“I quit my job this week.”
Joey has been struggling with the transition from regular paid employment into devoting himself to his rickshaw business for some months now. He’s faced the common but still scary challenge of stepping out of the so called comfort zone of his regular pay check, the status in his friends eyes and the increasingly apprehensive look in his children’s eyes when he’s stepped out of the door every morning and left for ‘work’: their look gives away their concern that every time he comes back later that night, his nerves are a little more frazzled, his temper a tiny bit more frayed and his breath laden with a touch more whiskey than it was the night before.
The safe space of the regular job has become increasingly hostile recently: it’s now an uncertain and distrustful environment with colleagues looking over their shoulders and minding their backs in an attempt to avoid the next round of cuts and restructuring. Joey has never seen so many people sidle around the company corridors like crabs with their backs to the walls, attempting vainly to stop someone else knifing them between their shoulders as they go about their increasingly futile daily grind.
Today contained an epiphanic moment for Joey. A phone call from an eco-friendly transport company in Glasgow placed an order for 50 rickshaws which had to be delivered by Christmas. The task is immense: but it’s given him the security to step out of the unsafe safe space of full time work into the safe insecurity of finally being able to dedicate himself to truly looking after himself and his children. He has no idea what will happen after Christmas – but the first signs of Spring have come six months early for Joey.
“I quit my job this week…” has never sounded so optimistic and his six children can breathe easier knowing their dad will finally be sobering up before he bids them goodnight when he gets home from his real work: running his own business.
drnickombe 