Exiting Grace

 

https://www.wikiart.org/en/wassily-kandinsky/composition-x-1939

More rain, got a little sun this morning.  Working through the process still.

Been talking to a friend lately, he is sick of where he is working and the field that he is working in.  Can’t say for a moment that I blame him. He has toiled in the field that I left fifteen years ago and has built up even more scorn and loathing of the field than I ever had.  He is, simply put, too old for that shit. 

But he is too young and too poor to quit working just yet.  So when I talk with him he is constantly coming up with “what about’s” and “how about I do” statements.  Some of them seem like good ideas, but all of them seem to require that he either 1.) Work hard, or 2.) Learn a new skill he currently does not have.  Either one of these two uncomfortable constraints seem to be in the cards for an aging specialist in an industry that despises the same.

The hardest part for him is that he can’t seem to realize that his “ownership” of things is weighing him down more than anything.  He wants to live well out of the city.  Their place is around 25 miles from any job he might potentially be qualified for.  The distance and the transportation costs alone require that he be fairly high-paid.  

He also demands that he be given six weeks a year off, he feels that with his expertise in a dying field, he deserves the time off.  But the hard part is, the companies that may potentially hire him want a shit-ton more work than that, because their capital costs and administrative/management costs are exorbitant.

Nope, in a sense he is a classic Gen-X’er.  Lots of “I deserve”.  The “deserve” ore was mined out a long time ago.

Supposedly I am a “boomer I”,  an old boomer.  I rode the horse as long as I could, and got off before it went down.  His age and the times today won’t allow him that possibility.