I'm coming up on six months at my current job as an MSO - Multi-Skilled Operator, a.k.a. "pumper" for a major oil and gas company in the Bakken. I'm still wearing a green hard hat, what I've been told is a pretty common signifier industry-wide that you're a new guy, and that everyone else needs to look out for you and not assume you know how to do your job. Once I've hit six months they'll give me a white hard hat. I think that'll make me feel more established, more secure.
I've recently been switched into a new pickup, and I mean brand new. The odometer read 400-some miles when I jumped in; I add more than that in two days of running my eastern Montana route. The new pickup helps me feel more secure too, I'm not going to lie. Plus there's no getting over the satisfaction of jumping in each morning and enjoying that "new car smell". It's really a treat.
The pay is very good, at least for me. I'm making more money per year than either my dad or my wife's, more money than any of my brother-in-laws, probably more than most of my friends, and certainly more than I've ever made. Our bills are being paid each month, even when that includes more expensive grocery trips, $750 a month for rent, and catching up on bills we'd fallen behind on before we left Ohio.
And that's just the thing. My future still feels so insecure. The life of poverty is still so close in memory as to make me feel that it would be very easy to get back there, or to feel as though we've not yet left that life. And with every uncertainty at work, any mistake I make or opportunity that I worry I've missed, fear and anxiety grip my heart.
My young, impatient, probably foolish heart fluctuates between fear that I won't progress in my career and wealth-building quick enough, and dread that complete ruin lurks around every corner and could pounce on me at any moment.
I have so many dreams, so many hopes and aspirations.
For instance, I want to travel around the world with my family - to live in foreign countries and have my sons visit foreign museums, learn other languages and cultures, get an education they couldn't from only reading books. When they graduate high school, I want to take each one of my boys individually on a long trip (somewhere between a week and a month) to a foreign country of their choice.
I want to buy each of my sons their own small starter home as a wedding present, in case they want to marry young.
I want to design and build my own home, some uber-clever subterranean high efficiency home, and I want to run a bison ranch.
Not to mention I'd like to be able to write more seriously; I've always told myself that'll have to wait until I become independently successful since writers, as I understand, either do very well or starve.
But all of this takes money, and my net worth is something like -$80,000.
Living in the moment is difficult lately. When I do catch myself enjoying where I am, who I'm with, what I'm doing - I worry that my inattention to the future is going to put my wishlist in jeopardy. On the other hand, I worry that my lack of attention to the present, and, what's worse, my anxiety over the future, is going to serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy ensuring failure.
I read histories and biographies, I read the news and informative magazines - Wired, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and the like. My hope is that arming myself with useful information, committing to work hard, be honest and compassionate, and taking it one day at a time, I'll find myself where I should be, enjoying the life God intended for me to have.
The simple fact is that control isn't meant to be entirely ours as humans. We're not supposed to hold all the cards. If we did, how boring would that get?
Life isn't all about getting what we want because life isn't all about us.
Maybe I will lose my job tomorrow. What then? The world will keep spinning. But maybe I'll get a promotion, or a pay raise It won't mean my life is any more worth living, or that I'm suddenly a better person, any more worthy in the eyes of God.
Perhaps underneath perverted human ambitions is a misguided certainty that we're supposed to be living to bring glory to God, that we show his greatness when we are great. But how tragic to, as Jesus phrased it, "gain the whole world and forfeit your soul."
More than any of those other items I mentioned, I want to come to the end of my days in this body with a calm peace, knowing I am right with my maker, that I did justice, loved mercy and walked humbly with my God.
