It’s time to cut my losses and admit it’s time to hit the road on what I believe will be my last career .. on the road, trucking. (How’s that for a sentence?) Working 911 was an interesting year. Fascinating, appalling. Ultimately, the callers didn’t drive me away. The calls didn’t drive me away. The center, which is actually one of the better ones in the country, drove me away. Three problems: Training is a debacle; communications is non-existent; and I hated police dispatch. So, I’ve called time. I gave it a solid year. But by the end of April, I could tell the writing was on the wall.
Why trucking? Well, age discrimination is a thing. Trucking is one of the few careers where I can still enter. I’m in very good health now, best since my thirties. I’m up to the job. And as I said, I want to get away from people in a cocoon. It might not be exactly a safe situation all the time, but good god, anything after 45+ years of working in too-close proximity to people.
I’ve enjoyed (mostly) each of the jobs I’ve had, and made life-long friends, and had great adventures. But the way this society has turned out, let me talk to myself, I’m better company.
There are times I think I’m high-functioning autistic. Kind of a trendy thing to say now, but it’s always been there, from childhood, in a mild sort of way. I’ve always hated lights, especially flourescent light. I like it dim, always have. I often have trouble reading other people. I can figure out what’s up with them, but not what signals they’re sending, or what they’re looking for from me. I do understand their thinking and what they’re saying, but the interpersonal is difficult.
I’ve always been very self-contained. I far preferred to be playing by myself or hiking in the woods, riding my bike alone, reading by myself, to being social. I didn’t care that I had a small core group of a couple of friends and no wide social circle. Did not and does not matter. I do have friends coast to coast. I love them dearly. But what I do not have, nor do I want, is to have scads of close friends. I’m no social butterfly.
I have some obsessions and sometimes can’t let them go. I talk too much. It’s a problem sometimes with job interviews. Hopefully, it didn’t sink me today when I interviewed at a trucking company that would be pretty awesome, especially the pay. School and on-the-job training is provided. You drive for them for two years and you’re golden. I need to drive for either three-and-a-half years or longer. This would work very well. The pay is double what I’m currently making.
While I will not like being away from home for four nights or so at a time, I do crave the solitude in the truck cab after a lifetime of working always around other people. I feel claustrophobic and stifled in cubes and even on retail sales floors after so many years of it.
Yes, you’re surrounded by people on the interstates. Doesn’t matter. You can’t hear them and they’re not in the cab with you. I can listen to music or books or hum or sing or curse or yell or talk to myself without anyone else listening.
I know I won’t like some restrooms and showers on the road. Always sleeping where you work is not always a nice thing. But I’m a nester. And I can put up with anything for a short time during a rest stop or sleep over. Every single job out there, including all the ones I’ve had in the past, have issues you have to deal with … traffic and America’s interstates are this one. I’m okay with that as long as I’m in a truck. Can’t go too fast like I do in my car. I just make time, deliver each load safely, and there’s no extra agenda. I deliver on time, accept the next load, advocate for myself and my safety. I don’t have to wonder what the hell the lady in the next work station is going on about and why she’s so annoying.
Drivers are annoying, yes. Saw some self-centered and ridiculous behaviors. It was a 120-mile round trip. But what I saw was no worse than 25 fourth graders in a classroom. And I did not have to hear or even really see the people on the road. It was frankly blissful.
Whether I get this position or not, I’m moving forward with trucking one way or another. It will be great if this works out. But, as my cockeyed optimist father would always say, “It’ll all come out in the wash.” Meaning, everything will work out. It may not be exactly what you envision or even necessarily want, but it works out. We have options in how we live our lives. This is my next choice from the available options.
Catch you on down the road.
