Monday Morning Workday

Awake. Sunshine and warmth. Hard to get out of bed. I love bed. Gilbert the dog has visited several times. Leaps of fur and fun and lots of licks. Can't read a calendar. Likes work. Doesn't feel all the new aches and pains from weekend of fun and exercise. Coffee will work. Always works. Shower follows. Routine too. Mustn't break the routine. Know too many people that stopped going to work and lost the habit. Mostly complainers. But what it comes down to is discipline. Hardest part is putting on the shoes. Work boots. Doesn't matter if they're sandals. If they take you to work. Work boots. Lacing harder. Velcro a god send. Bending and getting the feet on board. From bed to work, the longest mile. Work itself a fun shoot. Bit like rapids. Once you're in the chair the day explodes around you. Just a matter of getting there and then holding on. The details aren't important. It's mostly in the main strokes.

Workmen's Compensation Vancouver opened a club house. Workers off work needed to report to the clubhouse. Stopped all the secondary jobs that the disabled seemed to prefer to the main stream. I'd be a ships captain for sure for the summer were I collecting disability. But Workman's Compensation brings them into the clubhouse and so much sooner people are back at work. Reminds me of my mother saying that if I was so sick I couldn't go to school then I had to stay in bed. Now I'd be wheeling dealing on Craig's List or babysitting my neighbors grandkids. How to collect two pay cheques and justify it. But there's the clubhouse instead. Kind of like 'detention room'. But then if I'm paying do I really want to be paying for someone to be their own boss, to sleep in and work for themselves at my expense. Easy to say it's not stealing. Easy to explain it away.

I'm afraid of retirement. The government workers got light weight jobs, paid their dues by being goody good two shoes, working to order, and having mostly boring jobs, but indexed pensions and all the health benefits. I'm private sector. We do all the work in Canada but are hated and abused. Taxed to the nth degree to pay for the dead weight of government. I know there are those who work in government. I worked in government but it's a cakewalk compared to real work and only those in government who've worked private get my respect. They know. The evidence of their knowing is in the respect they give to those of us in private sector and how they accept their good fortune with grace. We know and they know that we're down here in the trenches and they're up there on easy street.

Though recently job security hasn't been good anywhere. And the French Canadians who had the partisan jobs without the skills and only had to have the language ability to get to be the chief of rocket science with a gr 9 education are rocking and reeling with all the smart French speaking phd black women coming here from Africa. Even the Quebecois swagger is struggling in these changing times.

On the west coast, the Pot Dealers can't compete with the Crack dealers who have dropped their prices in a bid to get greater control of the market. Reminiscent of the beaver pelt trade in England that had Londoners looking askance at Hedgehog headwear. What better evidence of global economy than that imported cocaine is cheaper than bathtub meth.

If I turn on the news, and I do some Monday mornings on the way to work, it will even be more bizarre. There are Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. Catch 22 and all. Kandahar. I just learned that word and now wonder what it will be called when they change the name of Ho Chi Minn City or will democracy stick this time. Democracy with it's jails and jails and jails and jails. Freedom with it's lack of free speech and Christianity banned in public places. New churches filling as the old one ossify in political correctness and social communism.

I will have to think seriously, put on character armour. Watch myself. Go out into the workplace where there's competition and 'beatniks are out to make it rich.'

Getting there is so much part of the equation. Especially after time in the wilderness, out by the timber line, on the seas or anywhere near the portals of escape. l've come back again. And everyday I'm thankful for the priviledge of work, and the joys of meetings and the positives outweigh the negatives if I let myself see that. There will be all the attitude especially the phone people who put all their negative personality into little packets of darkness demanding this or that. But there will be the glimpses of light. Only last week several people had miraculous cures. There have been a half dozen diagnosed with cancer these last months and it's been removed or remitted. Good is happening all around us. Even obesity and alcoholism are being cured. Remember how everyone smoked and the rooms were full of tobacco clouds. Change is possible. Humans are advancing.

Now get to the shower. It would be so easy to stay at the computer. Make it seem like work. Convince oneself that whatever one is doing is valuable. But the reality is that it doesn't pay the rent. What pays the rent and food comes first. Those are the rules. Started out with hunter gatherers and continues today. Even the rich gangster would rather play at the computer than smack about a dishonest pimp holding back some of the ho's money, not divying in the cut the way it's supposed to be. He's got to pistol whip this guy when he'd rather be playing at his computer. It's all relative at one level. At the other level it's all God but that's a different story. God's more likely to be in the workplace than anywhere else.


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