After working for the Air Force Academy two years in a janitorial role, I found myself feeling deeply unsatisfied with life in the Spring of 2019. I was a germaphobe cleaning toilets, showers and sinks for twelve dollars an hour and each morning that I woke up for work I felt myself dying inside. I had a great connection and relationship with my co-workers and no real reason to be personally disastisfied with anything other than the pay, but something inside of me asked “Is this all I have to look forward to for the rest of my life? Is this the best I can do?”. One day I simply walked out of work and took a drive to go stare at the beautiful Spring scenery in the familiar Rockrimmon area I had grown up in. Before I reached the parking lot of my destination I promised myself I would start writing a book because I could not and would not take another day of cleaning those disgusting urinals and toilets!
I was sick of the wads of gum in the urinals, the shitstains under the toilet bowl rims, the occasional vomit and various bodily fluids I would encounter. However I did not follow through on any of this and the very next day came back to work apologetic about my behavior as I needed the job and could not afford to lose it. I promised I would never do it again, but within just a few days I did it for the final time with no backup plan, no jobs or interviews lined up, no real savings, just the $1,200 or so in my account and my parents’ nervous support of my choice to leave and help me move forward with financial support. I had recalled a co-worker and friend telling me some time ago that Amazon was hiring in Denver, so proceeded to apply online. For those unaware, getting hired at Amazon is enormously easy and so I secured a job and within a few weeks began working my new job after getting an apartment in Thornton, CO.
It goes without saying that each of us only has only so much tolerence for misery. For myself in particular I am sensitive to meaningless routines that feel like they lead nowhere. Amazon truly saved my life and transformed it giving me new opportunities to grow and be myself! From that day forward I have learned a very important lesson; my time is valuable, my days are few and my patience is based on what I am gaining, not what I am willing to give up! I am once again feeling the call. The need to reach for something more. Today however, I have a more defined vision for my purpose. I feel an emptiness in my gut, the tension of being nothing and the despair of hoping for something fulfilling.
Sanity is like a cliff; it has an edge that you can fall off of. Once you fall you don’t reach a bottom, you either find something to grab onto to climb back up or you continue to hit your head on the sharp rocks on the way down until you are so badly beaten that you give up. I am so sensitive to pain of numbness that I’d rather face the pain of trying something new, even when the odds are sharply against me and all of my efforts. I write so that I don’t die and I write so that I can make sense of my pain and my joy. Numbness is pain beyond anything I can feel because it can’t be described. It is the absence of being and of feeling. Nothing can be made out of nothing, so I live by inspiration.
