Free as in Freedom

Since I was a kid, I have wanted to be something that mattered. First I wanted to be a vet. Then I wanted to be a psychologist. Then I wanted to be a writer. Then I lost track.

My first job was as a garbage sweeper at the PNE. So were my second and third jobs. (it’s an annual event, you see). I sold cheese, then shawarmas, then wicker furniture, then photocopies and then I made the leap to administrative assistant-dom where I have been languishing ever since. I have pretty much reached the pinnnacle of administrative assistant-dom: the government employee. There is nowhere to go from here except higher up the administrative assistant ladder (oh yes, there is one) or The Fuck Out. As you may know, I am choosing the latter.

You could say that what I do does Matter. I certainly would. I have managed to convince myself of this over the years and I only half don’t believe it. I don’t think it matters as much as being a heart surgeon or a teacher, but it matters a little. For two reasons.

1. People rely on administrative assistants to make things run smoothly.
2. If it didn’t matter at all, hoo boy would I have been hating my life for the past 5 years.

It is not a problem to think that what you do matters. The problem, I guess, is when you decide something matters over-much, whether to convince yourself to get out of bed in the morning or to justify your existence to your boss / father figure / colleagues. At least 15 different people have done my job before me and at least 15 will do it after I leave. Once my nameplate is gone from the wall, I will be remembered by some, for a while, and then forgotten entirely.

However, I also care a lot about Doing a Good Job. I take my work responsibilities especially seriously both because I am amply compensated for them and because I was raised with a tenacious work ethic that dictates I must Stick With It or Else. If not for my lippy, petulant, creative inner teenager who rails at injustice, I would be the perfect public servant, really.

So in these last weeks of work, even as I was glad to be leaving, intending never to return, speaking to people as though I didn’t care where their precious pieces of paper had got to, of course, I did. I was still, in my mind, carefully wrapping up loose ends, leaving a smooth trail of knowledge behind me, trying to make things easier for everyone. With 30+ days of unclaimed sick days in the bank, I was fretting about additional doctors’ appointments.

Then, on Thursday, I was sorting through my email, trying to get it down to one screen, mentally classifying, “oh this one I should keep / this one I should file” when I suddenly realized: DELETE THEM ALL. Delete them all, every last fucking one. It won’t matter in my last 4 days of work EVER in this job if I have that email. I do not have to follow up or track down.

DELETE THEM ALL. Just like that, I mentally left the building. I completely relinquished the responsibility of keeping track of everyone’s information, the heaviness of every day being just a continuation of the last, the tooth-grinding, mind-blowing crush of days spent chasing paper and people and hearing the same words over and over, slouching, bored in the land where nothing ever changes or finishes or is important enough to require more than one eye on it at a time.

In short, I removed the mantle of administrative assistant and became a normal, hugely pregnant woman in relatively comfortable pants.

It is exciting and terrifying to start this new chapter of home-by-choice, in large part because it is the first time in recent memory that I have made an employment-related choice. I have taken jobs because they are “good jobs” even if they are not good for me; I have stayed in jobs that were “bad jobs” because I was afraid to quit and have no job. I have been relieved to be laid off, twice and relieved to be pregnant, twice, because those things made the choice for me, but in this instance I have truly made it myself. I have allowed myself to say: I can be happier than this and I deserve to be happier than this.
I will work driven by love rather than desperation. Driven by respect rather than hierarchy, driven by being my own boss and being truly accountable for my actions. Not having to fill out 17 forms to prove my accountability but to be able to say look, my kids are happy / sad / angry and I helped. The end.

Not without exception, I know.

It is not some ice-cream lined utopia I prance into at the end of next week but dirty, noisy, frustrating life with child(ren) on 5 bucks a day and no scheduled breaks. It is pretty much the opposite of where I am leaving. But I am still so happy to be leaving for a place where my overwhelming sense of work-related responsibility can at last be justified. For a place where things actually do matter. And where my children will never, ever utter the phrases “moving forward” or “from the ground up.”

Ever, you hear me? Or I am getting a job at Tim Hortons.