Printers

The Oatmeal is right: printers were sent from hell to make us miserable.

I have fixed printers at every single job I’ve ever had. It never matters what my actual job title is, or what I was hired to do. There will be a printer, the printer will break, and I will fix it. And then I’m drawn into printer hell forever.

This didn’t change when I moved to Twin Oaks. The main difference is that this time I did it to myself. I didn’t have to do tech work when I moved here. I could have been like many other Oaker techies and just said “nope, I moved here to do , fix your own damn printers.” Alas, I actually enjoy systems and network admin work, and once you start doing that, fixing printers is inevitable for some reason.

Luckily, I don’t have to spend all of my time with printers. One of my favorite things about this place is that I can usually adjust my labor scene when I start getting bored with a job. There are things I’ve discovered I really enjoy, like fixing cars and putting things in boxes (aka shipping). There are other things that were fun for a while, but got old or started making me cranky, so I moved on. I can explore new areas, quit them, and the whole time never worry about things like being homeless or not being able to pay bills.

I’m not always the best at quitting things though. Take printers, for example. If I could never fix a printer again, I’d be a happy person. However, there aren’t that many people that can deal with them, and it’s expensive to just keep buying new ones. Also, we print *a lot* in seed racks, and I’m the one that has to keep the things working so we can pack seeds. It’s much harder for me to just say “eh, don’t feel like this anymore” in that situation. So, my future will contain printers for a while. Luckily, I enjoy enough of my other work to make dealing with printers worth it.