Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief

Each week I walk into the restaurant there are new faces - in the kitchen, behind the bar, serving guests or cleaning tables. Conversely, old faces who's names I have actually learned, disappear at the drop of a hat. Turnover is quick and constant in the industry and people come and go like shooting stars, here one minute and gone the next. You can miss them entirely if you're not paying attention.

I have a tendency to find work and stay put, sometimes past the point when it is healthy and rewarding to do so, misplaced loyalty, I suppose. I've learned that the perfect workplace is a theory for all us ordinary folks, something to imagine and hope for but not to be attained. I suspect that this is due to all workplaces being primarily made up of people with all their flaws and defects as well as their good points. Ambition not being an integral part of my make up, I've always been content to find work that I can do well in an atmosphere that I enjoy, keep the bills paid and be able to sleep late now and then, maybe have dinner out once or twice a month, even buy a pair of earrings without sacrificing a meal. It's distinctly possible that when I had that kind of freedom and security, I didn't appreciate it.

I find people who knew their goal from childhood - doctor, lawyer, Indian chief - and pursued it with unwavering focus and single minded energy, to be interesting as well as - from my point of view - wildly successful. I see them often in the restaurant, the doctors who people rave about, the lawyers who make partner at 40, the heads of utility companies, the real estate barons and former oil men, even the writers and Hollywood actors with their instantly recognizable names and faces. I remember wanting to be a nurse, a teacher, a veterinarian, a pilot, a farmer, a counselor, a tap dancer, all in passing stages that faded when the newest fancy came along. I played with the idea of becoming a librarian, joining the Peace Corps, even thought for awhile that it might be fun to be a journalist, but nothing called to my soul, not with the absolute passion I hoped for or the certainty that it was meant to be. So like the majority of the great and struggling unwashed, I meandered from job to job and state to state - married and meandered some more - with no set course, no clear plan. Another marriage, another divorce, and finally to within spitting distance of the Medicare years, still a little aimless and searching - the only constants in all these years being every book I ever read, a few pieces of good jewelry and a houseful of cats.

There are worse endings.

The very substance of the ambitious is but the shadow a a dream. William Shakespeare