I’m not lazy, really. I’ve just been busy again. And trying to grab sleep where I can. I got a new job you see, and I… well, I’ll start at the beginning.
Last week was finals week, and though I didn’t have any true finals – I just lucked out that way – I did have five pages of essay to revise. Of course I picked my worst possible essay, and put it off until the last minute, so not only was it painful to read, it was even more painful to figure out how to fix it ASAP. But I seem to be a sucker for working under pressure, because I just keep on doing to myself, time and time again.
Anyway, amidst revising, and finishing up a psych paper at the last minute (which I also got an A on, because I’m so bossanova), I realized how desperately I needed a job. My unemployment was due to run out sometime in January, and I couldn’t wait for that to happen, because then I’d be completely and utterly screwed.
Of course there are the usual gambit of jobs that I’ve been applying for, all the computer jobs that I’m eligible for, the bartending jobs that seem to get snapped up the second they hit the paper – on a side note, I think it’s as difficult to get a job as a bartender here as it is to get a high tech, how’s that for picking a wrong career switch – but I wasn’t getting any of them, so I decided to branch out.
For a while now I’ve been slowly delving into the idea of criminal justice, and had just about made up my mind that I would try and get a corrections job, as well as applying for any police reserve program that had openings. This plan, while good, had a serious flaw when pertaining to my predicament. Those jobs take months to get, if you get them at all. I didn’t have that kind of time. So I sucked it up even further, and started scraping the bottom. Security.
I think on average, your typical security guard gets paid eight or nine dollars an hour. Not exactly ideal, but then, it sure as hell beats zero dollars an hour. Every week there are adds for the cookie-cutter security guard, you know, the ones that sit or walk around all day in office buildings or malls. I thought to myself, how hard can it be to get one of those jobs? Well, apparently, it’s too hard for me. I applied through a phone application process having to give no pertinent information, and I still didn’t get called back. How does that happen? The job listing is in there every damn week, and I don’t get called back? They don’t even ask you for your social security number, just name, address and phone number. It’s probably not even a real security job, just a big telemarketer list.
Feeling a bit dejected, I figured I had nothing to lose, and applied for an armed security guard position – police experience preferred. Well hey, I’m studying criminal justice, doesn’t that count? I was in the military… that must be good for something. You have to understand, that armed security positions don’t come around too often. In fact, this was the first I’d seen. That probably had something to do with why I applied.
You can imagine my shock when they called me back the same day for an interview. I’m sure you can also imagine my heart failure, when at the end of the interview they gave me the position. Hot-diggety! I’m getting’ paid to carry a gun! My pants are getting wet just thinking about it.
So I’ve been training for the last couple of days. The down side is that I now work graveyard, and I’m having a damned of a time adjusting my sleep schedule. I will have gotten five or six hours of sleep in forty-eight hours come eight tomorrow morning. I just hope my patrol area picks up a bit in the excitement department. I got to listen to other people have all the fun last night on the radio – I want some of my own.
Monday or Tuesday I take their handgun training and certification (like I need it – I’m sure I’ve already taken more firearms instruction than they’re going to give me). Later in the week I’m hoping to get my baton and mace training.
And last Friday… I ordered my first bulletproof vest. It’s like watching your kid take their first step. I think I’m going to cry.
I’m largely an instant gratification kind of guy, so you can understand that when they told me it would be eight weeks or so before I actually got my vest, I was a bit disappointed. No, I was hugely disappointed. I think I’ll die of anticipation long before that.
This has gone on far longer than I intended, and I’ll need to get ready for work soon, so I need to switch topics.
I think I’m going to write a collection of stories. It won’t really be about anything. It’ll be about everything. I got this idea of my head – I think it came from some writing exercise I heard about a long time ago, where you try to tell a story in a hundred words. Just in writing my film reviews, I’ve come to see how difficult this can be. So I’m going to challenge myself. I need to write a group of stories, or interesting scene descriptions in just ninety-nine words. And I’m going to write ninety-nine of them.
I’m going to call the collection “Ninety-nine words about ninety-nine things.” Clever, I know.
I’m sure it’s been done before, but it sounds like a fun thing to do. Besides, that’ll be almost 10,000 words when it’s done. Not too shabby. It’s nothing like 50K, but I’m going to have to edit these so tightly that hopefully it’ll all be useful.
And god only knows how long it’ll take to do them.
I already have the first one stewing in my head. Unfortunately I don’t have time to write it right now. If I can only hang onto the details until I do get the time…
Here’s another cool photo site to check out. A couple of this guy’s pics that are outstanding. Erik Hillard – photography