Am I Next

Five years ago I had just quit being a massage therapist. I was starting out in a new job as a business manager for a school.

I loved being a massage therapist. It was the first and only time that I felt like I was the best at something. I am not exaggerating when I say I was a gifted therapist. But I am a practical person. I made almost no money (because of a long and horrible story involving the psychotically jealous man I worked for and how he fucked me over big time) and J was supporting us. We were getting married that winter and we just couldn't keep going on my erratic pay. So I got a desk job.

A desk job working for another crazy person. A crazy person who wanted me to do illegal things and who urinated on my desk and who was SHOCKED that I would not accept tuition payments in illegal narcotics.

And then I started working where I work now. A different position, a different part of the company. But it was the beginning. I was good at it. And I stayed.

I have stayed a long time.

It is a funny thing, work. How you just go into the office every day without thinking about what you are doing, what you have given up. I am not sure I could go back to massage therapy today. I might not have loved it for long. Not much changes. It is a physical job with a lot of strange people situations. I might have grown tired or gotten injured. I'll never know.

I get paid a good amount to do what I do.

Not a lot. For some reason because J and I have our shit together people assume we make a lot of money but we don't. Just enough that two practical sorts like ourselves can be just fine. My job pays our bills, builds our future, is our security. My job makes the past three years he has spent looking for his future possible.

But my future. I can't even imagine what that will be. I feel like I have to keep doing what I am doing forever. It is our health plan, our investment plan, our everything.

A lot of people would love my job. But I am bored. I took this as an interim stop on the way to something bigger and more interesting. Dear GOD I hope it comes soon because this is starting to feel like a soul-suck.

I don't regret giving up massage therapy. Five years ago I was a different person. I don't really know that girl anymore. I miss her sometimes. I want to go back and tell her to chill the fuck out and things will be fine. Even though that may not be true. Sometimes I feel like our shit was only saved because I was such a hyperactive lunatic about things. But she got me here.

I don't know what I want to do next. But I am having this moment wondering when it is my turn to figure it out.