I’m not bored to death.

When I was fourteen and fifteen years old I was ‘lucky’ enough to secure a summer job working with my mother in her office. It was your average office work, filing papers, making copies, running to and from the mail room. Oh, and it was from 8am-4pm Monday-Friday. It was after working here that I vowed to myself never to hold an office job.

I found the work utterly boring. Maybe working during my summer break didn’t help, but I just remember looking at the clock every ten minutes, willing it with my mind to move faster so I could finally clock out after an eight hour work day. My ten minutes breaks were always too short, and the last half hour of the day always took the longest. It just wasn’t for me.

I was sixteen when I got a job working at Dunkin Donuts. I stayed for two years. They wanted to promote me to a manager. I wanted out. I mean, the mornings were the best. That 7am coffee rush with the line of ten cars in the drive-thru. We had a time that we needed to beat- getting every car in and out in under two minutes- that just sent my adrenaline rushing. But at about 10am when everyone was in school and work and the pace slowed down I would pull out my hair. Being bored is not one of my favorite pastimes.  And at Dunkin they always said “If you have time to lean you have time to clean.” Well, sometimes there was nothing to clean. Sometimes you cleaned till everything was clean and you were bored and you still had three hours to kill till you could punch out. I wanted to punch a wall.

I wanted out so I got out. I took a job in retail. Working at Forever 21 seemed like a fun job. You were surrounded by cute clothes all day. You got a discount. Life couldn’t be better. Except for weekdays when there were no shoppers and the managers would tell us to straighten the hangers and refold the clothes. Busy work. I seriously hate busy work. Again I found myself slipping away to look at the clock. So slowly counting the hours until I could go home. Time always flies when you’re shopping. And then when you’re working in a clothing store it decides to stand still. (Minus the weekends.) Lucky I went off to Mortuary school after two years and waved good-bye to retail.

Today I have no such thing as a schedule. A funeral director is not a 9-5 job. It’s not even a Monday-Friday job. It’s a whenever someone dies you have to work job. It’s a we just got 9 death calls in 8 days job. It’s everything that I ever thought I would want in a job. I love it and I hate it.

I love it because if there is nothing to do I don’t go to work. I love it because when we’re busy the time flies by. I love it because we don’t have busy work but we are often very busy with work. I love it because I’m always learning.

I hate it because I don’t have weekends off. I hate it because when we’re busy I wish I had more than 24 hours in a day. I hate it because I can’t schedule a haircut or doctors appointment because I may have a funeral.

My past jobs have taught me that I hate busy work. My current job has taught me to take advantage of the time I do have for myself. One thing all of my jobs have taught me and that the funeral home had enforced has been that my time is precious. I’m not promised today. I’m not promised tomorrow. All I can do is my best. And I praise God that I’ve finally found a calling in which I’m not bored! Seriously, thank you, thank you, thank you!