Sisyphus Incarnate: There Are No Gold Watches

There are no gold watches anymore. Sadly, we live in a different world now.

My generation, by and large, will not retire from a company after 40 years of service. That ended with the Boomers, along with company picnics and smoking at your desk.

Ours is a generation of professional nomads, forced to traverse the landscape as seasons change, following after food. Doing our best to weather the storm.

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve worked somewhere, or how much you know. Skill, passion and dedication mean nothing when contrasted with the bottom line.

Retirement is for our parents—it’s a myth.

I admit, I’m still easing back into the unemployed life. I’ll get used to it again, I always do.

But…

Quite frankly, this is something one should never have to get used to.

I spend my life working, struggling, fighting my way up to the mountain top. Metaphorical, yes, but the incline is steep and rocky nonetheless.

Sometimes, I get close—I can see the top just ahead.

But the gravity of the world always somehow finds a way to pull me back down, a boulder rolling over me—crushing me.

Leaving me back at the bottom of the mountain, back to square one.

Wanting to reach the top all the more.

Sisyphus Incarnate: Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places…

I’ve been married for over ten years now. My wife and I have been together even longer. Once I found that special someone to spend holidays with, someone I could fart in front of while sitting on the couch in my underwear, rife with the knowledge that she’ll be there tomorrow and the next day—well, I thought I was in the clear. I thought I was retired from the dating scene.

Foolish mortal.

I’m unemployed. I used to be just another corporate soldier, entrenched in the front line of the cola wars, sitting in my fabric-lined cubicle wearing my corporate casual uniform.

Now, I’m just another casualty. I wear a bathrobe all day, and haven’t shaved in over a month. A day once filled with meetings and busy work now consist of job hunting and old episodes of the Rockford Files.

It’s amazing how much unemployment is like my bachelorhood—only with less internet porn.

The similarities between dating and job hunting are rather uncanny. Finding a job is just like trying to pick up a strange woman at a bar.

It’s true.

Instead of a pickup line, you have a cover letter—dates are replaced with interviews.

Being fired is akin to being dumped for someone better looking, and getting laid off is the professional equivalent of “It’s not you, it’s me…we can still be friends.”

And of course, there’s the hiring process.

That first interview is like a blind date—you met on the internet and seem to have a lot in common…You clean yourself up and watch what you say; you find yourself acting a little more polite than normal. You conceal your bad habits and pop breath mints like candy.

You pray they ask you out on a second date.

And when you get home, stomach full of butterflies, body a buzz, you wonder just how long you should wait before calling. You don’t want to seem desperate or psycho.

Sometimes they lead you on—you think you’re about to get lucky but it turns out they’re just not that into you; it’s the corporate equivalent of a tease.

Sometimes they say they’ll call, but never do, as you sit and stare at the phone for weeks—waiting, wondering what you might have done wrong.

It has been said that everyone has a soul mate out there, just waiting to be found. In the arena of love, I know this to be true; my wife reaffirms this belief almost every single day.

Let’s just hope the same can be said of careers—I’m not cut out for the bachelor life.

In the meantime, I just keep pushing that boulder up the mountainside, trying to make it to the top.