Sunday Meditation: Father Bukowski Speaks of Hells Left Behind

For the longest time, like a good, well-trained citizen of these United States, I used to consider myself a failure for not having a career. In my half-century-plus of existence, I’ve never worked anywhere longer than three years, if that long.

But then I think back on those places where I worked, and it saddens me that people could be so soul-dead as to not mind coming into those same places every day, dealing with those same awful people every day, watching the seasons change through the same plate-glass window year after year. 

Watching each other grow old, talking about days until retirement like you’re all waiting to get out of prison—a prison you campaigned to get into, and worked like a fool draft horse stay in, because you’re no one if you’re not wearing someone’s brand of striped pajamas. If you do not belong—as in, you are not owned by someone who commands your time for 30 or more hours a week, why, that’s just the worst.

All love and respect to those out there making the wheels go round in the cubicle farms and whatnot, but the idea of still working at any one of the places where I used to work back in the day fills this basement-dwelling horror writer with cold, nauseous dread. Father Bukowski wasn’t cut out for that madness, and neither am I.