The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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I got an e-mail today with a link to the ‘best’ and ‘worst’ jobs in America.  Gotta tell you, I dreaded opening it up, fully expecting to find Artist probably the worst.  In all honesty, I almost hit the DELETE button, but this had come from a friend and he probably expected a response or a confession or a vow to do better in my next career choice, one from the ‘best’ list.

Turns out the ‘best’ jobs were pretty much judged on the basis of salary.  Actuarials, statisticians, mathematician(!), no kidding: high paying, technical, number crunching corporate gigs.  Boy oh boy, if I’d only know known back when I drummed out of school and began my desperate search for a ‘meaningful’ job.  Nobody told me the best careers were the highest paid ones.  I thought maybe they would be the ones that made me the happiest.The ‘worst’ jobs were the dangerous jobs.  Like Lumberjack.  Probably cut your leg off or be killed by a miscalculated cut in a leaning Doug Fir.  Poor pay, hearing loss, amputations.  And forget health care or vacations or sick leave or a pension.  Not gonna get to pension age anyway….

No mention of Artist in the group.  I guess poor wages, no bennies, no pension, not really the ‘worst’ job if it isn’t dangerous too.  Although I got to thinking how about those glass installations I did back when I was too eager and too stupid, climb up on a skinny ledge two stories above a concrete floor to hoist 30 square foot panels of stained glass into place with barely a few toes on secure footing at 3 a.m., every cell in my body screaming NO NO NO! and the sweat smelling like fear.  Fear, in case you don’t know, that kind of fear at least, smells like excrement.  Truly, unforgettably.

Anyway …. I didn’t find my ‘job’ listed on this link.  I’m just sort of glad I got something I can call a job.  Although, between you and me and the pegleg lumberjack, I never think of what I do as a job.  Someone asked me about retirement two nights ago at an art gallery opening. Would I — could I — just stop?  It’s not like punching a time clock, I guess.  It’s not about making the money.  And it’s not about being afraid of the danger.  My danger was really starvation, poverty, failure and humiliation.  Too late for that now.  The fear now is the creative well drying up, the days growing longer and emptier, the boredom settling in like a slow metastasizing dread.  I don’t know yet, but I bet it still smells the same.

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