Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to work at different places doing somebody else’s job. If you are like most people you have had a few jobs in your life. But what about jobs that people do that there is no way you would ever have. What would it be like to say run a train? Be an entertainer on a cruise ship? Work in a rum distillery? Be an orderly—what exactly is an orderly? 

                I don’t think I would do well on an assembly line. I like variety. But maybe the workers on assembly lines rotate to get the full spectrum of what is being built on that line. That might be kind of cool. Just think of all the things that are done to a D8 CAT before it rolls or tracks and rumbles off the assembly line. But after some thought I think everything on that line would be heavy and each step would have finger pinching written all over it. Knowing my own limitations, I best stay away from mechanical machinery. 

                I worked as a short order cook and a counter waitress in a small casino but I have always wondered what it would be like to work in a fancy schamcy restaurant where the tips I hear can be pretty hefty. I think I have the personality to be a server to fine diners. Of course I also know that I have a strong enough personality to know that I would not take being treated as I have seen some servers treated by customers that are, what would be the right word here—snotty. Yes with me a snotty customer wouldn’t stand a chance. That however is not the correct attitude to have going into a job. 

                Another job I wish I would have had the opportunity to give a whirl was a stewardess. Okay so now-a-days the politically correct term is flight attendant. So being a flight attendant seems to be a very romantic job. All that travel and adventure. Oh and of course there is that handing out empty then picking up full, air sick bags! Might want to rethink this one… 

                More times that I can count I have uttered, “If I knew then what I know now…” I would like to replay my senior year in high school and try for more scholarships and go on to a big city school and see what I could have accomplished. I would like to have started my writing a lot earlier to see what I could have done.  I have to be careful not to should-a, would-a or could-a, my life away. It’s really easy to fall into that vat of nonsense. But at the same time you have to keep reaching for something, anything and everything you want. 

                That is very appropriate at this time of the year, the New Year, the resolution promise of a new year. Yes, yes we all want to lose weight, be nicer, and have more patience and please if you do smoke—stop smoking. (Know that I am behind ya all the way on that one!) But this year how about standing outside of the regular loop and going with what you already have and adding to that? Become the better whatever you are. Reach down deep and grab hold of what you have and grow with that. My other half tells me that some of the best advice he got when he was a kid was that he could have or be anything he wanted just as long as he worked hard and went out and earned it. That’s pretty grandiose advice. It should be it was from his Grandfather! 

                I don’t have a perfectly easy way to do all that. It takes hard work to sometimes even get up in the morning let alone facing a day full of trying to be more than I was yesterday. However—yes another famous however—however nearly every day I look down the road of life and say, “Bring it on life, and give it your best shot!” I come from good genes and have a hard enough head to know that taking it on the chin just means to me that I can still feel and react to life. With that and a sack of ice I can take on the world. That’s my job every day of every year—what else could I ask for? 

                Hap, hap, happy New Year!  

                Trina lives in Eureka, Nevada. Share with her at itybytrina@yahoo.com      Really!