I got my pages done today, so it was a good day. That’s the question that defines my day: did I get my pages done?

The number of pages I have to get done in order to feel that I “got my pages done,” changes. It’s not a fixed number.  Today I decided 7 1/2 was enough. Yesterday I was in a lousy mood because I crapped out after 3 1/2. Two previous days were 9 pages each, so I was feeling pretty good about that. When I lose a day of work I am impossible to be around.

My name is Michael, and I am a workaholic.

I dropped out of school after completing 10th grade. Long story short, I spent that summer hitchiking across country and by the time that was done felt a just a bit emancipated.  Then, at a new school for 11th grade, a teacher saw I had entered the lunchroom by the wrong door and demanded I go back out and come in through the right door. So I dropped out.

Really, under the circumstances what choice did I have?

(Aside to younger readers:  no, this is not a rationale for you dropping out.  About one out of every 50 people who jump off the Golden Gate Bridge actually survives but this does not mean jumping off a bridge is a good idea.  Also:  do not hitchhike. Again, just because one idiot gets away with it that doesn’t mean the next one will. )

In any case, I dropped out.  Later I went on to drop out of junior college, and then university.  So it’s not like being a high school drop-out limited my dropping out career.  Before I went on to bail on San Francisco State University, I got my first job.  I wanted to run off to Europe and I needed money so I got a job at age 16. Toys “R” Us.  Stock clerk.  I worked the doll aisle.  Barbie, Cabbage Patch and Baby Go Bye-Bye.  $1.60 an hour but I worked basically every shift, so it added up.

I liked working because working made sense.  School and home always felt irrational to me, while the workplace made sense.  I showed up, put on my red and white Toys “R” Us uniform and worked.  Then, they would give me money.  I liked that formula.  Still do. I show up, I work as hard as I can, and someone pays me.  (I did eventually earn enough to take myself and a cashier named Connie off to Europe for three months.  I was 17 by then.  Connie dumped me, I ran out of money, my stuff was all stolen, I spent a week sleeping under a bridge in Germany and I came back to the US with nothing but a jar of peanut butter and a copy of Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke.  Best trip ever.)

I’ve worked pretty much full-time since I was 16.  That’s not a complaint, it’s a brag.

My work has changed over the years — stock clerk, painter, library clerk, law librarian, restaurant manager, antiques shopper, temp, waiter, apartment manager, editorial cartoonist (say what?) hotel night manager, janitor, restaurant reviewer, political media consultant, documentary film maker, writer — still today, some thirty-eight years after I got my first job, happiness is a day where I get my work done.  

7 1/2 pages.  I can live with that.  Decent day.