Tag: career

Wes Lexner x 3

The boss man came to me. He closed the door behind him and laid a pistol on the table then he looked me square in the eye. “I have ass cancer,” he said.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I told him. “Is it hopefully terminal?”

“It is,” he said. “I have six months. Maybe a year. I’ve dedicated my life to this company. You know, it’s funny. As children we have larger than life dreams; that growing up means making a difference by doing the things we love. What they don’t tell you is that once when mediocrity burrows in like a festering parasite, life becomes an endless stream of meaningless toil and futility. No matter how well you think you have it, there’s a deep void within you which whispers to you each night and tells you that you have wasted the best years of your life by becoming a cog in a soulless machine. You can spend the hours burying that voice but you know it speaks the truth. And you go on ignoring it until it metastasizes into an incurable disease. The good news for me is that I don’t have long. I will soon join the legions of the dead and forgotten. But as for you, I must pass my burden onto your shoulders.”

“What do you mean sir?”

“You are being promoted from serviceable to merely competent. The Company has deemed that you take the reins of this operation once when you’ve achieved the applicable credentials, namely a college degree. I suppose a congratulations is in order but I wouldn’t wish this job on my worst enemy.”

“But I already have a degree.”

“Your diploma in Italian porno studies at Brownhole University is not, to quote my superiors, ‘worth wiping your ass with’. I’m afraid you’ll have to get a proper one at a proper school.”

The boss man then holstered the pistol and gave me one last piece of advice. “It is life that gives meaning to death,” he said. “And if you want a meaningful death then you should resign from this job and follow your passions. If not, then classes in business management begin at Western Governor’s University on August 28th. Apply today and receive a 5% discount on fall tuition.”

Then he straightened out his shirt and opened the door. But before he departed this earth, he turned around and tapped on his pistol and winked. “You know what to do,” he said.

“Yes sir, I do.”

Western Governor’s University

Changing lives for the better

So long toilet factory

For the last time, I will walk through those doors, pull down my pants, and take another 10 hour shit while on the clock.

I don’t like how things are ending. I gave that place so much of my blood, sweat, and tears (and so, so much shit). But this is the way it’s got to be.

Monday, I’ll embark on a new career working at the nut factory. God knows how that’s gonna pan out. Instead of shitting, I wonder what I’ll do in the bathroom for 10 hours? 🤔 😉

Anyway, my schedule’s changing. Hopefully the new job will give me a renewed sense of disdain for both my audience and life in general.

That’s when I write my best work. 👍

Quiet quitting

I assure you that when I quit my job it was anything but quiet. At first I felt bad because I thought that there was a more professional way of handling things other than sending out petty emails. But after I got that two weeks notice in, I never felt better.

I thought I loved this job. Come to find out, I just enjoyed the game of politics. The fact is that staying abreast of everyone’s drama and using that to your advantage makes you a sociopath. It can be fun initially, but you lose your soul in the process.

The bad news is that I’m now selling my house…that I worked hard for…and moving out of state . The good news though is that I will not have to pay a mortgage (or rent) for the foreseeable future and I’ll virtually be out of debt with a good deal of cash on hand.

This frees me up to do basically anything I want. I doubt I will pursue writing full time because, not to brag or anything, I can write in my sleep. So I’ll probably return to school for nursing or something in the mental health field which is what I should have done 15 years ago.

Whatnot n’ what-have-you

My obsession with the Gospel of Mark might seem odd at first glance. But consider this: it’s the most basic of the four canonical gospels, no one knows who wrote it, we don’t know why it was written, it is the oldest known narrative of Jesus, all other Gospels are based on it or are in some ways responding to it. Therefore, this Gospel essentially invented the story of Jesus, making it one of the most important documents of all time, literarily and/or historically.

This document is a mystery; a mystery that will almost certainly never be solved. But that doesn’t mean certain quack scholars like myself won’t give it a shot.

Unfortunately, when you spend an inordinate amount of time researching a specific topic, people tend to read more into it than what’s actually there. I try to keep that in mind while reading Mark. I don’t find this gospel to be a particularly brilliant document and whatever “themes” are there, I think, is just a reflection on the reader.

Case in point is the abrupt ending at 16:8 (the original ending, after Jesus’s death, when the women enter his tomb only to find a man in there telling them to go to Galilee):

“Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.”
‭‭Mark‬ ‭16‬:‭8‬ ‭NIV‬‬

What a weird way to end a story eh?

And maybe the author of Mark did have an “artistic” purpose for ending his or her story in that way. I just think he (or she) ended it there because why the hell not? I’m not saying it was a GOOD decision, just A decision.

So never read more into Mark than what’s actually there. But there does seem to be a growing consensus amongst scholars regarding its genre: it’s a Greco-Roman biography.

I think Helen K. Bond, in her book The First Biography of Jesus, makes a pretty good case for this. While Mark doesn’t fit perfectly with the biographical genre, it does share enough of its characteristics to possibly shed some light on the meaning behind this strange document.

But whatever Mark’s intention was, as Bond summarizes in her book, the story of Jesus IS, essentially, the Gospel of Mark. So whatever your beliefs are, there is a great deal of historical worth in that.

***

Personal update: my career at the toilet factory might be coming to a close. New management is taking over and, although they can’t fire me, they can make my life difficult which is how they treat veterans whenever they want a clean slate.

I don’t understand why new managers feel the need to do this, but so it goes.

So again, might be extremely busy for the next month while I find a new career. I may be writing A LOT or writing very little. Sucks, but life goes on.