I don't like to staple things, much. It seems as soon as I wed a couple of sheets of paper together, I just have to break them up again. Perhaps that's not the best analogy, but you get the idea. I hate paperclips even more. That kind of indecisiveness gets on my nerves. I like my papers to be free-flowing and open to change. This is really just a lot of bull - and helps explain why my desk is in a mess most of the time.
Anyway, I have had the same box of staples for the entirety of my current employment. It was a big, new box handed to me the day I started. It held 5,000 staples. Every time I moved to another office, or got a new desk, or was hit with a fit of spring cleaning, the box of staples went with me. I began to think it was like the hourglass in the Wizard of Oz - the staples were counting down my existence and when I ran out of staples I would have to leave, a la Shane or Mary Poppins.
Today I have completed 12 years at my job. And I ran out of staples.
What are the chances? Not only the chances of these two events occurring simultaneously, but that the first occurred at all. Not many Generation Xers can say that. (Or would want to!) I just happened to stumble into the perfect job for me and I have stayed here. When I have tried to leave, I couldn't get any other employer to even acknowledge my existence, much less give me an interview.
I got my annual retirement benefit statement in the mail a couple of months ago. Right in the middle, in big black letters it says: First Retirement Eligibility - Age 48.
That means there's no getting rid of me now! That means that at age 48 I can shove this job and become the weird lady at the fair who draws charicatures on the cheap.
That means I can quit my 8-5 and open a photography studio where you could get bridal pictures done, but not wedding pictures. And when you come in to sit for the portraits, your mother has to sit in the car. With no keys. With the windows rolled up. Especially if it is August. And did I mention I ain't gonna take pictures of yer family, especially yer mother of the bride, at the church?
That means I can open a bookstore on the square like the lady in Sweetwater - remember her, Kincaid? - who was always interested in whatever you were into and had just been reading a book about it and it was freaky but in a good way.
I've got 14 years to go. Gonna have to make this new box of staples stretch a little bit farther.
8 comments:
~memo to self.....must remember to take more staples out of Rach's desk more than once a month from now on....~
New life mantra:
"Go easy on the staples."
Great POST! I can identify - I only made it 9 years so naturally, did not use up my staples, either. amazing, isn't it?
Congrats on 12 years - that is terrific!
No way! Don't use staples for the next fourteen years - use something else!
Like...desktop dust bunnies or...something...
How did you know I have dustbunnies on top of my desk? Hmm...
Creative people have messy desks.
I hate paperclips and I have plenty of dustbunnies. I can be bought with food, though.
~waves her pic of Rach's desk so that the reverendmother can see it.....~ Wanna See???
You know I do!
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