The ETL character

Q: Your character on Twitter is funny. Where did that come from?

Before Covid and before there was a shortage of workers, the economy bent in a different way, and I was laid off from my mid level office job. For a while, the initial rush of freedom buoyed me as I browsed the thin job listings. I’ll be okay. I can get another job wherever I want. Gradually, as applications went unanswered, that adrenaline faded. I became consumed with a mounting dread that the doors to my field had closed with me on the outside.

My family burned through every dollar and gifted dollar we had. We went on food stamps. I tried to get a job at Pizza Hut as a delivery driver. On the website application, it asked if I had either graduated high school or earned a GED. Well, technically, I had done neither. A curious product of being homeschooled in the 90s. Two college degrees, but I did not have a high school diploma. I was unceremoniously booted out of the Pizza Hut portal and told to come back when I was qualified.

The bottom came soon enough. I worked a summer as a landscaper, quickly sweating out 30lb along with most of my will to live. At the end of one 12 hour day I crawled into the shade in a fit of vomiting and tremors. I had long since been without insurance, so the owner of the company paid for me to visit a walk in clinic.

“Heat exhaustion. Good thing you got out of the sun when you did,” the doctor said bluntly. “Could have turned into heat stroke. People can die from that.”

My career as a landscaper over, I became a part time janitor at the church we were attending. Three days a week, I scraped together what was left of myself and trudged into the cavernous building to stack chairs and vacuum the cheerios out of the nursery carpets. I tried to avoid the staff and church members who randomly crisscrossed the grounds throughout the week, but it was impossible. Don’t mind me, I’m just scrubbing the toilets with my Master’s Degree.

If this were a movie, this is the point in the story where you would introduce a villain. A mean spirited pastor talking down to me. An adversary. But there wasn’t one: the pastors and staff at the church were unfailingly kind. At home, my wife stood by me and tried to support me as best she could. It was just me—there was no villain to blame, no external target to rage at. Sometimes life just knocks you down.