I Want To Be A State Worker When I Grow Up

No one has ever overheard that phrase. Unless they heard it from me, talking about how no child ever uttered such a phrase. If you would have told me 20 years ago I would be sitting in a cubicle, editing board items and analyzing budgets, I would have laughed in your face. Yet here I sit, editing board items and analyzing budgets. I’m sure as heck not complaining either. I did one of the hardest jobs in the world for over 13 years, before I decided I couldn’t do that for the teeny pay I was getting any longer. The most difficult job in the world was raising other people’s children. And if you don’t think a worker who’s with your child from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day is raising your children, email me and we can have a discussion about it. I was with these kids more waking hours than their parents were. All while getting paid at most 12 dollars an hour. Don’t get me started on how we need to pay early childcare workers more in this country. But I digress.

When you grew up thinking you were going to change the world, there are certain things you adjust while living in cubicle land 9 hours a day of your life. I altered my “change the world” mentality to changing the world one person at a time. I changed the goal so that I still feel good about myself, while not being so grandiose. Some days my goal is to make every person I walk past on the way in to work smile. Some days it’s cheer up a grumpy co-worker. I fully believe if you alter the mood of one person, that mood carries on to help another, and another. It’s kind of like that movie, “Pay It Forward.” Some days I go out to the homeless camps and give them water and blankets and chat, to let them know that I for one do not try and make them invisible. Some days I just sit here so buried in work I do none of that stuff and can’t wait to get home. Hey, I’m human.

I take comfort in the fact that this job does not define me. This job is a paycheck. What I do in the outside world makes me who I am. The attitude I choose to have when I wake up at 3:30 in the morning instead of 6:30 when my alarm goes off, is what makes the difference in the type of day I will have. This job affords me the home I own. It allows me to buy fresh vegetables and meat and poultry that I know where it came from. Food that is not loaded with chemicals and trucked from places half round the world. I get to go out to fancy dinners once or twice a month which I love. I can pay ridiculous amounts to have Showtime and HBO.

Sometimes I have too much free time and do stuff like this via iPhone with a friend, which she then turns in to a blog. It's best to do the older posts and read it from the beginning, so it makes more sense:
http://realemoji.blogspot.com/


I can also find things like this cookie, then carry them around the office making up back stories for them. Now some would ask, “Why did someone make a gingerbread man with a beret?” I went ahead and took it a step further and made him Jacque, zay fronch zhinzherbread mon. Whenever I do a French accent I do it poorly in homage to the French girl in Better Off Dead. Worst.French.Accent.Ever.

Sometimes it is so cold in here that I bring my Snuggie because it serves a double purpose: I can be warm while still typing and completing my work, and anyone that comes to my desk gets to chuckle about the girl in the pink Snuggie. This is me looking dismayed that it is so cold in the office that I need to wear a Snuggie.

So, not all state workers are stuffy. Not all of us sit around doing nothing all day. But most of us are super excited about how amazing our health benefits and retirement are. I'm most excited that on Fridays I get to dress like I normally do, which is like a total bum. I am sitting here in a black t shirt, rust wide legged cords, and all black Converse. Go me!

I have no idea why in some posts two pictures come out right, while on some you have to click on the little white box for them to open up. But I tried to fix it and it is still that way. Sorry about that.