I’ve been away, dear reader, for quite some time. I’ve been busy driving a child to and from preschool, making Target runs, finding my spiritual center on Oprah’s Lifeclass (the first lesson taught us about the false power of ego), watching The Bachelor and Bachelor Pad (it takes three hours to watch that show every Monday night — that keeps a girl busy!), and wondering how I can avoid cooking the Thanksgiving Day turkey.

I’ve also been busy getting a job, and then quitting that job two weeks later. I write that sentence with relative ease, but I’m mortified about the entire experience. It’s so embarrassing that I can hardly admit it to my closest friends. Therefore, I think the best course of action is for me to blog about it, so that complete strangers can read it, know my deepest, innermost, and personal thoughts, and absolve me of my guilt and shame. Then we can all go our merry ways and pretend the entire thing never happened.

I’ve been a Stay-at-Home-Mom for a few years now. And, despite the somewhat negative public perception of this career choice, I’ve been happy. I’ve had time to read, write, have coffee, lunch with other ladies, work out (which of course I never did), and keep in touch with friends. Oh, and be available to my child twenty-four hours a day.

Then, when the little man started a few hours a week at preschool, I feared that the never-ending coffee break would become boring, and I decided to get a job. The thought was that I would meet new people, maybe do a little work while having a lot of fun. And get paid. So I found a job in retail.

Allow me to mention that I have never before had a job in retail. I had plenty of other jobs kissing ass, mind you, but never had the pleasure of kissing ass as a sales associate. But I was optimistic and excited for the all the fun I would have.

The first week at orientation was easy enough — a lot of sitting, talking about the brand, the customer, and the amazing sales associates. There is nothing I enjoy more than hanging out (while seated) with other women talking about how amazing we are. My friends asked me how the job was going, and I said “Great!”

The second week was not as easy. Although I was learning about the retail business, I also spent a lot of time opening boxes and using that gun-thingy to attach the plastic-tag-thingy to the garments. I hung clothes, sorted, re-hung, resorted, folded, and sorted some more. Not only was I on my feet for hours at a stretch, but I was lifting, pulling, and bending, all with four seconds to take a bathroom break. (I had fifteen minutes for the break, but it took me 14 minutes and 56 seconds to figure out how to open my locker.) And I had to appear happy doing all this physical labor, lest the manager think I wasn’t as amazing as I appeared at orientation.

Managing the job and my son’s schedule was complicated. In the past, I only had to wake up, make my son’s breakfast and lunch, drive him to school, and drive him home. Now, I had to wake up, take a shower, make my son’s breakfast and lunch, eat my own breakfast, drive him to school, stop at the store to get milk, drive home to park the car, straighten my hair and put on makeup, get on the bus to take me to work, work for a few hours, take the bus home, get back in the car to pick my son up from school, drive home again, and tend to all the other things that mothers do. I didn’t even have the time, or the energy, to work out. Oh wait, I never do that anyway.

Midway through the second week, it was all getting mighty stressful. I said to my husband, “I’m not sure how I’m going to do this”. My husband assured me that I wasn’t used to working outside the home, and would soon get into a rhythm.

A few days later, I got to interact with customers. Finally, I would meet all these new people and have lots and lots of fun. Only the store was packed. I’ve never seen so many people needing so much attention. And, in my effort to be a great sales associate, I pushed myself. I talked to everyone. I asked the customers questions. I got different sizes from the sales floor, did personal shopping, measured hems, found dressing rooms, asked how the pants fit, ran to see if we had items in back stock. The frenzy never stopped. I got 15 minutes to step outside to eat half a banana and some grapes and take a four-second pee break. (And yes, I came back inside for the pee part of the break.)

I started to get a familiar feeling -– the one I had when my son was a week old,  which was, “I had such a great life. What have I done?!?” (Note to new parents: you’ll stop asking yourself this question after three years.) The herculean effort it took to get out the door in the mornings, the commute, and the fast-paced job quickly became too much. I decided that the entire thing had become a lot of work and no fun at all.

And finally, at the end of the second week, I got a cold sore. Nothing says “I’m under extreme stress” like herpes simplex virus on your lip. It was time to quit.

If you’re reading this thinking I am a wuss, a high-maintenance brat, or a lazy prima donna, you would be right on all accounts. I’ve taught my child a number of lessons here, such as: when the going gets tough, it’s best to quit. Or: it’s better to luxuriate in your pajamas and a cup of coffee in the mornings than to shower and race out the door. And: retail jobs are hard. It’s much more difficult to work in retail than to sit in a cubicle appearing to be busy while surreptitiously looking on the Internet. (Unless of course your Internet usage is being monitored, and the log says you’ve been spending time on a gambling site. But that’s a conversation for another time.)

I reasoned that the amount I got paid wasn’t worth the stress, that it cost me more in child care than I made per hour at the job. But the reality is that I couldn’t cut it. Many parents successfully work while raising children. But for me, after a full two weeks on the job, I resigned. And I am beyond embarrassed. I warned everyone that I was going to be very busy with my new job. How am I going to tell them that I’m back to being very un-busy? I could barely tell my husband the truth. When he asked, “Aren’t you going to work today?”, I just murmured, “Oh, I don’t think I’m going to go today. I don’t know. I like that shirt. Where did you get it?” Thank goodness he is easily distracted and enjoys compliments or else I really would have been held accountable.

So now all of my friends (and my husband) can read of my not-so-long and not-so-illustrious career as a sales associate. My family can once again shake their heads at my failed attempt at employment, and my friends will be reminded of how pathetic I really am. But the one glimmer of hope here is that I now can spend most of my day watching reruns of Oprah’s Lifeclass. Which is good, considering I might need some help with my bruised ego. And I’ll have unlimited hours to watch The Bachelor, which began filming its latest season just a few weeks ago, and should be airing soon. I quit just in time.

There was a very sadly missed opportunity not long ago. It was a brief flash of insight from Administration PR man Jay Carney. Don’t worry, it didn’t last and has not been repeated but somewhere deep in the mind of this poor confused fellow he discovered a simple fact and, intentionally or not, exposed it to a gaping press. “Well, the White House doesn’t create jobs. The government together — White House, Congress — creates policies that allow for greater job creation.” What possessed Mr. Carney to publicly rubbish the fundamental Creation Myth on which sits the whole contraption of Obamaism? There must have been a demonic home-invasion in his little skull, invisible to video or audio but perhaps if we slow it way down and turn it way up we will see the ghost of Milton Friedman dashing in his one eye, speaking his piece and then fleeing through the other. Either that or Jay stumbled on a bit of good sense accidentally, which happens, but then quickly throttled it in its infancy, which also happens.

Most demoralizing is not that Carney’s Clue was still-born but that no one seemed to notice its abrupt life and death. The White House does not create jobs? What the hell are we doing here, then? Neither in the press nor in the Congress did anyone react thus. How could they? As Governor Romney is married to his Promethean Romneycare and the President is married to so, so many concubines; likewise is anyone who could take Carney’s lead and run with it married to this witless idiom from the New Deal days that the government is the creator of wealth.

Hold on there, numbnut. We are talking about JOBS! As non-President Biden said, a three letter word, not Wealth, however many letters that has. Likewise there is perpetual discrimination, as the threadbare Carney demonstrates, between the debts, the deficits, the spending, the taxing, the growth, the shrink, the currency, the benefits, the policies, the price, supply and demand; indeed between anything we want to discuss and that which we do not. It is as if each of these blocks in our puzzle were roving beasts with agenda of their own rather than malfunctioning organs in one great lumbering, puking, choking Goliath. This also is purely opportunistic as when an issue is waived off for irrelevance another is corralled in for support. Such is the source of so much pointless wrestling over trivium. This isn’t a Jobs Bill, this is a Spending Bill! This is not a Spending Bill, it is a Growth Bill. Or a Tax Bill or an Energy Bill or a Deficit Bill or what have you.  It should be plain that in these days of the wheezing greenback, anything that deals with money is dependent on and hostile to all the other bits as your body is 90-some percent water but without the other stuff present and working tolerably well, you are no more than a puddle.

Of all these elements though Wealth Creation and Job Creation are near synonyms. When Smith considered The Wealth of Nations it was the mysterious differences between the despotic and despoiled France and the tumultuous but prosperous Britannia that concerned him. In Leeds a man could walk in, toil mercilessly and then take a cabbage back to his family. In Tours, not so much. Dickens took the same two-eyed approach in Tale of Two Cities, wondering why a few miles of rolling sea seemed to make such stark differences. In the Americas similar questions were being addressed and the answer, somewhat oblique, was Liberty.

That term also is subject to the imperatives of the moment but it has proven pretty durable. You will, however, search mostly in vain to find it mentioned either by the President and his legions or even among the anarchist hellhounds at Boehner’s call. For the few that do speak the ancient tongue there is despite and revilation among general calls for Revolution. Now, I am as revolting as the next fellow, maybe moreso, but we need some clarity, whether you are recruiting or shooting, as to what and whom you are revolting Against and just as crucially, what you are agitating For. The Revolution on offer today from the noisy, noisome Occupiers of this or that (in Atlanta, it is Woodruff Park) is mostly incoherent but where there is a discernible aroma it smells of blood.

Blood, we do not eschew as Americans and all this faux fainting at the sight or mention of it is an alloy of image management and wishful thinking. Do not denounce the scruffy Marxists who howl on streetcorners for your throat, just prepare yourself for their coming, it won’t take much. But recognize and perhaps mention that if JOBS are wanted, Blood will not provide them. Indeed, only Liberty will. Jesse Jackson the Junior is not calling for heads but he is making a rather French appeal when this sitting member of Congress (D, and quite Ill.) declares that the Congress (including the Democratic Senate, apparently) is in a literal State of Rebellion. The mic-man drops the ball here, not inquiring, against what or whom is the Congress in Rebellion? It seems to be nothing more than the Will of Barack Obama. But here Jesse Jr. sees another chance to get Obama on the cover of TIME as a President from history, Lincoln this time. The stove-pipe hat and beard can be Photoshopped in. It is not the Constitution that the rebels oppose though, in his view. We know because he encourages the President to declare a State of Emergency, something with no Constitutional foundation that comes rather from the history of Argentina. This when not a shot has been fired or a single extra-legal action been recorded except on Jackson’s side. More alarmingly, he states specifically that “extra-Constitutional” action is called for AND THAT THE PRESIDENT IS ALREADY ENGAGED IN IT!

If it weren’t for Jackson’s pedigree as chocolate-blooded gentry he would deserve a good reporting for this slander against the President. Didn’t Jackson and all the other elected whoozits swear an oath to protect the Constitution from ALL enemies, foreign and domestic? He is declaring the President a Constitutional Enemy and himself likewise. Has the boy gone off his meds? Oh, not a bit of it. Cancelling elections and ignoring the Constitution is perfectly mainstream thought in the Democratic Party. The Governor of North Carolina made a public call for support of cancelled elections with the usual justification of the King over an uncooperative Parliament. These gabbing-types, you see, are far too beholden to the whims and superstitions of the Mob. Once relieved of that primitive duty to appear before them every few years, they will do the right thing. In this case as in all others, the Right Thing is increased taxation and accelerated borrowing to support increased spending that will support increased Job Creation.

Does that work? You tell me. We might have a good example or two in living memory, depending on your memory’s life expectancy. But whatever you or I as individuals think, there are elected genii who are making those decisions today. Otherwise baffling actions by Democrats and others are well-explained by Rep Keith Ellison. In his view, regulations do not destroy employment nor hamper growth. No no. Regulation or indeed any sort of governmental imposition is BENEFICIAL to Job Creation as the new line inspector implies an increase in compliance officers! And those are well-paid jobs indeed. To be a compliance officer in any enterprise great or small is to take the very existence of that business into your hands every day. One slip that may not even be a slip but just an inviting target will put said business out of business if that is what the all-powerful and all-benevolent regulator wants, and perhaps even if he does not so want. And if you cannot find the extra revenue to hire a compliance specialist? Well then the responsibility falls on the proprietor and what the hell? Those fatcats have time and loot to burn anyhow.

Do not spit and curse Ellison, however (peace be upon him). He is far from alone and in any case, engages not in rough lies but rather smooth truth. Yes, of course, the government creates jobs. The government is in actuality the biggest employer in any nation you can name. Here in the Land of the Free we crossed the halfway point long ago and have not looked back. Britain was lauded and disdained as a Nation of Merchants. It is not anymore. Likewise we former forgers of steel and trade are, and apparently aspire to be, a Nation of Regulators. But each Regulator destroys just a bit of that which they were hired to regulate whatever benefit they might confer as the Regulator himself becomes more aggressive to justify his department. The result? Devastation. The stopgap measure is to now employ Regulators to regulate the Regulators. Hey! TWO jobs created! And yes, these will add to the spurious statistics but you will notice that all this addition at the most feverish pitch can only maintain a status quo that everyone agrees cannot continue. So, contrary to Mr. Carney and many another, the government can indeed create Jobs. What it cannot create is Wealth. That comes only from Free Exchange; Trade, Commerce, Business, Merchantry, Traffic, Truck. Which can thrive only under conditions of Liberty though it lives even in prisons and even in prison-nations. We are presented with two competing and mutually destructive Creation Myths. One cannot die, because it is true. One cannot survive, because it is false. Which is which awaits the judgement of Events and each individual American. Compromisers are delaying and increasing the cost of the inevitable. They and we are living on fudge.

Unless…. Wait, I see it now!

The solution is simplicity itself…. Get government into business!

Have we tried that?

10. Anthony Weiner’s image consultant

9. Parka salesman

8. Suicide bomber

7. Amish air conditioner repairman

6. Lindsay Lohan’s bail bondsman

5. Apprentice crackwhore

4. Public pool pee monitor

3. Chris Christie’s lotion boy

2. Shark bait

1. What, people still have jobs?
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

10. Instead of giving you a chair, he makes you squat

9. He insists that you think of him as “Your boss…with benefits”

8. Your healthcare plan is a box of bandaids

7. “Casual Friday” means he comes to work in his pajamas

6. You wish he were only “all hands”

5. Your “probationary period” is now in its sixteenth year

4. You have to submit your request to use the bathroom two days in advance

3. The closest thing you’ve had to a promotion is when they doubled your lunch break to ten minutes

2. He greets you every morning with the phrase, “Do you still work here?!”

1. He insists on paying you in Cheetos
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

“Work,” Noël Coward once said, “is so much more fun than fun.”

Thomas Aquinas would have agreed. “Agere sequitur esse,” he declared. Action follows from being. You are as you do.

I also agree, especially now that I have returned to work (last week, I started a part-time, presumably temporary gig at the Philadelphia Inquirer).

Bear in mind that I have hardly been idle since I retired as the Inquirer’s book-editor two years ago. I continued to write for the paper, and for other publications. I have written this column pretty faithfully as well. And I continued to blog.

But the problem with being retired is that things you did in a couple of hours when you were working suddenly take longer than that to do. You have time to spare and you take advantage of that. It seems that the more you have to do, the better use you make of your time. Now, when I have some time, my reflex is to immediately turn to something else, not just take a break and loll about.

I don’t remember feeling any less energetic over the past couple of years, but I certainly felt a lot more energetic this past week. I was wide awake at 5 a.m., and did as much blogging as I could before leaving the house at about 7:20.

On the way to work, I would stop into St. Paul’s to attend Mass, then continue on my way, arriving at the Inquirer a little after 8:30. It’s about four-and-a-half miles from my house to the Inquirer and back, which makes for a nice daily jaunt.

Getting back up to speed using the paper’s editorial software took longer than I had expected. Apparently, I had purged every vestige of it from my memory.

My principal task is to edit the letters to the editor, and editing readers is quite different from editing reporters, columnists, and critics. No need to go into all of that, though.

A couple of odd things happened during the week, one on the very first day I was back. A letter was passed along to me that had been sent to the features department (where I worked when I was book editor). There was a note on the envelope asking that it be forwarded.

The letter was from someone I haven’t seen in more than 20 years. She was inquiring after one of her best friends, who happened to be my first wife, and who also happens to be dead. There was something uncanny about being reminded of a time in my life that now seems so remote, not quite real, like an old legend. That in itself is strange, since I still think of my first wife and was with her when she died (though we had long since gone our separate ways).

Perhaps that is why, when I woke up the next morning — and the morning after that as well — my very first thought was of what is encapsulated in the Latin phrase memento mori. Remember that you must die. I found myself powerfully aware that the time left to me was limited. What was perhaps most peculiar was the sheer matter-of-factness of it. I didn’t feel it was something to worry about, just something to make provision for.

In my last column I mentioned how intensely alive one can feel when absorbed in a task. Well, last week I was very much absorbed in work, and yes, I felt exhilarated as I walked home, and deliciously tired when I went to bed.

I have no idea what to make of all this, which is why I have brought it up. It seems that we have — or at least I seem to have — a natural impulse to seek for significance in whatever happens to me. I have felt this way all my life, as if I were living in some kind of story.

Perhaps I am. Perhaps we all are.

I just learned that my great Aunt Molly, one of my grandfather’s remaining siblings, passed away yesterday.

It took some time to process this information after I received the phone call from my cousin. I would be lying if I said we were particularly close –- it has easily been a year-and-a-half since the last time I saw her, since her health began to decline and she went into an assisted living center.

But Aunt Molly used to be one of the regulars at the Adult’s table growing up, and a sense of importance and regality surrounded her and the fact that she somehow out-adulted my own parents. I am 27 now, but Aunt Molly always seemed to be the same age: old –- old enough to seem delicate, but never in jeopardy of dying. This though, comes with almost 2 years of decline since the last time I saw her -– between reality and the memories I kept carefully preserved from it.

I can’t help but smile at my use of the word “delicate” to describe her in any capacity. Although each one distinct, beautiful, and in youth, even glamorous, “delicate” has never been a word one easily associated the Wuillermin girls of that generation (although the others are questionable, that trait that obviously remains dominant). So, even though to me, Aunt Molly was always old, she hadn’t been actually, and from the stories passed down, she had many suitors in her time beyond her husbands (yes, plural). I never remember seeing her without her make up on or her hair done–the thinned salt and pepper strands teased like she just came from the beauty parlor.

Aunt Molly had a way of just saying things–saying what came to her mind, without much time to sugarcoat it (ahh, genetics…). The last time I saw her, she called me over to her table (we were at my aunt’s wedding reception) to ask me if I was pregnant (I was sporting a rather flowy top). But in between her candid –- and oftentimes unwanted–observations, she told me numerous times that she thought I’d “go far in life” and that I had a “good head on my shoulders.”

I’d also be lying if I said that the incredible sadness I’m feeling over the news is solely limited to my aunt’s passing. In some ways, I know this was a relief for her. I know the past few years had not been kind, and through the tangled grapevine of family information, I had heard that she had articulated her hope for death. My hope now is that she is at rest, that she is at peace, that angels have led her in. But beyond her death, I find myself wrestling with the overwhelming feeling that something else is slipping away, quickly and quietly –- I am grappling with this urgent reminder that time is limited and soon the generation I held in such regard will be gone: soon an entire level of my family tree, of my recollection, will no longer exist in the flesh.

It’s easy for me to get caught up in the pain of that, in the overwhelming sense of loss and my inability to stop my life from changing. I have been hitting a point in my life where I am realizing the quickness and significance of these changes and how many more are yet to come. I would be lying once again if I said these truths didn’t terrify me. I do not want to see my family fade. Aunt Molly, along with the other “old timers” who have already passed –- my Aunt Lee, my Uncle Joe, my beloved grandfather –- to me, are the “roots” of our family tree. They are the foundation, the “first” generation -– the story keepers, the secret holders, the all-knowers. And with every loss, with every passing, I feel like my history unravels, destined to soon only exist in the faded photographs found in a shoebox at the bottom of my grandmother’s hallway closet.

But I force myself to remember the cyclical nature of all things, most importantly, life. We all continue, all age, all die, so the next generation can do the same.

We lose love, but we replace it with new love… Like the branches and leaves on a tree: they serve an important purpose for some time, their beauty and strength admired by the outside world. But, eventually, they must fall, fade, die, break, to make room for more growth, for more beauty. Our family has lost another “old timer,” but through my cousin, his soon-to-be wife, and their unborn child, there is already promise of a new life waiting in the wings. So it’s not a matter of our family fading, or even being replaced -– it is a matter of it expanding, growing, and maintaining its spirit and legacy after this life is over, through the eyes and memories of new members.

It is not a matter of forgetting or being forgotten: we have not let go, but we must move on. We must grow.

This week has been a walk down memory lane for two interesting milestones in my life. Twenty years ago this week I wore English Leather cologne to a high school party and a girl thought I peed myself. That’s a whole other story that I’ve told a million times, but I’d rather talk about the ten year anniversary of foolishly taking a job at an Iranian man’s lock and door hardware company. It was a nightmare from the get-go.    

 Let’s rewind back to the innocent days of August 2000. People still bought CD’s, cell phones were everywhere you looked, and America was breathing a collective sigh of relief after we made it out of Y2K unscathed. I was working at Enterprise Rent A Car and was miserable as can be. I didn’t fit in there, because I wasn’t banging any of my bosses or co-workers, and I steadfastly refused to drink the Enterprise Kool-Aid (It was green). I was working in the “Pennsauken” office, which was the nice way of saying the Camden office. For those who don’t know, Camden serves proudly as a perennial winner of “America’s most dangerous city.” I was renting cars to drug dealers, the occasional pimp, and a lot of guys in velveteen track suits. We were renting out Cadillac Escalades on cash, no credit card needed, and thank heavens, because very few drug kingpins carry plastic. And I hated every day of working there, and every time the phone rang I cringed. Because it meant I’d have to pick someone up somewhere dangerous, argue with someone over the daily rate, or go to a dealership and rent a car to some pissed off old man whose Cadillac was broken down. But one phone call I took was going to change my life for ev…well, for a few months.

It was a beautiful August morning, and I answered a call made to our office from a man with a very thick foreign accent.  It was a very stern, cold accent that reminded me of Ivan Drago’s wife from Rocky IV.  He wanted to be picked up but was not in our area.  (Enterprise “law” forbade stealing other branch’s business by picking people up in an area not in your branch’s zone).  Knowing my manager was already breaking Enterprise law by renting to people out of our area and knowing it was going to be me stuck picking up this guy, I just went ahead and took the directions. I was too tired to even explain to the guy that he called the incorrect branch. Plus, he lived in Cherry Hill and had a credit card, so it was going to be a refreshing change by not renting out a car that was going to transport narcotics.

When I got to his home and picked him up, he looked just like sounded — foreign and stern. His mouth seemed to permanently frown, and he looked like a miserable human being.  Just what I loved about this dreadful job — awkward, uncomfortable conversation with someone who I wasn’t go to be able to understand.  So as we were talking, I came to discover he was from Iran (and was trying to remember if it was Iran or Iraq that hated us).  Part of me was afraid that the vehicle I picked him up in was going to burst into a fiery explosion, part of me didn’t care if that happened at this miserable point of my Enterprise career.  He seemed very interested in knowing about me, and was asking very probing questions.  I, being the chatty Cathy that I am, was singing like a canary or a Mafia turncoat.  His name was Alex and it turned out he owned a company over in Philadelphia that was a distributor of locks and door hardware and just fired an incompetent salesman. 

For some reason, Alex took a shine to me and was hinting at the possibility of hiring me. I was entertaining this because at the time I would have taken a job as a human ashtray (would have been both a pay raise and more esteemed job). I had nothing to lose, Enterprise was a prison and I had to escape. We exchanged numbers and he told me he really wanted to hire me.  For once, I felt like I was getting a lucky break and would finally be on the road to success (since I was on the Highway to Hell presently). So as soon as I could, I sent my resume and cover letter that outlined how interested I was in the thrilling, fast-paced, sexy world of locks and door hardware. I was under the impression that I was practically hired on the spot so I was confused when he asked me to send all that stuff and request an interview. Well, after a few weeks, I finally got a response and a chance to interview.  Right about here I should have seen the stoplights, white flags, and Jerry Springer guests saying “don’t go there!”

When I walked into the world headquarters of Alex’s company, I should have just turned around, tucked my tail between my legs, and done my best Carl Lewis impersonation.  It was the most dreary, awful, dimly lit depressing place I have ever been (besides any IHOP or Kmart on a weekday morning).  The current employees looked like extras from any 60′s zombie flick and barely grunted when I walked through the doors.  But I’ll get to that cast of characters in a bit.

The secretary told me Alex wanted me to sit and wait for him since he was on a business call.  I sat in a room adorned with locks, lock posters, keys, key posters, and an inch of dust on everything.  When he was finally ready for me, after a half hour wait and a quarter inch of dust collecting on my body I ventured into his office.  The friendly Iranian lock dude I picked up a few weeks that was literally throwing a job offer at me turned into a totally different person in the interview.  I felt like a prisoner of war being interrogated by the enemy.  The questions were quick, short, and many, it was like a firing squad. I have never been so uncomfortable being asked questions in an interview. In congruence with the fact that I cannot possibly take anything seriously, I almost starting giggling nervous like a schoolgirl, or mental patient.  But alas, I made it through with a straight face and after a stern handshake I was on my way (I know I am using the word “stern” a lot, but this guy personified the word). 

Now a normal human being or even someone with a few problems, issues, and conditions may have just stayed away and realized that this was bad news.  But foolish, silly, and stupid Marty needed to get the F out of Enterprise so I accepted the job offer. But after the interview, and before accepting, I had to pass a drug test and “personality test”.  Both were going to be held at the same place at 18^th and Locust in Center City. The place was like a private investigator’s office, well it wasn’t “like” one, it WAS one.  The girl who interviewed me and gave me the tests was very fetching.  It made it even harder to tell the truth since I could barely speak English to this girl to begin with! She starts asking me questions, and they are actually very personal!  And of course me, never taking anything serious, try joking with her.  I tell her “Before you ask, I am NOT going to tell you when I lost my virginity!” Fully expecting her to chuckle, she stared at me blankly with a stone, but pretty face.  The rest of the session was uncomfortable, as you could imagine, but I made it through. Although the drug test came back saying I had too many deep fried materials in my system.

Finally I was given a start date of January 8, 2001. Yes, that was about four months after I met him and he sort of offered me a job on the spot. Alarm bells were ringing, but I wasn’t listening. I was so eager for my first day, where I was going to take the lock and door hardware world by storm! (What was I smoking? Apparently nothing because I passed the drug test!) I’m fairly certain nobody in the world had a first day like I did at this place. I dressed in a freshly pressed full suit, shiny new black shoes, and a handsome properly tied tie. I breezed through the doors and proudly introduced myself. The response was quieter than crickets on a cool summer night. The people barely acknowledged me. They literally ignored me. I then grabbed the guy who was supposed to be my trainer and manager to show me what I need to do. He said he wasn’t sure and we had to wait until Alex came in, which was 11 o’clock. This made me feel so wonderful. Nobody wanted to talk to me or help me, and it was like they had no idea I was starting that day. So I sat and stared blankly at a computer screen and watched people come and go. We could only sell to distributors and the two old cranks sitting up at the counter with me seemed to love being dicks about that. Somebody would come in and they would be completely rude and ignorant and treat the person like they were the worst human being alive for coming in and asking to buy something. There were no signs that advertised this, and so it happened a lot. I’ve seen carnival workers be friendlier to customers than these guys were.

I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss my co-workers. I guess a better term is “other people that worked there” because they didn’t work with me or try and help. We had this old know it all named Charlie who was sort of friendly to me. The guy who sat next to me was this goofy dude named Robert who spent the entire day bashing the company and making cheesy jokes. He went out of his way to not be of any assistance to me, and anytime I needed his help he would let it be known how much of a pain in the ass it was to him. There were Dave and Amy, who were very finely dressed sales reps that sat in the back and had all the good accounts. Amy never breathed one word to me in my time there. Dave wasn’t much help either. I just basically knew to stay away. The office workers were slightly ok. They at least would acknowledge my existence. The folks in the warehouse were a whole different story. There was a woman who huffed and puffed every time I needed help and I once overheard talking ill of me. Then there was R.J., who was a whole blog in of himself. He was the skeeviest, scariest, most disgusting person I have ever seen in my life. He clearly must have been a meth addict, because he had three teeth in his mouth that were rotted beyond belief. He would talk all day about having sex chats on the internet with girls, and all that nasty stuff. It was stomach churning to say the least. And he hated me probably more than everyone else. Because he wanted my job, and in all honesty he deserved it because he knew his stuff, but unfortunately people with three teeth in their mouth and sores all over their face aren’t the best sales reps. The one other guy in the warehouse was a black guy named Frank. He was the only person who was friendly with me and talked to me, he was a pretty good guy. Thanks to him, I knew that everyone hated me because they liked the guy who was fired, and R.J. got shot down for the job. Like this was my fault?

Finally Alex came in, and what I came to learn was that the entire office changed after he came in everyday. In the morning, they were all talkative to each other and friendly to everyone but me. But when Alex came in, the place stopped, nobody spoke and everyone seemed to be on edge and miserable. It’s not shocking why. This guy was a complete jerk. He came from some wealthy family and bought the business on a tip from someone he met. He treated people worse than anyone I have ever met. He lied to me, about everything, and most of all the customers I would have. Basically, he said I was getting a ton of accounts from the guy he fired. But since it took him four months to fire me, the accounts were eaten up like Pac-Man by the other reps. And believe you me, they weren’t going to hand them back to me.

Hard to believe this was ten years ago. In some aspects, it feels like yesterday, but really I am still so scarred I can never blank it out of memory. The next four months were easily the most depressing and damaging of my life. I was in a haze. There was nothing I could do. I would call businesses that didn’t use us and solicit their business.  (Keep in mind we really could only call on businesses in the area since any further away would not be beneficial to the company due to shipping costs) The few times I could get someone on the phone they would tell me they would never buy from me because of who I worked for. On many more than one occasion people on the other line told me to quit and get as far away as possible. Things just go worse and worse — then we went on our “road trip”. Please join me next week as I discuss my trip down south with two middle-aged Iranian gentlemen!

My day gig is teaching, so I am off this week. All I really had to do yesterday was shovel snow. That is it. This was done by about eleven o’clock in the morning. Did I come in and compose a sonata? Did I practice an extra hour on my guitar? Did I work on the final two mixes on my current musical project? Did I get around to writing this article before 8:55 PM last night? Nope.

This sort of artistic truancy is rare for me, by the way, but I think my artistic readers can relate to falling into it, at least on occasion. It is amazing to me that, after a grueling schedule that causes me to squeeze in writing and composing when I can, that open spans of time like today don’t always yield marathon creation-fests. In fact, I seem to be more artistically productive when I am overwhelmed with responsibilities. Teacher or not, I produce more work in the fall than I ever do in summer.

Why? Fear. Plain and simple. When I am busy, the fear that the world is going to steal my real passion drives me to fight — to tell everyday responsibility that, although I will not shirk it, it can’t hold me down. The sometime bleakness of a day full of things I must do causes me to look for the bright windows of creative time and I throw them open whenever I can, to let in the light and air.

And the truth is, many of the things I do outside of my artistic work, I believe in deeply. Being a dad and a husband, for instance. Also, as a teacher, I work hard and take great pride in my work. I like my job. But it does interfere with my creativity at times (though, at times, it inspires it, as well). See, it isn’t always the bad stuff that interferes. In fact, sometimes, good stuff will seduce you away from creativity. That can be more damaging to the old portfolio, in the end.

At a wedding, once, I was talking to a friend who had kids some years before me. He is a talented musician and he and I were in a band together that was doing pretty well before everyone but yours truly decided that making real, reliable money was more important. Anyway, he said, “Wait until you have kids. You’ll stop wanting to write. How could you ever create something as cool as your kids? What’s the point?”

I decided, that night, that  this would never happen to me — that having kids would not, as wonderful as it would be, shut any doors on my work. In fact, with the writing of a lullaby for my first son — still a piece I consider one of my best —  I began a personal composition renaissance that has lasted until today.

Fear of losing time and the will to compose helped me to forge on.

I guess the message to my fellow artists who do other work to make ends meet — or who have other passions — winds up being pretty simple: Just, as they say, do it. Don’t look longingly forward to having time to write, paint, sculpt, compose, etc. Pretend that time will never come. Be an active artist at all times. Wedge your work in-between the cracks in the wall of your daily schedule.

Be sure not to define yourself as an artist (or as not an artist) based on how long you work at a stretch. Serious artists can work fifteen minutes per day. In fact, no serious artist is a part-time artist. Any good artist works all day long, anyway, drafting in the mind. (When people ask me where I get my ideas, I ask them , in return, “Where don’t I get my ideas?”)

In the end, it is okay to take a couple of days off when vacation comes, like I did today. Read books. Watch crappy TV. Take walks. Play with the kids. Drink a little. Feel free to “chill” when it is time to recharge. That’s how you gather seasoning for the next stew you’re going to concoct.

Chris Matarazzo’s ARTISTIC UNKNOWNS appears every Tuesday

I noticed that one of the three glass globes on the light fixture in my son’s bathroom was badly cracked, so I brought it to Lowe’s to find a replacement. None of the glass globes for sale were a match, but I saw that Lowe’s had the same lighting fixture for sale. I asked an associate how I could get a single glass globe. I was expecting him to give me the contact information for the manufacturer or that he would special order the part for me. Instead, he opened up the box of a new lighting fixture so he could give me one of the glass globes. But it wasn’t a match. It was close, but our fixture must be a few years old, and the globes that come with the fixtures being sold now are slightly different. He then got out the giant steps and climbed up to examine the display units high on the wall. There were three models on display — versions with two, three, and four lights. The glass globes were not all the same on the displays, and he removed several globes before finding one that was an exact match. When he did, he gave it to me. No charge. I didn’t have a receipt, nor do I know for sure that the fixture was purchased at Lowe’s in the first place, since we moved into this house a year and a half ago and the fixture was already here. For going out of his way to help me, I hereby present [whatever the guy's name is] with the Scott Stein Excellence in Customer Service Award. Lowe’s, if you’re reading this, [whatever that guy's name is] deserves some recognition from you as well. He ensured that this customer (who was already buying stuff at your store every week) will continue to shop at Lowe’s.

Mark SaFranko has led a writer’s life. Dan Fante once said of SaFranko that the man would rather “write than breathe,” and Mark has stayed restless but productive throughout his working years. This means he has held too many shit jobs and too many of his manuscripts have been left to rot unpublished and unread, but this fall, a breakthrough is on the horizon. In November, his cult classic Hating Olivia will be his first novel published by a major press in America although the book was published five years ago in England. Indeed, SaFranko follows a long line of American novelists who found a home in Europe before they managed to crack the conservative culture of American publishing. As you’ll read below, Mark has fought battles as a writer, a husband, a father, and a human being. But even when the future was most bleak for SaFranko, it knew better than to fuck with him when he was on a writing kick. Keep reading to check out his excellent responses to my questions about Hating Olivia, parenting, the future of books, and more.

AK: So for this interview, I broke my one rule for all of my interviews, which is that I have to read at least one book by the writer. Well, I’ve been anticipating the American release, but I haven’t yet read Hating Olivia (in the spring or summer, I tried to buy a copy from the English press I think, and I can’t remember what went wrong or why it was never sent), but I’m guessing this novel is also about loving Olivia and fighting with Olivia, and feeling really emotionally fucked up concerning the aforementioned Olivia. Could you tell me if I’m on the right track?

MS: Absolutely. It’s about trying to become a writer and trying to survive economically while involved in a volatile, all-consuming relationship that drains the reservoir of your psychic energy. It’s about being with someone who’s as screwed up as you are and how we find that person. It’s about the destructive side of the muse. It’s also about being a wannabe artist in a country that has no use for them. In a nutshell, that’s it. Incidentally, I was never wild about the title HATING OLIVIA. Too blunt. Without subtlety or nuance. I wanted to use INTO IT. But whenever I ran my list of titles past people who’d read the book, they invariably voted for Hating Olivia. People seem to like the title. In this case, I let them win.

AK: Right in the title, the book suggests anger; hate is a strong word. Would this accurately describe Hating Olivia? And if so, do you feel the writer necessarily must experience such strong emotion to write well about it? I’m also wondering if more recently, you have felt removed from the emotional intensity of this novel, maybe just to the extent that life can wear us down.

MS: I would say it’s about how something can start in a good place and curdle into its opposite. How dreams end up on the side of the road, as someone once said. Hatred is a strong word, but often love ends up as that, sadly, especially when the lover becomes a prisoner of his attachment.

I don’t know if you have to experience something directly in order to write well about it. My guess—though I experienced the content of Hating Olivia firsthand—is that experiencing something peripherally is enough. After all, we’re creative writers, not biographers or journalists. As a novelist you have license to do whatever you want and who’s to say it’s not legitimate on some level, right?

Yes, I definitely feel removed from the emotional intensity of the novel’s content. I wouldn’t have been able to write about it if I wasn’t. It was all such a long time ago.

AK: My understanding is that you have fought wars as a writer as far as getting into and then staying in print. Discounting the HarperCollins deal for Hating Olivia, could you describe what you feel are some of your greatest successes and failures as a writer so far?

MS: A really good question, Alex, and one nobody has asked me before. Yes, “a war” best describes it. Hating Olivia was written 15 years ago and is just now finding an outlet in the US, so it has been a protracted battle. I would call my greatest successes the publication of three Max Zajack novels (Hating Olivia, Lounge Lizard, and God Bless America) and a story collection in England and the three Zajack books in France my greatest successes since they were the books that got me an audience and attention, at least in Europe, after many, many years. What that says about the Europeans I’ll leave to you. My greatest failure? Well, there’ve been many, but maybe the most egregious was my failure to get a play about the life of Henry Miller produced. It went through years of readings and revisions—the typical nightmare theater process—and sits in a drawer of my desk. I’ve given up hope it will ever see the light of day. There are other failures, too, but I don’t have enough time. Life is mostly a matter of failure, though, isn’t it? Every once in a very great while something works out.

AK: Your writing is often connected to that of Charles Bukowski, so I’d like to know how you feel about that, and also, what you feel are the strengths and weaknesses of Buk’s work?

MS: Well, it’s misleading because I count so many other writers as influences: Henry Miller, Georges Simenon, Knut Hamsun, Pat Highsmith, Mohammed Mrabet, to name just a very few. There are really lots more. Bukowski, too, and I’m flattered that anyone would make that connection but I think we come from a somewhat different place. That said, of course I love Bukowski’s work. To me his strengths are his humor and the fact that he’s really a philosopher. I don’t see him so much as a poet as I do a philosopher. And of course he’s completely addictive. For me a weakness is his more “literary” poetry, the pieces that always show up here and there. I have no idea what the hell he’s talking about in those poems—and I’ve read Proust.

AK: In an online interview, you described the “monthly nut” as a huge obstacle to writing. Maybe to life itself. I’m pretty sure that implied a mortgage and most likely a wife and kids. And worse yet, I’m pretty sure this scene is being played out in New Jersey. So basically, what we need to know is how in hell did you ever write anything at all?

MS: Yes, these days that scene is indeed being played out in Jersey. But I have an understanding wife, and she tends to leave me alone as long as I hold up my end of things. Same goes for my son. But to answer your question about how I did any writing, it’s really a matter of minutes, and I’m not being facetious. I recognized a long time ago that most of our time is wasted. If you want to write and you only have a matter of minutes every day, you have to use what you’ve got. The minutes add up and so does the work. You end up doing the best you can. It’s all you can do most of the time.

AK: And also, how do you feel about some of the great writers who just walked off the job when it came to raising families? I’m thinking of Sherwood Anderson and then more recent writers like  Saul Bellow, Richard Yates, and Fred Exley who were sort of in and out, but often out, of their children’s lives. Is it possible to be a good writer and a good father?

MS: That’s another damned good question and one I’ve pondered from time to time. I’ve done it—walked off the job—a couple of times. In the long run the dramatic gesture doesn’t add up to much, really. If you’re not “covered”—meaning you’re not flush with money—you’ll end up back on some kind of job sooner than later if you’re on the right side of the law. Anyway, to create anything at all you need food and a place to sleep and so forth. Otherwise you’ll feel like shit and not be able to do anything.

As far as kids go, why have them if you don’t want to deal with them? Of course lots of so-called artists don’t. Maybe they’re better off. Maybe they don’t suffer from a guilty conscience. I think lots of damage is left in the wake of the absent artist-parent. Again, you try to do the best you can. It’s my experience that kids actually need their parents to be around. Whether or not we’re good at it, who knows? There are probably one or two artist parents around.

AK: Are you concerned that the physical book is going to become the latest casualty of electronic progress? I just heard that e-book sales jumped 118 percent from last year, and I’m wondering when the bookstores disappear en masse. Tell me I’m wrong. Please.

MS: It’s interesting. I think that it’s the corporate monster forcing the e-book down our throats, like they forced the eight-track tape and CDs down our throats. And the reason is simple. They want to make money. Those reading devices cost lots of money. You can’t share the books, so that’s more profit. Books won’t have to be stored anymore, which will save the corporate monster even more. Not a single person I know wants to read off those damned devices, yet they’re being pushed at us relentlessly. People want to hold an old-fashioned book in their hands when they’re lying in bed or sitting on the throne. They want to mark up the pages. They want to smell paper and admire artwork. But in the long run the monster wins. He always wins. Books and bookstores will go. It’s just a matter of time.

AK: What do we need to know before we read Hating Olivia?

MS: Well, like I said, that it’s 15 years old. The material is from an earlier period in my life. That it took 10 years after the writing to get published by a small press in England and then went on to get published in France. I’m really coming to the U.S. by way of Europe. I’m taking the long way around. Also that I’d been writing for a long time by the time the book was published. And that the vast majority of my work hasn’t been seen.

Mark SaFranko’s Hating Olivia arrives on November 16 and is available wherever books are sold.