Someone Always Won't Play Nice

My mother always told me, "Life is like a box of chocolates..." - oh no, wait, that's something else...

My mother always told me, no matter where I worked, there would be people I get along with, and people I don't. That's just the way it is.

At the time, I was working retail - selling cameras, then moved into bartending, then went on to slinging tofu in a health-food veggie bakery/care, then went on to working at a domestic violence shelter, then went on to teaching part time, then full-time advising, then...hey - wait a minute... This is about when I began to realize, my mother was (is) right. I thought it was only while I was working minimum wage or barely better jobs that it would happen that way. Not true. It happens all the way through. At least, as far as I can tell right now.

I guess I thought that once I had gotten a *higher* degree and was really working in the job and field I love, for some reason things would be different - the people would be different - the relationships would be different. I mean, we're all educated professionals, right? Not children on the playground fighting over sandbox turf.

Before I got my FIRST full-time teaching job, I had always looked with envy upon the full-time faculty, watched them at meetings as they joked around with their peers, made plans to organize events and oversee projects, heard them invite one another to drinks, dinner, parties... I thought, "That's the way I want to be. That's how it must be when you get *there*." The ever mysterious *there* that is never where you are, but is still out there somewhere, achievable, no doubt, by anyone except yourself.

And do I have this now? Now that after ten years of searching I have that elusive full-time teaching job? Yes. I do have what I saw there. I have GREAT colleagues who are supportive, who are understanding, who listen, who count on me to listen, who share, who commiserate... Yes. I have this. But, I also have what I thought I would some day outgrow - I have those colleagues who seem to exist only to make others' lives miserable, who, no matter what you do, they are never satisfied, who are not happy unless they are unhappy, who cycle in and out of psychosis and psychological states that - if all alone on a desert island they would be okay - but they're not. They're my colleagues. And so, I have to find a way to deal, to adapt, to get along, to suffer - silently or out loud - and to just get through the day. Remembering, as best I can, what my mother told me: After all, it is just a job. Don't make it your life. And know when to walk away.