With Renee (Chapter 1) by, Michael Blankartz

I am eighteen-years old and everyday during rush hour traffic I see what I am supposed to become returning home from work. The role models for my generation look angry and depressed. They are zombies caught up in a routine waiting for retirement. Do you know what it is like to wake up in the morning and not want to get out of bed because nothing that you will do that day is worth rising from the comfort of the warm sheets? I have read novels about people whose life had meaning, they got out of bed excited to start another day because they loved what they did. I don’t love what I do and I don’t know of anyone who does. Let me rephrase that, I don’t know anyone who is consistently excited about their life. My life is comfortable and that is all that I see people living. I wish I could have the focus and direction that the main characters of those novels had but I don’t. Unfortunately, I have no clue what I want to do with my life.

Presently I work at a recycling center. I was really excited last year when I got the job because in some small way I felt that I would be involved in helping the world while other kids my age were working in fast food. But now my only satisfaction comes from giving homeless guys more weight than the scale reads and $1.00 a pound instead of $.85. My job starts when the customer dumps their aluminum cans into a conveyer that caries them into a basket for me to weigh them. I spend my time removing everything that isn’t an aluminum can before it gets into the basket. This includes aluminum foil, rocks, trash and even old maggot infested food.

Truthfully the maggots have only happened twice but they stick out more powerful in my mind than the trash. I get to give people money for recycling which is rewarding but it isn’t enough. I try to appreciate the little things in life but my rationalized meaning only keeps me happy for so long. Let’s face it I sort through old beer and soda cans that have been sitting idly in peoples backyards. The smell of stale beer constantly stains my clothes and overwhelms my nostrils. Who in their right mind would read the novel of my life? Even I wouldn’t make it past the first page.

Lately I have started to drink beer at work with two of my co-workers. When I get to work at noon Kevin (he is a forty year old ex-meth addict) goes and buys a twelve pack of beer and a bag of ice from the liquor store down the street. Upon his return Ed (he is an alcoholic in his late forties) fills a five gallon paint bucket with a little water, the ice and the beer. Once the “cocktails” as Ed calls them are on ice we work together to serve all of the customers as fast as we can. We sit on three lawn chairs that we found in the dumpster under the shade of a torn tarp. It takes a lot of effort for me to drink as fast as them while making it look natural. I have been drinking steadily since I was fifteen but usually it is warm beer out of a backpack. This beer is ice cold and the thought of drinking at work makes it even more enjoyable. I usually only drink two or three of my beers because I don’t want to get too buzzed at work. Besides I gladly give my fourth beer to Kevin or Ed because they want it more than I do.

I don’t want to work at a recycling center all of my life but it might not be for the reasons that one would think. It isn’t because my co workers are alcoholics or because I come home covered in filth. It isn’t because I only make $8.00 an hour or even the maggots. It is simply because I am not happy there now and don’t believe that I ever will be. I think that happiness grows from situations that supply your life with meaning. So if I can’t find meaning at the recycling center now then I will never be anything more than comfortable there. I don’t want to work at the same meaningless job for the rest of my life. I don’t want to live another twenty years and still not be living a life of meaning. I am terrified that when I’m an old man and dying I will know in my heart that my life was meaningless.

My father gave me an appreciation of philosophy and adventure through the books that he would recommend to me. Stories of fallen soldiers missing their loved ones, eastern monks traveling the world in solitude devoted to the one task of finding meaning and young adventures living outside the conformity of society. I loved the books and found role models in the pages. My father and I would talk about the characters in the highest regard and I found a teacher and friend in my dad. That was until I graduated high school two months ago and I told him my decision not to go to college. Instead I was going to work on the fishing boats in Alaska with a co-worker from the Recycling center. He didn’t understand why I wouldn’t go to college and it was then that I realized something about my father. He believed in talking about living a lifestyle “outside the box” but he never dared to put his ideas into action. My father was a living contradiction and I didn’t know what he truly believed. Did he want to live a life of adventure and risk or the calm and quiet lifestyle of an eastern monk? Was he too afraid to live without routine and security? Did he lack the wisdom to live the life of an eastern Guru? In the end I asked myself one final question would I be happy living the life of my father when I was forty?

I remembered his occasional comments about quitting his job as a teacher to work somewhere with less responsibility. I had heard him say on at least ten separate occasions that he wanted to be a floor attendant at Home Depot. I thought more in depth about the time he had to write a paper about the meaning of his life for an administration course he was taking to be a principal. He brought it to me in the family room and read me the title “News Junkie” before briefly summarizing it to me. He said that his life basically consisted of coming home from work as a special education teacher and reading Time magazine before watching the news on T.V. He finished his summary with “Pretty pathetic isn’t it.” I remembered how I laughed and told my father not to be so hard on himself. I told him that he had raised a wonderful family and had a humanitarian job that touched people lives. I assured him that there was nothing more productive than that and told him that his monitoring of current events was something that I admired about him after being a great father. He forced a smile and told me, “Your right, I hadn’t thought about that” and walked into the kitchen. As long as my father wished that he was doing something else he would never realize what he had. He spent more time talking about his dreams than reaching for them. And I guess a small part of me always resented him for that.

All summer I have been waiting for Jim (another coworker from Recycling center) to sell his motorcycle so that we could buy a truck and drive up to Alaska. Every week my father tries to get me to register for college and I tell him that I don’t want to prepare for the future only to find out in doing all the preparation I have wasted most of my life. For two months I have done nothing but tell all of my friends that I am leaving yet I don’t leave. It has been frustrating waiting for my life to start but thankfully I have run out of time. College starts next week and my father gave me an ultimatum to go to college, work full time, travel or move out. I told Jim I was leaving in a week and he said that he couldn’t sell his bike by then. I saw the fear in his eyes and realized that he never would have gone.

Yesterday I sold my Volkswagen bug for $2,000 and bought a train ticket that departs in two days. I read on the internet that there was a ferry that ported out of Bellingham Washington and traveled up the inside passage of Alaska. I don’t know what will happen to me when I get there or when I’m coming home. All that I know is that I want to see life as a gift instead of a burden. In two days I was going to start living the novel that I would love to read.