Rebuilt

I was fired twice this year.

The first time was unexpected (and in some opinions, unwarranted). So it was a shock for me and most people nearby.

The second time wasn't unexpected. But it was the one that broke my heart.

See, I'd had a dream I'd been dreaming for the last three years fulfilled. I was given challenging physical work from 9 to 5, getting me out of an office chair and onto my feet, putting my hands (and arms) to the task of lifting, holding and screwing (sounds pleasurable, indeed) instead of typing, tapping and clicking. A different kind of making, to be sure. No more or less productive, no more or less creative - except in the latter case I could easily see the final versions of what I'd helped to make, existing in the real world as measurable, tactile accomplishments that real human beings would utilize, inhabit...appreciate.

It was a drastic and total change, but one I'd been craving across my three years putting words on websites for a very cool, very cherished advertising agency. To be fair (and it's understating the matter), said agency changed my life in every way. But it was time for a different change. So I put away my computer mouse...

And picked up a hammer.

Starting this fall, I worked construction with the finest men in the trades, anywhere on this planet. I do not make that proclamation lightly. They are truly two in a million - strapping man's men with more muscles than I ever knew existed, and bigger hearts than I ever thought possible. When they heard I'd been kicked to the curb by my fellow nerds, they lifted me up and protected my sorry hide when I needed it most. I was gainfully employed without pause - meaning I didn't have time to mourn the disappearance of regular income, only the form of its delivery. And in the new regime, I was required to get the hell off my flabby ass and do something really useful, whether it be cleaning up scrap, building the steel skeleton that would one day become a wall, or dressing it with a flesh of gypsum to create these illusions of solidity and enclosure we so take for granted.

I became a drywaller. A boarder.

And when I was good enough to put on a heavy toolbelt and learn to walk with my hands a manly distance from my body (not to intimidate, I learned, but to avoid the cluttered periphery of measuring tape, lifters, rasps, keyhole saws, crimpers, vice-grips, hammers and screwguns in abundance across the hips of any fellow building buildings these days), I felt like I had earned a black belt. That kind of achievement surpassed any title change I may have garnered back at the office, like a badge on a Cub Scout's shoulder saying yes, you learned how to make fire, buddy.

And yes, as a pasty, sedentary writer, I was on top of the world learning all the new jargon I've thrown around so casually above. Just happy to be learning, period. I really do best when there are new things to process and fresh skills to encounter, develop and perfect. It was heaven, with benefits. I sweated like a pig (grinning through it all), and discovered my arms and shoulders were getting bigger than they'd ever been before. Who among us Y chromosome-bearers could sniff at that?

Thus, it was all the more wrenching when the toolbelt was wrested from me and my duties revoked. Being me, I took it personally, thinking I had done something wrong. Not ramped up to speed quickly enough. Hadn't proved myself indispensable to my experienced employers - as a rookie, yes, but one who actually respected (no, revered), them enough to give his all in the hopes of impressing and making an impression.

Alas, it was none of these that got me booted off the construction site. It was a mere financial matter - compounded, of course, by our proximity to year-end and the rush of generosity that seizes those of us who love to buy presents for the people in our lives when mistletoe is hung and trees trimmed. More than that, because the New Year bodes some hefty expenses for my team, and they needed my earning power (however fledgling) out of the way to facilitate some saving and greater spending.

The day I heard I'd just emerged from the shower. I was standing there naked but for a towel, as the fellow who had hired me walked into the living room and told me he had to let me go. I couldn't have been more vulnerable unless I'd dropped terrycloth and weathered this news in my birthday suit! And it took a while to make it okay in my mind.

But just when I'd processed; just when I'd accepted; just when I'd made my peace with being relegated back to the chair and the keyboard and the mouse that isn't a mouse, who came knocking on my sliding door again?

The same guys.

There was a need for me now. There was a budget for me now. And did I want to spend this weekend's daylight hours hanging board with the best? (Those last two words are my assignation, not theirs - these guys are as modest as they are welcoming and patient with rookies they're willing to take a chance on.)

I was already smiling.

I didn't need a second to think it over.

And so my time was spent: exerting, hurting (in all the right ways), and blurting (out whatever struck my fancy). We gave a home walls. We talked philosophy over lunch. We went home with our bodies as exhausted as our minds can get in this day and age.

New muscles, you ain't going nowhere. 7-11, you're great for a quick and cheap lunch. Chad and Trevor, you made my dream come true again.

You even went me one better.

I got a job, sure. That's fantastic.

But I also found two brothers.

And that kindness can never properly be repaid.

Not that I won't try, of course. When's the next shift?