The Bottom of the Box

Excerpt from Notes from the Bottom of the Box: The Search for Identity by a Modern-Day Renaissance Woman.

Imagine yourself stranded on an island in the middle of the North Atlantic. The isle is isolated; the chance of rescue, slim. You are not alone. Others share this space, each of whom has been shipwrecked upon its shores, each in their own time and each for reasons sometimes too obscure to understand. There is a hierarchy among those who live here, one of privilege and connections. For those in the upper echelons life is good, princely in fact. But for those in the bottom rungs of this closed-off society, there exists but a certain drudgery hidden behind ten-minute coffee breaks and bagged lunches with Jerry Springer. Some find their way off the island, mostly the young, but many don’t. They stay for reasons more obscure than how they got there in the first place, and then, at some point, the reasons no longer matter—it just is.

The life of a Big Box employee.

It is one I envisioned before entering this most inglorious profession and, unfortunately, the one I lived for the first few weeks of becoming a Big Box cashier. Taken out of financial desperation, I fell into a black hole as I took the circumstances—finding my middle-aged self on the bottom rung of the North American career food chain—to be more about me than a misguided perception of self value. But like most of life’s dark moments, this twist of fate proved to be a most fortuitous turn of events. Realizing I couldn’t remain in a downward trend where bemoaning my existence was the norm, I slowly but surely turned it around: I began writing about it. I uncovered its gifts. And despite the fact I stayed in the Box for over three years, I found myself climbing out of the metaphorical box in which I had lived most my life.

You can find these blog posts at The Interdependent Life (May 2012 – July 2015).

Notes from the Bottom of the Box: The Search for Identity by a Modern-Day Renaissance Woman was inspired by my sojourn as a Big Box cashier. It is a collection of stories from that time as well as other phases in my life where I abandoned my true identity for a work persona that I took as my own. In looking back, each phase was a gift; each moment of darkness a new discovery: a pathway towards who I am today and always was.

Hoping you are enjoying these excerpts. See you next week.

If you like this blog, please like me on my Modern-Day Renaissance Woman Facepage.  Thanks for the support!