plumbing, again

we got a new kitchen faucet yesterday, after about 36 hours of being without one that didn't spray water everywhere when turned on. it's nicer to have a fully functioning kitchen sink, in my view, than not. i appreciate things like that. the faucet itself is perhaps not what kara would have chosen in an ideal world, aesthetically speaking, yet i believe it will serve. (note that the sink itself, the backsplash, and the nozzle on the faucet remain old.)

the plumber was just a boy, of i believe ukrainian descent (i really like ukrainians for some reason, the accent, the bone structure), 10 or 15 years younger than i. and he was friendly, if a little reserved at first. he worked quickly. so maybe i should become one. a plumber, not a ukrainian.

but i went to college, didn't i? indeed, i graduated from a small, new england, liberal arts college with a fine english program, nestled in woodsy maine, no less. why am i thinking of working a trade?

i was brought up (intentionally or not) to look down on the trades, on those whose careers depended on vocational school rather than a 4-plus-year academic education. (of course, a 1-year program in a vocational school prepared me for the job i'm working currently - is that why i look down on myself? - but i do work with words, and concepts of medicine, so maybe that elevates what i do? or not?)

i had not much in the way of ambition when i entered college, and less when i left it. my goal at graduation was to get a job (of some sort) that would support me as i wrote fiction. so, as i currently do have a job and do occasionally write fiction (though i've been between attempts for a few weeks now), i suppose i'm living my dream.

and yet i am unsatisfied. not always, to be sure, but sometimes. i do worry that advances in transcription software will eventually put me out of a job. i'm afraid of 20 years passing with me doing this same job. i wouldn't mind being our department's qa manager, working toward that; however, our current qa manager was just hired within the past year and if she doesn't do anything profoundly stupid then she's virtually guaranteed that job as long as she wants it, and she's younger and fitter than i. (and, as i learned a few weeks ago, our in-house transcription department is a rare thing in this world of outsourcing; a qa job elsewhere would likely be hard to come by.)

so why am i unsatisfied with my current job? (does this beg the question - isn't everyone at least intermittently unsatisfied with her or his job? who exactly am i to be looking for more?) what do i want to be doing instead? what did my parents have in mind for me when they shipped me off to college, and how relevant is that anyway? why did i not go into plumbing - or become an electrician or go into construction - immediately after high school? (though i don't for a moment regret college; i do value my education) (that last question can probably at least in part be answered thus: i was and am rather a girly boy and such jobs frightened me. plus they were deemed beneath me, which seems to make much less sense now than it did then.)

anyway. behold our new kitchen faucet, while i dream, undoubtedly fleetingly, of an apprenticeship; as we were told yesterday by that ukrainian boy, all plumbing fails eventually.