After the thrill is gone

I left work on Friday and thought to myself that the week coming up would be a strenuous one, longer days, somewhat stressed worrying about two jobs instead of one. I unlocked the car, took it out of gear, pushed the clutch and started up the Neon en route back home for some needed rest.

I talk about rest as if I am worked to death. The hours are the only things that make me so tired. My job doesn't involve heavy lifting or strenuous activity, and thankfully my job isn't the sort of environment where I have to watch my step or keep hydrated after being in the hot sun or exposed to the elements needlessly. Matter of fact, it's been the same job I have had for almost 9 years now.

July 27th, 1997 I walked into the KTSM Newschannel 9 studios as wide eyed as anyone could get. Fresh out of high school, no college experience and suntanned from working summers at the local amusement park, I met with my then boss and signed paperwork hiring me on as a full time employee of a radio station. My heart pounded from anticipation (and the beginnings of high blood pressure) and my mind raced with the millions of thoughts about how working in the news and radio industry would be.

I would grab the keys to the cruiser, a 1996 Chevrolet Lumina minivan emblazoned with the radio station call letters on the side and take the sucker out for its daily washing and fueling. I stayed for hours at my house on days where the vehicle wasn't needed and detail it, vacuum out the carpets, organize the shelves, make it just that much more presentable. As I sit here and write about it, I laugh to myself how eager I was to please my superiors and show how much I appreciated my job. Then as I went higher in the company, I saw how others had taken the keys to the cruiser and didn't show the compassion and care I did.

As the years went on, I noticed that I too started to change. I had money. I had spare money and time to spend with friends. Everyone remembers climbing into my 1999 Cavalier and just driving for hours on end enjoying our company and the roads. My priorities changed and so did my outlook for my job. I saw my job as defining who I am. I am in this radio station because 18 years prior I was in the car with my parents and while passing by the KTSM Channel 9 studios, I leaned forward from the back seat and proclaimed "I'm going to work there".

My parents didn't say anything to me. I don't think they took me too serious when I said it.

It was around the epiphany of that foreshadowing that things started to change. All of my life I had devoted myself to my craft, my industry that I have nothing else to show for it. What I thought would give me money and fame, just gave me mediocrity and debt. I used to tell people that working at the radio station was just like any other nine to five job. It was a job. A task you alone are hired to perform to the best of your abilities based off of the information given to management off of your resume. A resume that only had one other radio job on it. It's a linear profession, not progression.

Do I care that I am not the most famous name in town?

No.

Do I care that I could have done more with myself doing something else?

Yes.

I've had so many friends tell me I am too smart for what I am doing at the radio station. It got really fucking annoying being told that. The question was always the same "What are you doing, you're smarter than this, you should be doing something other than this". I used to counter by telling people that I was doing what I wanted to do, not what others expected me to do. The sad part is it was what I didn't want to do that I ended up doing and regret not taking the advice my friends tried to hammer into my head years ago.

I also have the opposite view based on what my friends talked me out of doing back when I had a better chance at pursuing it. Then one day, I started to feel differently about my job, my career. Years of telling everyone that it was merely a nine to five job started to sink in. Working at the radio station has been just like working at any other nine to five job, I got there, did my work, did whatever extra needed to be done and then got the hell out of there as soon as I could.

Putting the car into first gear made me realize up until buying the Neon, I had been doing the same thing for the past 10 years, 9 at this job. It was just another day at work. Another day at my job, a place where menial tasks are performed day in and day out. The passion I once used to have for my work is slowly starting to disappear and the feeling I used to have isn't there anymore.

The thrill is gone.

So where do I go from here?

Well, things are changing at work. I don't know for certain that I am included in these changes, but I know for certain that change will come my way soon.

When that happens, I will make my change.