Tuesday, June 28, 2005 -- 9:04 PM

So... What in the Hell does He Even Do?

I don't usually like to write about my job, because I spend a lot of my time, time that I would rather spend surfing or practicing a quick-draw, doing it and it's really quite unexceptional. But in an effort to describe something of my life to the world, I've decided to just go ahead and see what happens when I write out the actual day. A day "In the Life" if you will.

So let's talk about my job. I arrive at whatever house we're currently building sometime between 6.55 and 7.00. Usually there's banter regarding whatever funny or striking events occured in the scant fourteen hours since we all saw each other last, which might not seem very interesting since probably about eight of those were spent sleeping, but it's not really what you say, it's how you say it, right? Often there's a round of cigarettes. After that, we unpack tools from the van and begin all gung-ho and up 'n at 'em.

Thusly it begins, the moving lumber, measuring stuff, making cuts, building walls, screwing down floors, passing up sheathing, leveling walls, and all of the various tasks that an underling framer engages himself with. We have one break in the morning and possibly a run to 7-11 for some munchies or a drink or more cigarettes. It's funny how a break can turn your mindset right around, it's like a reset button. At J&P Construction, however, we believe that pressing that button too often will wear it out, so we only press it twice a day. First around 10 or 10.30, and second around 2 or 2.30. At 4.45 we pack up tools and we're finished the last rounds of conversation at somewhere between 5 and 5.05.

The thing you have to see, and this is... really, I mean, pay attention now. The thing you should really see is that you aren't your job. Since I really really really am not my job because I've only been doing it for six months and I'm quitting to go to school in the fall, I'll use my boss as an example for this, and also because he (my boss) is who taught me that "you are not your job" in discussing career paths once. My boss is a really smart, funny kind of guy, who likes good-natured people and likes getting riled at incompotent ones. He really likes to laugh, and he likes to make fun of the fact that he's a framer and that framers are generally looked down upon. He doesn't laugh in a gratuitous way like you might think though, he likes it when other people laugh with him. What he does for a living isn't who he is. He decided to make houses for a living, and he's damn good at it and he makes a damn good living off of it. Also, he's a high-school drop-out with little or no chance of ever making more money than he does, which is actually okay with him, and another source of amusement, but don't push it. He turned thirty last week and two weeks before that he was installed as deacon at his church and in that evening service his new little son was baptised, so now his other son and two little daughters have another sibling.

So there you go, that's actually not what I meant to do at all. But you have to be happy with what you have, even if you feel silly going to bed now when I'm just going to get up and do it all over again in a few hours.