At 5 a.m. on Wednesday morning, I slowly walked into the cashier area of Yellow Cab to start a new job. I felt the need to make some extra cash since my job typing up the calendar for a local weekly newspaper never quite paid the bills. I received the keys to Car 216, gave the vehicle a once over, and was on the road before 5:30. Hardly anyone was on the road that early (cab or otherwise), and I settled into the Triangle zone, waiting for early morning calls.

My first fare was an older couple who needed a ride to the airport. My second fare were two drunk guys who needed to pick up a set of keys they left at somebody's apartment. My third fare took an ill mother and her son to the VA hospital. Forty bucks in fares before 7 a.m. The calls kept coming in all day long, especially during an extended rain shower. Trips to hospitals, hotels, the airport, Old Town. All around the east side of the river. I've lived in Albuquerque for over 10 years, so even though it was my first day cabbing, I knew where I was going.

Yellow Cab leases their vehicles on twelve hour shifts, and I am contracted to drive 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I can walk in on other days if I desire. With lease, fees, and gas, I owed the company $120 at the end of my first day, and I slid 6 twenties under the glass at the cashier's window. I went home drained but knowing I made some money. When I counted all of my bills, it tallied up to $180. I hadn't made that much money in one day in a long time. This was going to be a good second job.

At 8:30 a.m. on Thursday morning, I slowly walked up the steps to Crosswinds Weekly carrying a cup of coffee and a ham and cheese croissant from the nearby French Bakery. I sat down to type up the calendar events for the umpteenth time this year. All the family events, festivals, gallery happenings, fun runs, lectures, music groups playing, theatre and dance recitals, and book signings. I got halfway through the first category when my boss came up and asked to see me in the conference room.

It turns out she had been dissatisfied with my calendar work for quite some time but had failed to mention it to me. She stated that I either needed to improve my efforts or she could have me replaced by next week, hinting that she already had somebody in mind. I told her that I always thought I was doing the calendar as a favor for them. The work was more than mundane, I made only $80 a week, and they repeatedly pointed out to me that no one else wanted to do the job. I doubted I could improve much more on typing in repetitive calendar notices, and that it might drive me mad if focused much more on them. We mutually agreed that I would stop doing the calendar.

So in the span of two days, I went from typing for a weekly newspaper to being an independently-contracted cab driver. If anyone would have told me such a thing would happen two weeks ago, I would have laughed and laughed, but that's how life goes. You think it's going one way forever, and before you know it, everything has changed before you can decide whether you want it to or not.

I've striven all my adult life to be a writer who pays his bills with the insightful written word, but it just does not work that way. Unless I conform to stock journalism or pornography, no serious money will be forthcoming. So I just keep living life and going from job to job. My shortest jobs last three or four months, and my longest last around two years. Never finding my niche, always paying the bills. The jobs keep piling up the longer I live.

If there's one thing I've learned from the book store, fast food chicken chain, 24-hour diner, shipping company, kennel and pet supply store, homeless shelter, children's behavioral center, architecture firm, violin shop, weekly newspaper, and odd, odd jobs with money under the table, it's that work is weird. No job has ever worked completely for or against me. It's just something I'm supposed to do to survive in the capitalist world. And so far, I have survived.

In a blur or a flash or a burst, I am no longer Calendar Guy, punching in the myriad of social events that grace my fair city. I am now the guy pulling up to a variety of locations in town, sticking out my head, and saying "You call for a cab?" Work is so weird.

Chris Jungle has a clean driving record.