
Hmmm, can I get a hallelujah for finishing the marathon?
I am not referring to the gospel hymn by that name although some of the sentiment applies. I am declaring that I am now officially retired from the workforce. The reality is slowly taking form and substance for me. The fear that I will wake up tomorrow and find out it was only a dream is fading away.
It has been a long and winding road to get here. Taking into account part-time, after school jobs and summer jobs in my college and university years, I have been in the workforce in some manner for close to 50 years. A bit of context: The remuneration for my first part-time job was $1.45 per hour.
A quick rundown of the various jobs I have held: grocery store clerk, general labourer (several times), timekeeper (twice), supervisor of student workers (twice), paint factory assembly line worker (two months), reporter-photographer and the gambit of positions in the marketing profession – coordinator, specialist, supervisor, team lead and manager.
In my early days in the workforce, multi-tasking meant handling two or three projects at a time. At the end, it meant keeping so many plates spinning that your brain is in overdrive mode from the start of the work day to the end of it.
I have witnessed, and struggled to keep pace with, the relentless march of technology. When I started out, there were no computers, no digital world and no cell phones. Yes, the dark ages. Electric typewriters and Pong on a TV screen were the technological marvels.
I recall when desktop computers first appeared in the workplace. We had one large, clunky one that was shared by everyone. We had to book time to use it. I remember attending a training session on this new thing call The Internet and thinking: I am never going to be able to adapt to this thing. But miraculously, I did.
There was a time when new versions of software programs came along every few years and there was time to figure out their intricacies. As the end of my work life was on the horizon, wave after wave of new tech – each generation more temperamental and buggy than the last – bombarded me every few months. Adapting was a sink or swim equation to hold onto my job.
My body and my brain have paid a price over the years. Years of sitting at a desk seven or eight hours a day wore out my back which now requires a chiropractic treatment every week. I have two sets of eyeglasses – one for computer use and another for everything else. My brain was strained to the limit adapting to unrelenting change.
I have fought the good fight, survived (if barely) the thundering, high-speed train of technology, reinvented myself several times and dodged countless bullets. My work life was a marathon race and I stumbled across the finish line with precious little gas left in the tank.
But finally, at long last, I am free. Hallelujah, I made it!
~ Now Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet
~ Michael Robert Dyet is also the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel which was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog.
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