My co-working space is serviceable. I can work, mostly in peace, and the coffee bar deals a rotation of single-origins. Come Friday afternoon, juicy IPAs await in the shared fridge, and overall, the vibes are pleasant. I’ve also made a friend, someone else who works in the space for a few hours each morning. Her name is Rumbo—other aliases include, but are not limited to, Rum Cake, Rumpelstiltskin, Rum Pie, and Rummy Tum Tums. My co-working friend is my cat, yes. My co-working space is my 750-square-foot home, yes.
Rumbo is a peculiar co-worker. When I get up to use the bathroom, she steals my chair. Sometimes she sleeps in the office window. From 9 to 5. If I forget to gather up her ball before closing up, she likes to reopen the office and clock-in for ball at 4 am. Despite her mockery of etiquette and boundaries, I do respect one of her peculiarities: she makes her job as hard as possible.
From best I can tell, given we don’t speak the same language, Rumbo’s job is to bat the ball. Her base pay, I assume, depends on swatting the ball somewhere near 200 times per day. Commission is earned on level of difficulty.
If the ball rests on the rug, in the middle of the room, without a single obstacle between her and ball, she will tunnel under the rug until she’s jostled the ball off the rug, and then, when it comes to rest under the credenza, she will push and contort herself off the bottom of the credenza into a 360-degree-sideways roll, and just as she’s passing the ball, she’ll jab it out fiercely. Her first-class, completely unnecessary feats of athleticism make American Ninja Warrior look like toddlers playing in a sandbox.
Shortly after I quit medicine, a family member asked me, “Why can’t you just enjoy the fruits of your labor? Why not make good money and pay off your loans? Start your marriage on the right foot?” Then, I had no answers. I had to do what I had to do. Lately though, despite the language barrier, Rumbo’s habits are shining light on the truth, even when she start work at 4 am:
Difficulty isn’t to be eliminated, it’s to be sought.
To livin’ a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
(P.S. Yesterday, while working, I was watching clips of Twister, a peculiarity of my own. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, in F5 pursuit, supplied further illumination: “An ordinary man spends his life avoiding tense situations. Repo man spends his life getting into tense situations.” Touché, Rumbo meows. Touché.)
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