Perfect

I’ve been searching
for the perfect job
all my life.
I haven’t found it.
As if there is such a thing.
I look back across the span
of 22 years of searching.
My first jobs were in college.
I was a barback, a bartender,
and a DJ.
I enjoyed each.
I drank
and I smoked
and I did drugs,
but none were meant
for life
and none lasted
very long.
My first “real” job
came after college.
I worked as a catastrophe adjuster
for State Farm
for three years.
I traveled the country
from one disaster
to the next.
I met people,
always at their worst.
They hated me
because they believed
I was out to cheat them.
I met adjusters
from other cities
and they hated their jobs
because people hated them.
But we drank
and we smoked
every day after work
and we made it OK.
In the end I quit
because I hated my home.
Austin has never been
good to me.
I moved to Houston
and went to art school,
believing a creative job
would suit me better.
My first creative job
was print design
for a legal publishing company
and it wasn’t very creative.
There’s only so much
you can do
with two typefaces
and two colors.
The people were nice
and we drank
and we smoked
at the end of each day.
After three years
I left
to work as a web designer
for a web design company.
I ended up on an account
that used two typefaces,
but 22 colors.
Such freedom.
And at the end
of each day
the designers would drink
and we would smoke
and we would dream
of better jobs.
I was laid off
after a year
when the dot com extravagance
ended in the dot com crash.
Thousands of designers
poured into the market
looking for better jobs
and learned to settle
for available jobs.
I worked freelance
for two years
before starting my own company.
I did everything.
Account service.
Project management.
Design.
It was so hard,
but so rewarding.
At the peak
I employed six designers,
two copywriters,
an office manager,
and a programmer.
At the end of every day
we would drink.
We would smoke.
And we would plan
for the next day.
The next week.
The next month.
I know now
this was the best six years
of my life.
It was as close
as I have ever come
to the perfect job.
But people are greedy
and I was naïve.
My partners sabotaged me
to win a million dollar project
for themselves.
I left broken hearted
and floated for a year
before I found another job
as a designer
for a company smaller than mine.
After a year
I realized
I knew no one there.
I left because we didn’t drink
and we didn’t smoke
at the end of each day.
Since then I have worked
four jobs
in three years,
each worse than the last.
No one drank.
No one smoked.
No one cared.
I don’t feel creative
anymore.
I am thinking
I would like to be a barback,
or a bartender,
or a DJ.
I am thinking there is
no perfect job
and I just want to be happy,
not perfect.