For me to fully and accurately be able to respond to every aspect of your post there... well. It'd require me to sit here and be typing for an hour or two, and I'm not even sure it'd be coherent enough to make sense of by the time it's done.

I could go out and get a better job, I suppose. I used to be on a fast-track toward a job in the IT field. To say that I had the job in the bag would be inaccurate, technically, but it was close enough as for there to be not much of any real difference. All I had to do was graduate and finish my certifications. Graduation was set to happen in December of 2001. In September of 2001, however, something very bad happened.

I would have started at that other job making nearly twice what I started at TSA at, and would probably be making twice and more what I make for TSA right now (that whole four years without a raise thing at the start, because they didn't have a raise-system in place, really sucked~). TSA pays me well enough though; the cost of living in North Alabama isn't expensive, I make enough money to pay my mortgage and other bills, and to keep my wife happy and work-optional (she occasionally does get bored sitting around the house all day).

Your sentiments, however, have been said to me many times, though usually by my coworkers. Two supervisors have said it to me, a lead, and four or five other screeners. Usually along the lines of "Why are you wasting your time here?"

Suffice it to say, money isn't the sole factor in how I decide what to do in terms of a career. For me to accurately try to explain it, though, I think it'd take hours of conversation, and a couple packs of cigarettes.

I write, actually. I've been doing it for the better part of ten years or so now, I'd guess, so I'd like to think that I have a fairly strong command of the English language, and the rules that govern it (though I'm often guilty of breaking them. Sometimes, for goodness sake, a coordinating conjunction just sounds best at the start of a sentence).

Fantasy-based short-stories and the like, and usually out of boredom. It's kind of a hobby. I've never made any attempt to get anything published (much to the chagrin of several people that I used to do cooperative writing exercises with), and I'll probably keep it that way.

Just because it came up, though, I'll give you a little snip out of something I wrote a couple years ago:

Quote:

Jodiah Ayreg stood at the edge of the iron railing that separated him from a fall that would have surely been fatal. Black stone, sharply cut and dressed though worn away by wind and rain over the past centuries, marked the bastion's wall beneath him, above him, and to either side. He didn't look down. It wasn't that he had much of an issue with heights, but more that his attention was on the distant mountains far to the west through the haze of clouds.

There was nothing to see, not with his own naked eye -- just one; his right eye was an orb of polished glass in the middle of a narrow scar that ran vertically through his brow and cheek -- but he could almost imagine that he could sense trouble approaching. He had predicted it, had even prepared for it, planned for it as best he could, but even the best-laid plans only lasted until the arrows started to fly. A gusting breeze cut through his coat, throwing his black cloak behind him in a flare. He could feel his skin pebble into gooseflesh beneath his clothes, and decided that he had stood there long enough.