I got an e-mail today with a link to the \u2018best\u2019 and \u2018worst\u2019 jobs in America.\u00a0 Gotta tell you, I dreaded opening it up, fully expecting to find Artist probably the worst.\u00a0 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 \u2018best\u2019 list.<\/p>\n
Turns out the \u2018best\u2019 jobs were pretty much judged on the basis of salary.\u00a0 Actuarials, statisticians, mathematician(!), no kidding: high paying, technical, number crunching corporate gigs.\u00a0 Boy oh boy, if I\u2019d only know known back when I drummed out of school and began my desperate search for a \u2018meaningful\u2019 job.\u00a0 Nobody told me the best careers were the highest paid ones.\u00a0 I thought maybe they would be the ones that made me the happiest.The \u2018worst\u2019 jobs were the dangerous jobs.\u00a0 Like Lumberjack.\u00a0 Probably cut your leg off or be killed by a miscalculated cut in a leaning Doug Fir.\u00a0 Poor pay, hearing loss, amputations.\u00a0 And forget health care or vacations or sick leave or a pension.\u00a0 Not gonna get to pension age anyway\u2026.<\/p>\n
No mention of Artist in the group.\u00a0 I guess poor wages, no bennies, no pension, not really the \u2018worst\u2019 job if it isn\u2019t dangerous too.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Fear, in case you don\u2019t know, that kind of fear at least, smells like excrement.\u00a0 Truly, unforgettably.<\/p>\n
Anyway \u2026. I didn\u2019t find my \u2018job\u2019 listed on this link.\u00a0 I\u2019m just sort of glad I got something I can call a job.\u00a0 Although, between you and me and the pegleg lumberjack, I never think of what I do as a job.\u00a0 Someone asked me about retirement two nights ago at an art gallery opening. Would I — could I — just stop?\u00a0 It\u2019s not like punching a time clock, I guess.\u00a0 It\u2019s not about making the money.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not about being afraid of the danger.\u00a0 My danger was really starvation, poverty, failure and humiliation.\u00a0 Too late for that now.\u00a0 The fear now is the creative well drying up, the days growing longer and emptier, the boredom settling in like a slow metastasizing dread.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know yet, but I bet it still smells the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I got an e-mail today with a link to the \u2018best\u2019 and \u2018worst\u2019 jobs in America.\u00a0 Gotta tell you, I dreaded opening it up, fully expecting to find Artist probably the worst.\u00a0 In all honesty, I almost hit the DELETE button, but this had come from a friend and he probably expected a response or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[6002,5788,5787],"class_list":["post-17087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-artist-fear","tag-best-jobs","tag-worst-jobs"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17087"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17088,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17087\/revisions\/17088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}