I have a draft post I'm working on, discussing ways that our tunnel vision during the Cold War negatively impacted our foreign policy. Yet I find myself writing about something else today, and that's partly because of
this article. My own experience was not all that traumatic. And yet this particular section resonated with me:
"Nobody talks about the boredom, the impossibility of finding meaning in 8
hours work in an air-conditioned office after you just spent months
working 18 hours a day on a battlefield where your touch altered
history. Nobody talks about the surreal experience of trying to remember
how you got excited about a book, or clothing, or even a car or house.
On the battlefield, in the burning building, the ground trembled, we
felt our impact in everything we did, until the world seemed to ripple
at our touch. Back home, or off shift, we are suddenly the subject of
sympathetic glances, of silly, repetitive questions. The anonymity of
the uniform is nothing compared the anonymity of comfort. We drown in
it, cut off from what makes it worthwhile for others, unable to carve
out a piece of it for ourselves."
It resonated on a couple of different levels. First, because of that potential job that fell through the other day. I struggle in the civilian world. Not to the degree that there's an obvious problem. I've got a good paying job, I'm doing well enough. It's just...well, the joy of learning new things distracted me for a while. Made it easy to forget how unimportant our job really is. Will it make that much of a difference whether something ships today or ships tomorrow? Or (now that I manage the returns center), would it really make a difference if the customer gets their credit today vs. tomorrow? I mean, sure...it shouldn't take three months. But most of the time if a customer really needs their credit they'll contact customer care, who contacts me, and we pull their order out of the queue and process it right away. The rest of it? Not such a big deal.
These are the things I don't feel like I can say at work. After all, I'm a supervisor. I'm supposed to care about being better, faster, etc. And I do...I get it. It's just...nobody is going to die if we don't get it done. Nobody is being shot at over what we're doing.
So I've been hoping to find a job that fills my need to make a difference, that ties in my own interests (amply found here on the blog) with some sort of need that pays enough to do it professionally. Sure, I've got my hobby horse here on the blog...but it's not like I'm in a position to put my ideas into practice. I'm more like an armchair quarterback.
This job had the potential to change that. The potential to do something I'm interested in, that I find meaningful, and that I think I'd be pretty good at. And...well, it ain't happening.
On the one hand, nothing has changed. I'm still exactly where I've been for the past four years. And on the other hand...
On the other hand, I increasingly find myself stuck. Unable to see the way forward, to see a path that matches my skillset to the type of job I want to do.
