The Temporary Temp  “Hi, my name is Rebecca and I’m the temp.”  I always felt like I was in some sort of recovery meeting where admitting I was a slacker was part of the healing process when I said this.  Temp.  It’s a word filled with connotations of someone who’s fickle, who can’t commit, who’s too indecisive to pick a career.     I recently finished my master’s degree in creative writing.  I had a permanent day job while I was in grad school, but decided to “scare myself into finding a job that uses my degree” so I quit the steady job, the steady pay and the steady health insurance because I thought quitting alone would cause the forces of the universe to plop a perfect job into my educated lap.  I decided not to take just any job, but the job. That was six months ago.  As I added my master’s degree to my resume, I had the notion that it would swiftly open the gilded door to my “Dream- Job Land,” a land filled with publishers who were salivating for my fresh new words or Universities begging me to be a tenure-tracked professor all because I added those three magical little letters of MFA to my resume.  The words that come after it seemed to be the dead weight:  Creative Writing.  Prospective employers would see that and inevitably ask me, “What do you do with that degree?”   This was where I would start to minimize my dream of being a writer down to it being a little side hobby I dabble in as if I were a housewife who hosts Tupperware parties.  In job interviews, I described my wanting to be a writer as “something I want to do personally, but I know that writing isn’t a steady career; it’s just something I do in my spare time” and as I belittled my passion in life I thought of the song “Working 9-5” where Dolly Parton sings, “I’ve got dreams they’ll never take away.”  With this line playing repeatedly in my mind, I had to ignore my inner-voice that was saying, “I want to be a writer. I want to write books and do book tours and that job is not advertised in the newspaper, but rather is a path I have to pave myself so I’m here in your office pretending I care about your world because I still have a mortgage to pay and dreams don’t pay the bills.”  There’s a chance I was beginning to become a bit jaded and dramatic in my search to find my dream job.     I was offered a handful of permanent jobs as I was temping, but I set out to be picky and none of the jobs was matching up to my dream so I continued being an onlooker, an almost-participant; a temp.  Being a temp means having to check your pride at the door.  When you’re a temp, you’re sort of a high-end prostitute and your agent is your john, only you’re dealing with spreadsheets instead of spread—well, you get it.  Temps are presented to potential employers on paper like merchandise.  “Look at this one here.  She has a lot of computer experience.  We’ll take her” and with that, I was booked for an assignment, with a chunk of my paycheck going straight to my job-pimp.  As a temp, I felt like a ham hanging in the window waiting to be sold, only I was a ham who shouted out, “I type 83 words a minute!”    When I went off to a new job I was always the new kid, retelling my history to my new boss who asked me what kind of job I was holding out for, to which I would stumble to find an answer.  But this noncommittal way was my choice so I could get a glimpse into the working world from a view I knew I wouldn’t have forever, that view being a hovering observer trying to decide where to land.     I discovered a lot just by hovering and observing.  I started to look at my time as a temp as a social experiment of sorts.  For example, I had to fill in for a receptionist for a week.  I sat at my desk, reading a Margaret Atwood book and watching employees walk past the candy bowl the company kept stocked.  Approximately 70% of the employees took a piece from the bowl every time she walked past it.  Approximately 60% of their faces lit up and exclaimed, “Oooh!” as they held the shiny wrapped treats in their hands.  This happened every day for a week straight.  The candy bowl was not some big surprise that warranted an over zealous oooh reaction, but no matter how many times the employees saw that dish, they acted like it was the first time and it made coming to work worth it.  At first I sat looking from behind my book thinking, How sad that they’re being tricked into enjoying their jobs by a piece of candy, but as the week went on, I started to rethink my condescending opinion.  After all, any job is really just a legal form of bribery, right?  Your boss bribes you with money, insurance and the ability to wear jeans on Fridays in exchange for your time, brainpower and a slice of your soul.  Maybe the employees squealed in delight whenever they walked past the candy bowl because they were able to find happiness in the little things that make their jobs more tolerable instead of focusing on the list of things they’d rather be doing.      The reality is, most people I observed and talked to did not have their dream jobs.  There will always be people such as an accountant who wanted to be a baseball player, a lawyer who wanted to be a singer, but most people find themselves at jobs that are more reliable than their dreams.  It turns out I’m more like the average nine-to-fiver than I first thought.  It turns out we all have dreams “they’ll” never take away.  This discovery was at the same time comforting and disturbing.        I had been expecting to find a job where every day is filled with things that start a fire within me.  I expected fireworks, applause and just a genuine great time every single day and after six months of disappointment I realized that’s not a dream job—that’s a dream.  Not every job can bring these things to you; you have to bring these things to every job.  It was a stretch at first, but I began to search for the perks in each assignment I got as a temp that made it my new dream job of the week like the easy commute, free coffee or the way my boss’s laugh was a wonderfully contagious cackle.       I may have just spent way too much money for a master’s degree in creative writing.  It may not ever translate into money in exchange for my writing, but I finally realize expecting it to will only turn me into a disgruntled and angry woman who thinks she’s owed something.       I’ve recently accepted a permanent job and I’m able to not view the fact that it has very little to do with writing as defeat.  Because of the things I witnessed and learned as a temp, I’m able to find the shiny wrapped perks that make me happy to come into work.   I choose to be happy to keep writing as my dream and not tag any nasty word like “job” after it.  This doesn’t mean I’m giving up on my dream to be a writer; I’m simply saying I refuse to turn up my nose at the candy dish that bribes me along the way.  I will stop and enjoy the sugar-filled steps that lead to my dream so that I might one day look back and be grateful I held on to the dreams they’d never take away.   Maybe our dreams were meant to stay tucked away, away from timecards and benefits.  Maybe they should stay wrapped in shiny paper in the recesses of our minds so we can pull them down, unwrap them and exclaim oooh! every time as if it were the first time.