Category: Working

As if I needed ONE more thing added to my already bountiful, jam-packed schedule, I started another professional pursuit: obtaining my pharmacy technician license. Part of the appeal, besides career advancement, is that my company will pay for it. That got my attention.

Also, I’m a lifelong nerd. I absolutely love reading, especially in pursuit of learning a new trick. First, a coworker emailed many study materials. Then, my supervisor emailed more study materials along with information about company compensation for employees who get their pharmacy tech license.

One favor I did myself was to delay registering for the exam. I’ve been juggling several creative projects for a few years. I don’t want to take away too much time from them since they truly make life worth living.

Instead, I plan to do work around my creative schedule. By not having a firm deadline, I feel relaxed as I read through 10 pages of the study guide during the week and 20 pages on the weekends and holidays.

Since I’m not doing a serious drill of the material, I read through the material rather quickly, with the exception of the calculations section. That part was more challenging than I originally thought it would be, but I figured it out for the most part.

Once I finish the read-through of the study guide, I’ll check out the other study materials, then take a few practice tests online. I’m not even sure if such a thing exists, but I’ll research that when the time comes.

Hopefully, the testing site will be in town. Regardless, I’m already looking forward to the day off. PTO is it’s own reward.

I’d never heard of the acronym F.I.R.E. (Financially Independent, Retire Early) before, but I’d embraced the concept years ago. Perhaps “embraced” isn’t accurate. After all, I’ve not achieved financial independence yet.

As far as “early” is concerned, that’s a relative term. The current retirement age is 65 (or is it 67?). My mother could have retired at 55, which seems young now that I’m 53. Then again, 53 definitely feels like a “I’m-too-old-for-this-shit” age. If my circumstances changed overnight, affording me to retire, it would seem right on time rather than early.

Regardless, I have never needed any catchy acronym to fuel my desire to get off the paid-work gerbil wheel and focus on doing what makes life worth living, which gets me up in the morning or causes me to forget to eat or go to bed.

I try to be optimistic when I dream and plan for the future. Yet, things beyond my control, such as inflation anchor me to the world of the gainfully employed.

The next best strategy is guard my “free” time as much as possible for soul-enriching activities as exercising, illustrating, writing, reading, podcasting, and digital filmmaking. As I recently told Mom, “When I’m on my deathbed, I won’t regret not polishing the furniture more.”

FIRE!

When I moved in with my parents, I set up things in stages. I had a week and a half to unpack the essentials, prioritizing my home office. After cleaning out all the things my parents had stored in the downstairs room, I rearranged the room, using the pre-existing furniture.

Eventually, I replaced the desk, which was actually an ol’ school sewing machine table. Then I replaced the chair, which had no arm rests, no head rest, nor lumbar support.

To go with my sleek looking desk and adjustable standing desk, I bought a sleek-looking black office chair. Just as one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, the comfortableness of office chairs shouldn’t be judged by their looks.

No matter what I did, I never sat in that chair comfortably while working. I added a pillow for my back, but the chair’s head rest couldn’t be moved forward to support my head while looking at the monitors. Even adding a portable lumbar support didn’t help much.

After fidgeting with it for months, I returned to my senses and got an inexpensive gamer’s chair. (Perhaps too cheap because the armrests aren’t adjustable!) I’d bought my first gamer’s chair a few years ago, reasoning that if people a fourth of my age could sit comfortably for 12 hours or more, then a middle age woman could sit for a few hours a day when tired of standing.

Now, in between calls, I sit until a call comes in. I stand up, do what I can for the patient before returning to a seated position after the call concludes. It’s really the best of both worlds since before I bought my standing desk, I felt miserable sitting the whole time. This way, I’m getting slow aerobic exercise throughout my shift.

Not that I ever want to sit on my ass for eight hours unless I’m traveling, but even then, I want a comfortable seat. I have had enough of the ass-biting seats experience back when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer.

After seeing author Tricia Hersey interviewed on TV, I put her latest book, Rest Is Resistance, on my ever-growing booklist. The book asserts that American grind culture is the conclusion of white supremacy and capitalism, especially for Black people.

I’d always been immersed in the grind, but had been too busy hustling to analyze the situation. Starting in childhood, my parents and other older relatives preached the survival strategy of working twice as hard to get half as much as white people, but never seeing that that hustle was a never-ending, life-shortening detriment, not really a healthy, sustainable way to proceed.

At a few dead-end jobs, I remember feeling like an insignificant cog in the great machinery of the organization. At the best jobs, I believed I made a difference in the betterment of society.

In the end, whether the job was dead-end or not, the grind thrived. Bodies, especially bodies of color, were expected to grind and sacrifice our flesh to the secular gods of capitalism and white supremacy.

And here I thought I was free. When I was an independent contractor, either as an insurance agent or a customer service representative, I’d taken myself out of the machine. Or so I thought.

I’d inserted myself into a different part of the machine. More enjoyable since I loved setting my own schedule. Midday yoga class, followed by lunch with a glass of wine. Civilized. Yet, I still felt compelled to grind.

Work hard, play hard. Right?

They told us our life expectancy was lower because of health inequities. That certainly factors into Black people’s overall health. Yet how many of those reports/studies looked at the overall expectation that Black people must grind until our bones turned to dust? How we have to neglect our health for the capitalistic gain of others who don’t look like us, but look down on us? From that view, apparently it’s challenging to see our humanity.

I’m a naturally organized person who’s good at both writing and math. Those skills alone can be applied to a vast majority of jobs, which I’ve done in order to make a living. Yet, for the most part, the most enjoyable parts of my life have been outside of work.

Teaching math and science was a notable exception. For many years, the only reason I sustained being a teacher was the much needed, much earned time off. Having a creative outlet in which to teach students was always yoked with doing a lot of bullshit, decided by people who either couldn’t teach or wouldn’t dare take the cut in pay to do so.

Such is life. I always told my students to be lifelong learners. My latest lesson will be to remove myself from the grind.

So yet another wonderful benefit of my current full-time employment popped up in my professional email inbox. The company I work for has what I guess is a partnership with another company that specializes in back health. After filing out a questionnaire, I qualified to participate in the program to help with my chronic problem child of a left hip.

A few weeks later, I received my kit, which consisted of a mini tablet, two sensors, one for my mid-thigh and the other for my mid-calf, a few exercise bands, a tablet stand and lots of pamphlets of how to set everything up.

Like everything technological, there was a glitch. Confusing the situation, the error message read, “Network error.” At the time, I took it at face value. So, I checked that the tablet was connected to wifi. I had other things connected to wifi and was running well. I turned off the firestick just in case. I restarted the tablet. Same error message.

Instead of wasting more time on it, I repacked everything in the case, then emailed their customer service to report the malfunction. Since it was still a perfectly wonderful Sunday afternoon, I moved on to another leisure activity.

I heard back from them on Tuesday, given that Monday was a holiday. They needlessly reminded me of my login email. I just laughed. Once again, I’d have to run IT myself. Of course, that would have to wait until the following weekend. I had no mental bandwidth to screw around with it. Plus, I didn’t have any pressing reason to get it up and running.

By Friday after work, I figured why the hell not? Funny thing, technology. Despite the fact that the tablet was connected to wifi, I had to take the extra step and add the device’s IP information to a list. In layperson’s terms, I introduced the wifi to the device before they would dance. Just to make sure the connection was good, I put in my blog address.

Next thing, I was doing some Level 1 hip exercises. As corny as it sounds, I enjoyed the layout of the program. It displayed an woman avatar who had the sensors on her right leg to mirror what I did with the sensors on my left leg. Since the whole set of exercise takes less than 10 minutes, I easily incorporated them into my daily routine.

I sped read through the short articles, which follow the exercises, and have never once written any feedback. Quite odd for someone who claims to be a writer, but I’m saving myself for that moment, when the cumulative daily routine adds up to a pain-free existence.

It would be tempting to say that my sudden willingness to work overtime is part of a New Year’s Resolution to make more money. Truth be told, I’m obliged to work at least four hours of overtime during the first two weeks of January since this is the time of year where all those new insurance policies are entered and activated.

Thank goodness, I’d already figured out how to increase the pleasantness of my work environment, including listening to podcasts, music, audiobooks and streaming standup comedians. All of that truly helped after the second 3-day weekend in a row, the interactive platform cut up as if it had partied too hard over the weekend. Nonetheless, one of the benefits of being an employee meant I still got paid for doing as much work as I could.

A few weeks ago, I’d wished that a full-time day was only 6.5 hours. Although I’d still love that, three days out of five, that extra hour felt like a breeze. Those other two days…seemed like no matter whether I stood up, the pain on my left side (of course it’s always the left side!), just wouldn’t calm down.

On those days, I reminded myself that I was an hour of overtime closer to financial freedom. If that didn’t work, I thought of a restaurant I’d ordered from on Friday. Food, the ol’ standby incentive.

The downside of working an extra hour meant that I had an hour less of creative time. Once again, I had to work on editing my podcast on the weekends. At least that doesn’t have a deadline.

I had been looking forward to another 3-day weekend in honor of MLK Day. Yet, we were notified that we’d receive holiday pay (double) plus OT (time and a half) pay if we worked. Now by my algebraic calculations, that would be 3.5 times my regular pay, but my supervisor stated it was 2.5. Either way, that would put me closer to financial freedom. Certainly that has to be a part of MLK’s dream.