Five years ago, my family took a trip with our kids.
It was to a place we've been to a bunch of times, Knoebels. That's a family-run amusement park in central Pennsylvania, and a pretty magical place. Free to enter, free to park, good and relatively cheap food, great roller coasters, manageable wait times for rides, everything done right. We've made a ton of memories there, from the good (tricking people into taking a drenching water ride by slow-playing the impact, waterslides at sunset, the smile machine that is the Phoenix roller coaster) to the bad (fleeing during a flash flood, having a kid come down with a stomach illness during their birthday). It's our place, and never more so than five years ago today.
As night fell and we rode a slow chair lift down the valley, the park under us, the kids in their own cart in front of us, it felt very poignant. They were 16 and 11 years old, closer to the end than the beginning for us as parents of dependent people. It felt like the future was going to be OK, and that we had done a good job as parents and providers.
When I was in that ride, I had (what felt like) stable full-time employment. There was a college fund and no credit card debt. I hadn't ever worked as a rideshare driver. While I worked as a consultant and supplemented my income as a sports blogger (back when that sort of thing was possible), my nights and weekends were mostly free. I could take the family out for the occasional trip. I complained about things because that's what humans do, but looking back, I really shouldn't have.
Fast forward five years and... well, things have changed.
The kids are now 21 and 16, and still home, lives delayed due to pandemic and other circumstances. I've had a number of adventures in my professional life, some great, some terrible, none particularly steady. Rideshare became a consistent source of income, sometimes to help pay down debts, sometimes to be the only income coming on. Our medical benefits have been at risk and intermittent, and while the end of the mortgage is in sight, the end of credit card debt is not. I've kept up with the bills for the most part, accomplished some things, kept the more important parts of my health, but man alive, I should have been more grateful back then.
Four and a half years ago, when a gig ended without warning, I started ridesharing when I realized it would pay more than unemployment, and sitting around waiting for the phone to ring was pointless when the phone was, well, right there in the car with me. I've now done slightly over 19K rides since, and over 8K hours in the app, likely 10K hours in the harness, what with breaks and drives home and so on. It's been done so many days and nights, it sometimes feels weird not to do the second shift. If I sit down to watch a game, some part of me is figuring out how much that's costing, in terms of lost income.
There's an old saying, mostly attributed to a person that doesn't need further notoriety, that 90% of life is just showing up. As a rideshare driver, that's especially true. If I drive when I'm happy and engaged with life, versus times when I'm struggling with concerns that have nothing to do with the gig, there is an impact. My tips go down, and my ratings might suffer a little. My body might hurt more, and I might not really want to be doing this today, but the numbers are the numbers, and what needs to be done will be done. Sacrifices will be made. A sad hour doing rideshare brings in more income than an hour not doing rideshare.
Yesterday, the 21-year-old took the 16-year-old and two of their friends with them to Knoebels. They masked up during a pandemic while being fully vaccinated; God knows what the other park participants did. I drove over 10 hours in the app to pay for that and other thigs, and will likely do something similar today, given how it's a holiday and the rest of the week is going to be heavily compromised with other duties.
We all have stuff to bear, choices to make, and much to do.
And while I would have rather been with my kids yesterday, the better (note: not easier) choice was to be with my passengers instead.
Showing up, indeed.
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