Laughing it off

A few things had been a given for me in the billboard business from the get go: 1) I would need to be careful in order to survive; 2) Construction was not my dream job, but necessary to survive for now; and 3) I wasn’t going anywhere else, having survived the first two weeks, but really short on money. I did keep my eyes out for other positions, but I wasn’t really finding anything readily available that paid as well, at least not for someone with an English degree. Life was difficult so I resolved to simplify it. The main goal was to survive the workday for four days a week, and then enjoy three days off over the weekends. It was like I was living two completely different lives depending on the day. Since I love writing I started on a novel, but that was more for fun than it was for salvation. Who pays writers what we’re worth? Exactly!

I earned myself a couple new nicknames while working on billboards. “Pokey” for how much slower I was than the other three on the crew (at least in the first six months) and “giggles” for how I laughed about everything. I was officially in survival mode. Others began helping me more as it became more evident to others that the three things I mentioned above were realities for me, and things got easier on everyone once it was apparent that: 1) Preserving my strength by helping me learn how to more effectively do the job was safer for everyone; 2) I wasn’t a threat to their job anyway; 3) I wasn’t going to quit no matter what because I needed the work. I had gone a few months now just laughing it off. Life was one day at a time.