Day One of the rest of my life

I was driving home from work and received a text from my best friend H.K., who lives in Kansas (and I think my life has its downs). As I dug into my oversized purse that I would never have use for if I didn't have small children, I popped open my cell phone, the message read:

this is not my life


...and I got it.

You get to the point where you realize that after the divorce, as you commute to a sub-par job, destined to be condescended to by someone who isn't much smarter than you, if at all, to waste one more 9 hour day smiling at the other cogs as you take your place in the wheel, only to return home to the ingrates you call your teenage children, to humor them by asking apparently insipid questions to be answered with a facetious "yes, mom", "yes, dad", while they eat the food you put on the table, while wearing the $100 jeans your serf-wages bought and contemplate how you can chauffer them to their next social activity...you realize that this isn't the life you asked for.

As little girls and little boys, we weren't inspired to go to school everyday with the less-than-stimulating thought of being the manager of a convenience store, with 3 kids, 2 ex-wives, and 5 employees who do not own clocks or cars, and think smoke breaks are part of their job description. What happened to the dream?

I graduated from a great university 18 years ago. On that day, in my crisp red cap and gown, I honestly believed that my future was bright and I would go out into the world and immediately get hired by the employer of my choice. And why did I believe this absurd concept? Because that's what people had been telling me for 20 years. It seemed like for 20 years, since my 2nd birthday, all I heard was "you have to get a degree, you can't get a decent job without a degree, the world will be at your feet with a degree". Total and utter bullshit.
"The worlds a changin'" is what they should have told us. Figure out what you want to do early, stick to it, and kiss as much ass as possible to get your foot in the door, and then when the first "merger of equals" happens, hope you are mid-management, so you don't get canned, and stick close to the company exec's whose name the company kept.
Make parallel moves across company lines until you find a management position that looks secure enough to hang on to until you retire, and then when the CEO of the company gets indicted for embezzling all your retirement funds, hope like hell your wife's 401k will support you both.
Me on the other hand - I never did the 401k thing b/c I haven't stayed in one career long enough, so whoever marries me better have his own 401k.
Yeah, this is not my life.

Now, what my friend H.K. was referring to, was the 24 year old construction worker who was crying into his beer, as she threw back her Jack Daniels and wondered why she let this hot body convince her that he had relationship potential in the first place. 36 and single, great job, smokin' body, smart and sophisticated, yet finding eligible men who aren't ass-clowns in Kansas is like finding a white bunny rabbit in a snowstorm.
She looked around the bar and in a split second she examined her life and her moment of realization hit her.

Welcome to this is not my life.