Taking the Temp Road

Ah, Seattle in October. The city is bustling with energy and aliveness as its citizens squeeze the very most out of the last of the sunny days. Tales of the season of cold, wet grayness that will soon be upon us I try to ignore and stay present. It is nice, now.

I am at work, looking out the window onto the busy street with the space needle perched above the billboard advertising Smart Cars. Closing the downtown store can be slow, and I cannot seem to pick up a wireless network anywhere. So, here I am; with Microsoft Word as my canvass and a blank page before me.

It is kind of an odd twist of events that I am even forced to use Word as my entertainment for the afternoon. I rarely use Word because it has been almost two years since I have written a research paper. Most of my writing is done online, it various emails or blogs. It is odd because this morning I had to take one of those online assessment exams for a temp agency to reveal how computer (il)literate I am. I scored an 82% on the Microsoft Word portion. Microsoft Excel was a little scarier—73%. I am not really a spreadsheet kind of guy. I am really not sure what all this is to determine. In real life, there is a help menu that tells you exactly how to do whatever function you might be unsure of, and being able to find the information you need is a much more valuable resource than already knowing it.

So, the test—the first I have taken in while—humbly put me in my place as a mediocre computer user. So, sorry if this post is mediocre. I don’t know how to make it otherwise.

The whole purpose of this exercise in jumping through the white man’s hoops is to hopefully get my foot in the door at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It is a relatively new non-profit organization started by some guy who is apparently famous around here. Whatever. I am pretty sure that he invented the spreadsheet that an absolute genius can only effectively operate 73% of the time. Good one, dude.

However, his Foundation intrigues me. They are at the forefront in the battle against global malaria. They have dozens of projects, both domestic and international, that deal with poverty and sustainable futures for those at the losing end of globalization. When I moved up here, I had a desire to work for a non-profit that crusaded for a cause I could feel good about waking up in the morning to fight for. This one definitely fits the bill. However, it is hard to get a job there. If you did not graduate from an Ivy League school, or have twenty five years of experience managing a non-profit, pretty much all positions are temp to hire. Hence, my appointment with the temp agency tomorrow.

While I enjoy my job at Uptown Espresso, I have been pulling shots of espresso for yuppies for years. Granted the yuppies here are more intriguing and more generous than the people I used to serve down in Texas. But, it’s the same shit and eventually it is time to move on. I notice that my body no longer takes too kindly to waking up at 4:30 am. In my younger days I could close the bars down at midnight, catch four hours of shut eye, get to work (still drunk) and work the whole shift without batting an eye. Now, I would sleep till noon and not even hear my alarm or the phone calls trying to rouse me.

Something a bit more adult, a bit more 9 to 5 with benefits, sick days, vacations, and a 401 (k), has an alluring appeal that is hard to place, but certainly present. While I still plan on socializing into the wee hours on the weekends, a ten o’clock bed time during the week sounds pretty good. But alas, when your work schedule is all over the place, so are you. I wonder if I will miss the days of very little responsibility, late nights, early mornings, answering to no one except myself, and if I will return back to this land after a stint in the “real world;” only real because that is what our wage slave society requires its citizens to believe to continue thriving.

It is all a new adventure, and I am up for the challenge. Come what may, as they say. Ultimately I just appreciate living somewhere new, somewhere larger, gayer, more liberal, less intellectually challenged. A blue state, close to Canada for a quick getaway if the shit hits the fan, or if I need health care. Let us all tip our glasses to what the future holds and enjoy the last few weeks of autumn before everything dies and we all go into hibernation.