Holding on

The last two months have been the most painful of my life. Most of the time, I run around bumping into things. I take the day as it comes, waking in the morning with scarcely a thought to what the afternoon may hold for me.

But recently, uncertainty and fear have haunted me. I have been off work due to a severe shoulder injury which demanded a complicated surgery and a slow, painful, but cautious physical therapy regimen. I know I have a job. Worrying over my living shouldn’t even come to the fore. But it does on a couple of levels.

First, I walk in fear I may lost my job. There are multiple bureaucracies to juggle. Each needs its forms and those forms have to be perfect. Literally, an un-dotted I or un-crossed T can derail a paycheck. Miscommunication between the multiple offices and functionaries can put things at risk. I need the paycheck, regardless of how truncated it is in my situation.

Then, second, there’re surly supervisors under pressure from their bosses and the machinery that grinds above them. They are a sensitive bunch. Our business is delivery and those packages and letters have to go out regardless of a death in any one cog’s family or anyone’s injury or someone’s debilitating car accident. Dealing with these conditions, the supervisors sometimes just do whatever they can to get the job done, even if that means making a person go back to work before they have recovered from an injury.

Next, this puts me into a position to have to defend myself, stand up for myself against the forces arrayed only toward getting the job done regardless of my woes. I don’t like to stand up for myself. I don’t want to fight the management for more time off to heal. But I was hurt on the job. I have to look out for my health. The last thing I want is a bum arm because I buckled to pressure to return to work before everything was righted again.

Adding to my reluctance to confront management, I’m of a breed that believes that if I get the job done and done well, that should be evidence enough of my worth. Being raised a Catholic of the reactionary persuasion, I was taught that if one has to speak highly of themselves, they are conceited and selfish. And if there’s one thing a child of God should not be is proud and arrogant. To have to speak up for myself makes me very uncomfortable.

The other thing is that I’m of an age when jobs don’t come easily. Before I took my present position, I looked for over a year for work. I was teaching part-time, and this did us well for many years. Hundreds of applications, resumes, and cover letters netted me just a few interviews. I those instances, I made it through phone interviews with hiring managers, CEOs, and COOs. Then, they got a look at me and they saw my age. Too bad. The work paid upward of $95,000, though most jobs came in between $70,000 and $80,000.

A sudden financial scare forced me to take the first thing to come along. I had to keep the lights on. We needed insurance. So, that’s where I remain. The work is nothing special, just pure physical heavy lifting. But it demands precision and attention. It’s the only job I’ve ever had that’s demanded complete presence of mind for the duration of the workday. But it gives me access to good health insurance and a great savings plan with a generous employer match.

The precarity of my position is clearly in my mind, despite the fact that I have something of a sinecure. I have a good union. The employer has to go through a lengthy process to fire me. This, however, doesn’t linger in my mind. Perhaps, it’s all that Catholic schooling. Maybe, I’ve been inured to production since I was just a kid pushing a broken-down lawnmower in the suburbs.

More likely, it was the ease with which I hopped jobs when I was younger. With the exception of one job I had at a newspaper, which made me extraordinarily happy making my living as a writer, I’ve hopped from one employer to another. I started each new opportunity with enthusiasm. But after a while, I figured it out and mastered the skills I needed to employ to get the work done. Then, invariably, it became boring. I began to feel stuck and wondering if this was all there was. At every instance, I sought other employment or left town on long trips from which I’d return only to find another living as quickly as I left the other—which would start the whole process over again.

But those days are gone. I’m the old guy. I used to think that being in my late-fifties and having a Ph.D. were significant obstacles to gainful employment. Now, I’m convinced that most employers see my qualifications and age and think twice about someone who might only be with them for a short while. He will come here and have his finger in the air, they think, looking for the next career advancement. Or he will retire in a couple of years. There’s no wonder that in every grocery store is a seasoned career professional or Ph.D. among the rank and file.

Whatever the case, added to this uncertainty came other pressures and problems I’d never dealt with in my sober life. Faced with these new situations, I found that I could approach them as an adult. But one thing after another piled up on me. I reacted by going to more AA meetings, not to deal with the danger of a drink. I don’t feel under threat. But the psychic pain was something that scared me.

After all, it’s not the drink that is a danger to me. The insanity that precedes the first drink is the problem. Only now, I’d rather end my life than take another drink. So, staying sane and coping is a matter of life and death. Knowing this increases the necessity of keeping my shit together.

And sometimes, I’ve learned, I have no choice but to hold on. The lesson of “this too shall pass” has not been lost on me. Maybe, too, if I can just be patient, this period of fear and uncertainty will go the way of all other problems I’ve had, minor and major. That, I think, is part of being an adult.

I see the doctor soon and will probably be back at work after my visit. I don’t want to go back. I love the time off to write, to think, to sleep, to walk the dog at my leisure. I’ve worked hard my whole life, but I’m not fond of working for someone else. How nice it would be if I could just never go back to work again.

But I have three years before that’s a possibility—if nothing else comes up. For now, I have to settle for getting back to work and bringing home a full paycheck. These other issues I face which have been so difficult—relationships, finances, and household needs—are solving themselves. I can see the end of them. Patience.

Probably, like many other difficult periods of life, I will look back on this time and see what I could have done better, what I missed, what I didn’t grasp at the time. But I’ll go back to bumping into things, living in the day and moment. In a way, I can’t wait.