A Job A Day…

This may come as a shock to a few of you, but I am not the biggest fan of my job. Actually, I fear the people at my job are not the biggest fans of me, but that’s not really material to this discussion. It’s just something I’m pretty sure I’ve FELT. Get it? Material, felt? Never mind. I bring all of this up because a) I didn’t think I could make an entire post out of the recent mysterious popping noise that my left leg know makes only when climbing stairs and b) I recently found the coolest website and it is somewhat job related.

I am a dreamer, well it might be more like hallucinator as many of my dreams have no basis in reality, let alone some magical dream-like place where beef jerky grows on trees and I can openly blog at work. Ok, I am a ‘hallu-ceamer.’ I was going to go with hallu-creamer, but I didn’t want you to think I just sit around putting weird things in thickened dairy products. Well, I do prefer to eat cottage cheese with pasta sauce in it, but again, that’s not material here.

I often merge my halluceaming and work. I have envisioned many great jobs for me. Some include cheese, some include barbequing and yes, some even include getting large sums of money for blogging about the mundane and trivial. Heck, I’d even pimp myself out if I could get paid to blog about important stuff like religion and politics and cheese. So, you can imagine how excited I was when I came across something in a magazine about vocationvacations.com. What I mean to say is that I got excited once I looked up the meaning of ‘vocation.’ Basically, they have done a bunch of work so you can pay money to try out any of your dream jobs for a day. This is where you cue the big horns and strings musical number that conveys the very idea of perfection. If it helps, picture the clouds parting and the sun beginning to shine (or just listen to Bobby Darin’s ‘Don’t Rain On My Parade’).

I eagerly typed in the URL, or website address, as I believe it is called and waited nanoseconds (helloooooo DSL) for the site of my dreams, the very anticipation of my life, to be displayed before me. My fingers navigated the website with the wanton abandon of, uh, someone that really wanted to see something. There, laid out in plain view were jobs that minutes before, I could only have dreamed of getting the chance to try. Actually, since it costs a thousand or so dollars to me mentored on and then try some of these jobs, I still have to dream about them, but now the dream is a little closer to reality. Sorry, I should have warned you prior to unleashing that sappy, over used cliché there, but I was typing too fast to stop.

I’d like to focus on just a few of these humdingers (is it still hip to use that?) for a moment since I think they are the same humdingers (obviously, I am assuming you answered yes to my hipness question just a minute ago) you might be interested in. First there is ‘Voice-Over Artist.’ As you may or may not know, I like to talk (if you don’t believe me, just check out my podcasts link to the right over there). How great would it be to do voice-overs for stuff? I really could care less what the stuff is, as long as I get to do the voice-over for it. Pesticides, anti-fungal creams, it doesn’t matter. I’d be doing voice-overs. Though I’m not sure how excited my friends and family would be to get to say things like ‘why yes, that is Michael’s voice on the hemorrhoid commercial. Didn’t he sound in fine voice tonight?’ I had to use that last phrase from ‘A Christmas Story’ because I rarely get to work it into conversation. And what if we all got really good at voice-overs and got to do cartoons or car commercials? See? Dream job.

Then there is the first one that caught my eye. It was ‘Be A Cheese Maker.’ Yes, I realize it’s a little down the list alphabetically, but sometimes in my excitement, I can be a skimmer. Can you just imagine being a maker of cheese? As in making it? Cheese. Making cheese. My fingers are getting weak just typing that. The only problem is that if I ever got to make cheese I might be tempted to keep it as a trophy of the first cheese I ever made. Sure, I’d taste it and give a little to my cheesiest friends, but then I’d make it a trophy. The only problem with that is that it would end up being a trophy of the first cheese I ever cut… Sorry, had to. My fear is that in it’s trophied state, it would turn green and become moldy. I don’t think I could handle that. Not only would it break my heart because my primo creation would be ruined, but it would stink to high heavens. Trust me, there is a cheese plant in my city and whenever we drive by it, human nature leads us to start looking suspiciously at everyone else in the car trying to figure out ‘who dealt it.’

I could spend several thousand more words on just the cheese making job, like what type of cheese, what awesome ingredients I could infuse (see, the 5 hours a night I watch The Food Network is finally paying off) into the cheese, what goes into actually making it and the fact that I could have the title of ‘Cheese Maker’ under my name on my business card (which of course would be yellow and have cheese holes all over it), but there are other great dream jobs just waiting for me to fantasize about. I could try being a pit crew member, racetrack manager, a freakin’ schooner captain, a dairy owner, restaurant critic (perhaps my true calling as it involves food and writing) or even a professional speaker (who lives in a van down by the river!).

This website is willing to also let me be a farmer or a dude rancher. Now seriously, who hasn’t seen City Slickers and just wanted to try that for a while. By the way, is Jack Palance still alive? I can’t remember. Then there is the other real dream I have always wanted to try: baseball radio announcer. Growing up I really wanted to do that, but then I had the privilege of hearing the great Vin Scully call Dodgers games every night and who wouldn’t be motivated by that.

Getting to be a baseball announcer for at least one day would let me accomplish 2 things. I’d finally get to try it and I would no longer have to hear my grandmother say ‘it’s a shame you never became a sports announcer, you would have been so good at it. You didn’t even try. I always wanted you to be a sports announcer. If only you had listened to me.’ See, what man wouldn’t want to pay a thousand dollars to not have to hear that anymore.

My only concern with trying out these dream jobs is the insurance and liability aspect of the whole thing. Sure you get mentored before trying the job, but that can’t replace years of trying and doing, which I’m hoping aren’t the same thing. To be safe, we’ll just say that it can’t replace years of experience. There, that’s better. Let’s be honest, I have been known to walk into filing cabinets in our office because I was concentrating on something else. I have also walked into a sliding glass door thinking it was open. Although in my defense, it was really clean and streak free. Oh come one, you’ve all done it. Maybe I’ll just choose a job that doesn’t involve walking. I’ve got it! I’ll be a Marine Animal Care Specialist. Oh that reminds me, when was the last time I fed the fish…