Isn’t the Light OK?

Interruptions seem to be the story of my life. It took the incessant ringing of call center telephones to help me figure out why this matters.

As a kid, my parents and I kept moving from town to town, never really setting down roots too deeply. Following my father’s jobs, we lived in Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and finally upstate New York for about 6 years or so. After I’d had enough time to make friends and acquaintances, enough time to feel like part of the community, Dad was laid off. A few months later, he stumbled upon an incredible job opportunity in Taipei, Taiwan. I’d never trade my experience in Taiwan for anything, but at the time, the thought of relocating yet again was devastating.

I attended 7th and 8th grade at a private school that was pretty much the only educational choice for English-speaking kids. For a while, I felt like an outsider - everyone seemed so much more worldly than I was. Gradually, I came to realize we were all in the same boat. Many of the American friends I made at TAS were children of military, missionary or other nomadic families. They, too, had no idea what it was like to grow up in the same place, with the same people (aside from your parents) for years at a time. Two years later, the company’s contract was up, and we had to move back to the U.S. Uprooted yet again, I mistakenly thought my overseas experience would make me more interesting to my soon-to-be classmates in suburban North Shore Massachusetts.

Anyone who’s ever been to high school will know just how misguided my thinking was. High school turned out to be a hellish nightmare in two halves - my parents bought a house in central Massachusetts right before my junior year. Things were no better there for someone who was “different,” who hadn’t grown up into the cliques, who had been transplanted into the social order like an eyedropper full of oil in a bucket of water.

Years have brought more of these kinds of interruptions into my life, although usually from my own choices than those of my family. I dropped out of college after one year, supposedly to “make it” with my music, but more to rationalize how I’d wasted time at school. I stopped writing songs for a while after I met a girl. I lived on my own for a while, until mounting bills and an irresponsible lifestyle got me evicted and living back at my parents’ house again.

I’ve had more stability in my life since moving to Maine than I seemingly ever have in my life. Next summer, I will have lived in this state for 10 years, slightly less than a third of my life. Carla and I will be celebrating our 8th wedding anniversary this year. While I seem to have left the elementary school and teenage drama of some of my previous interruptions behind, my interruptions of late are of a more subtle and insidious variety.

I work in a call center. My primary job is to support some websites with severe usability issues. On a good day, it all works, we just have to explain in excruciating detail how to make it work. On a bad day, nothing works right at all. There’s so much wrong that we can’t keep track of all the issues on one site, let alone all of them. And while we’re trying to figure out the scope of what’s actually wrong, more calls come in to divert us from ever getting a handle on it all. It amazes me that we get anything done.

I come home and wonder why, in the midst of a failed attempt at international adoption; a house whose issues grow, if not more serious, then at least more expensive by the month; and this job, I find it harder to pick up the pieces, move on, and try to feel hopeful about the future. The other stuff probably wouldn’t be nearly as much of an issue anymore if I wasn’t in such an interrupt-driven workplace.

It’s hard to see hope on the horizon when you spend 8 hours a day with stray trash blowing in your face, obscuring the view.

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This entry was posted Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 11:19 am. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.