work: ROAD JOURNAL: How Did I End Up on the Road?

Bud Flooring
Write about what it is you do, exactly.

lame biography; here in seven mini chapters:
1. In 2002-04 Rockland to New York. I unloaded trucks on Broadway; I got work as a P.A., and I never made any money. I wrote a book, and a screenplay -- I never sent them out. When the time came for a proper tailspin it was scorched earth -- no woman, no apartment, no job, no money. Some people facing the adversity might have dealt with it better than I did, might have scrambled and found a way to stay; what can I say, I went back to Maine with my tail between my legs. I was twenty-six years old, and my resume was basically "truck unloader".
2. I got drunk for two years.
3. When I woke up, it had been two years of partying, playing poker, and working for my family on these jobs, but being sort of not all there. I was probably grieving for what I thought I should have been by then. Lame stuff. I told my best friend around this time: There's an expiration date on potential, and I'm ten years too late. Not sure where I should have directed myself, but I didn't do any of it. And in this time, seemingly by magic, I had picked up all this basic knowledge of this particular kind of construction work, osmotically. If you stand in enough ditches, if you look at enough towers, it will probably stick to the dullest head, or the most stubbornly inveterate daydreamer, (which is what I am).
4. So, to answer, I was allowed a long apprenticeship by the fact that it was the (most recent), family business. I'm young enough to go on the road, and chase the work around; I do feel like I owe that to my family, as they had a paycheck waiting for me, which most kids in my position aren't afforded. Spoiled really. Lucky. But I earn my money now. I work hard. I like money. I never cared about money until I had actually earned it. Now I'm greedy. I don't ever want to be broke again.
5. The work is several varieties of what I wrote on fB. We build tower foundations; we upgrade foundations; we do co-locate work for Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, Metro PCS, Cox Communications -- which is simply, if AT&T wants on a tower they're not on yet, someone goes in, and builds out their building and underground power and fiberwire, on said tower compound; while our crew was down in New York this summer doing this Verizon work, my father and brother were in Maine at a massive windmill farm, building a tower foundation.
6. It can be discussed in more detail, but what I should write about is this: I like it; there is also advantage presenting yourself dichotomistically; both sides can groove to your other half -- I can't say it hasn't helped me with construction managers that they aren't expecting some dude standing in a ditch to explain to them it'll be another half a day because when you put one hundred yards of concrete in the ground, that's serious displacement of earth -- "It calls for trucking, Sir." Dudes in offices on phones all dig military speak, I have words for'em. As well I get positive, almost shocked, response to this blog, as if by working blue collar it makes creativity more than it is, (anyone who knew me before is not surprised, and I suspect hardly impressed). I'll take advantage of it on both sides, but it seems perfectly logical to me that working in a new town every day, progress built before your eyes that you were responsible for, fits the right-brain hunger, and when it is done, you take a picture, and drive down the road to the next one. Someone, in response to this blog, said to me, "Someone has too much time on their hands.", and I hate to get cocky about it, but this crew has knocked out a sick amount of jobs, it's like an old, road-worn Roman Legion, that builds the camp anew every night -- it's muscle memory now, the engineers take our calls on how these jobs should be drawn up, and somewhere, compartmentalized, is the other place in my brain thinking over what story to write when I get back to the Days Inn. I can afford time. What else should I do in a Days Inn?
7. Good money. Exercise. Outside. New places, new jobs. Problem solving, visual results. Around my family. As a person who had no plan in life, I've fallen safely into a cush spot, and I'm trying to earn it.