I start a new job tomorrow!
I used an exclamation point and bold type to signify exhilaration and positivity but it is hardly that. The only thing I have to offer is resigned irony.
Let’s try this:
Oh, hi. I’m starting a new temp job tomorrow. I’m thrilled, yeah.
There. That’s more authentic.
What I’m experiencing, on the precipice of a new job at my age, is a vague relief, a hedging acceptance of the imperfect march toward retirement and existential obsolescence. I’ve written in my newsletters that I am too young to retire but too old to take a “new career” seriously.
On paper, I’m the perfect senior employee who you park out in a non-threatening public-facing cage. He can be assigned menial, repetitive tasks while the rest of the company ignores the social deterioration happening before their eyes.
I’m being hyperbolic because it’s hardly like I’m going to be a Walmart greeter or security guard for the Golden Haven Retirement Home. I will be working at <large global corporation> in a customer service role that sounds intensive and outside my normal wheelhouse. I’m accustomed to working in a lax entertainment environment where I experienced little oversight or explicit key performance indicators. Essentially, in my previous jobs I was treated like an autonomous and self-regulating adult, whereas in many lower-paid transactional environments, you are treated like a fifth grader with gratuitous infringement of over-the-shoulder supervision while you’re held accountable to repeated admonitions about quantifiable expectations or KPI’s. In such workplaces, expectations are rigid and consuming; this is the environment I will need to adjust in my new temp assignment.
It is a “long-term” assignment with the possibility of hire, which can mean anything. My recruiter boasted that one of his temps was recently hired permanently by said <large global corporation>. I got the impression this was the exception and not the rule. I expect there is a high turnover rate for this role and that <large global corporation> churns through the temps like disposable, low-cost cogs, but it’s all good, I have no problem being a cog as long as I’m bringing in a steady household income which will be funneled into padding my retirement bucket. I’m a Boomer that way. When I tackle a task, I’m all in. I will do my best job and I’ll either be a great employee who might get hired in a year, or I’ll shit the bed next week and be back to slacking on the internet all day long in between sending out despondent job applications and writing shitty Notes on Substack.
I’m not worried and don’t particularly give a shit which is my psychic pathway to liberty.
And this brings me to a pivot. I love the pivot…it is the only corporate lingo I like and use. It is a wonderful visual and captures the nimbleness required to change a strategy on the fly in response to life’s many twists and turns and decapitations.
In my case, this latest twist is a direct assault on my Substack presence. While I was unemployed, and even when working from home (since 2020) to a lesser extent, I’ve always enjoyed unlimited access to unchecked internet frivolity. I am not ashamed to admit that while WFH, I wrote many full-length posts interspersed between work tasks in my typical flurry of chaotic multi-tasking, the kind I revel in since I am chaos incarnate. While unemployed, there was little competition for my attention which I devoted largely to writing and scrolling Substack Notes.
My new job is 100% onsite which translates into a reduction of 42-44 hours, per week, that I can devote to my Substack avocation. My writing addiction will be curtailed and this sucks balls. I am not in a position to have what I want and circumstances are having their way with me.
I run conjoined newsletters on Substack that function as separate but equal. They do not refer to the other and are unlike the other in nearly all facets. The only common denominator between them is me, the author, who uses different pseudonyms for each, which can be confusing as hell to everyone, but especially to me.
My output will need to be tailored to my new temp job. I have no choice but to reduce my daily output and increase the efficiency of my reduced output.
As it pertains to david deconstructed, my 1,500-word motif may take a tumble. I love to write and I want to write every day, but I may have no more than 2 hours each day to devote to writing, and that is optimistic. I foresee I may transition to a “serial” format in which I write a routine post in 2-4 installments and perhaps another full-length weekend installment.
Most tragically, my Notes presence will be greatly diminished. I don’t expect to spend my workday tapping out nonsense on the Orange Notes chalkboard. Rather than expend creative energy on Notes, I will channel it toward newsletter posts. By diverting attention from Notes, my newsletter will become a compendium of my pithy bullshit while my Notes presence will be largely bare except for weekends and few minutes late on weeknights.