Growing Pains

     Once again, please insert my usual "speel" about how I'm a horrible blogger, I don't upload enough things for any of you (not that too many read these), and I promise to do better. It's summer now so I don't really have any excuses. In fact, it's been summer for a little while so I definitely don't have any excuses to use.

     So, let's get to the important things.

     My legs really, really, really hurt.

     Oh yeah, I have a job now. Via my English/drama teacher's husband I have managed to procure a job for the summer. Unlike what I suspect many of the jobs are that those my age obtain, it is full time and above minimum wage ($10.00 an hour). Oh, it's also in the sun in a shipyard in a place with a name that I originally believed to be a racial slur, but is the actual name of the town(?) or area. None is truly important.

     The point I'm trying to make is that I'm entering whole new. Compared the existence me and most of my peers, it's different to the point where it seems like being around these people is a whole new plane of existence. I'm not saying that as an educating young individual with a fairly bright future I'm above or better than of them. What I am saying is that I feel like an alien among normal people. I've finally stepped out of the dream of private school education, middle class socioeconomic status into the real world of a forty hour work week in the hot sun. Talk about culture shock.

     As I look forward to the rest of my summer, I wonder if I'll overcome that culture shock. Will I acclimate and integrate to that culture by the end of the summer? Do I want to? Will I perhaps understand them? Whatever happens, I'll certainly learn more of the world.

     When riding around last Wednesday with my father, we were driving so that I could work out where exactly I would be driving everyday for work, he said that this job would benefit me as a writer, and then he made a reference to Steinbeck (at which I glowed secretly with pride). Maybe, along with all of the other writing projects I've assigned myself will be to observe these people, to see another side of existence. I've always thought to understand the world because I've wanted to make it better. For the next several weeks, I won't be seeing it from the lofty and philosophical heights of air conditioned rooms.


                                                                                                              Good-bye for now,
                                                                                                              Jesse Byron

P.S. I'm getting published again. Same anthology, different edition. Also, I sent in an essay to a publication called The Sun. I'll probably hear back from it some time during August.