Twenty-five years ago today, I started a job. It wasn't the first job I'd ever had, but I suspected I might be working at this company for a while. "A while" turned into 20 years and change. I could not have predicted that I'd end up in a different division of the company than my initial one, that the company would have five different locations during those two decades, or that my employment would end abruptly during a layoff of veteran workers.
On a Tuesday afternoon 25 years ago, though, I couldn't see the long-term future. I was just thinking about learning as much as I could about the new job and proving that I had a strong work ethic. I wanted to set the right tone while driving to work, so I popped a Pretenders cassette, "Learning To Crawl," into the tape deck, and "Middle Of The Road" started playing. It's an appropriate hit-the-ground-running, "Here I go" mindset to have when jumping into a new gig.
After "Middle Of The Road," "Back On The Chain Gang" began. An outsider might have misconstrued that as an unintentionally humorous metaphor for a new job. I, however, thought it represented the reality of work and life. It's still one of my favorite songs by The Pretenders, and it sums up, as tunefully as possible, the reality of sometimes having to get work done when you don't feel up to it.
A quarter-century later, I still think I made the right song choices.
