, then they went out to dinner with her parents. I know, I know, it’s supposed to be like that. That’s what getting older and being an adult looks like. But man, I miss the excitement of gifts being opened and everyone awkwardly singing happy birthday. And the kids chomping at the bit to blow out the candles. And yes, I miss playing with the action figures. I admit it. Or the Beyblade battles, or hanging out in the retro lounge in the basement playing Namco Museum on the old 32″ Toshiba tube TV while he drank a Fanta out of a glass bottle, and me a beer from a pint glass.
Those memories are stuck in my mind, frozen in amber.
Those are just the thoughts of a dad who has been feeling slightly left behind lately. Time got away from me, and now I’m here, much older, sorer, and lost on what the hell everything means. Here where the world feels off its axis and occasionally I find that I feel like I’m the only one who notices. The Oscars were on last night, and I could care a less. It was something I used to enjoy, but it all seems to be a little pointless. Self-serving and self-ingratiating. Awards. Whatever.
Happy Monday.
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