Life Update

Last week during my week off, I had my first post-oilfield job interview. I went all out: pencil skirt, blouse, blazer, pantyhose, heels. Heels. And pantyhose. Though I used to get dressed up on a fairly regular basic in college, last week I felt like a man in drag. And not a fabulous gay man in drag. Standing with all of the other well-dressed 9-to-5ers on their way to work on the metro, I felt like a yuppie. I felt un-unique. I suppose that will be one of the biggest adjustments if I leave the oilfield for an office job. Not to say I will miss all the staring, but I like having a job that was strange. I like flying to work on a helicopter. I like wearing coveralls. I even like waking up in the middle of the day for fire drills and sitting around outside in the sunlight, my head resting on the grimey, oversized life jacket we're forced to wear.

So why am I applying for new jobs? Well, in short, I'm miserable. Not all the time of course, but I don't like my life right now. I miss my family and my boyfriend, who I'll move in with once I return to Maryland. The future I envision for myself doesn't involve the oil industry, at least not directly. I still want to be special, to accomplish something brilliant and satisfying, but I want to do that as a writer, or a researcher. And to do that, I need to start over. I will eventually need to leave oil, go to grad school or start as a low-level reporter somewhere. And if I'm starting over, I want to do it at 23, not 28 after my heart has hardened from years in the oilfield, and I've lost the man I want to marry (because who has successfully had a 6 year long distance relationship?).

The reason I haven't blogged recently is because I don't want to be negative in my blog posts, and lately it's been hard to be positive about this job. The money is good, but the schedule is undesirable to say the least. I'm working a 4-and-2 (4 weeks on, 2 weeks off), but those two weeks "off" are not really mine. This time, I got to go home, but I was told by my manager in a recent email,

"Please do not get the impression that every time you come in for 14 days that you are free to travel all around the country. This is not approved. There are times where you will be needed during your days off at the base."

This was no surprise to me, but I wasn't happy to hear it regardless. In our district, having a set rotation is a luxury, because you're actually able to make plans. However in our district, your manager will often expect you to hang around town to help out in the shop on your days off. From what I can tell, being expected to work/help out on days off is very specific to my company and this district. Everyone else on the rig I'm working on has as much time off as they do on (2-and-2, 3-and-3, 4-and-4), and their eyes pop out of their head when I tell them that not only do I work a 4-and-2, but that I'm not allowed to live wherever I want because I may be needed in the shop on days off. Other companies, such as Geoservices, allow their employees to live wherever they want in the world, and then simply fly them to the rig when scheduled.

Working 28 days offshore is tough for most people, even people that have worked offshore for decades. While some people love being offshore, most just do it for the money. I like to ask people on the rig how long they've been working offshore, and if they like it. It's not a question most people get asked, and most of the times they tell me no, they don't like it. But the money is good. Most people would rather be with their families, drink a beer after a hard day's work, sleep on a nice mattress. I work nights, so I miss the daylight. I miss iced coffees, and window shopping on the weekends. I don't like sleeping on the top bunk, and I imagine falling and cracking my head open every time I climb down the unsteady ladder that no one else seems to need.

I suppose my least favorite things about working offshore are the loneliness, and the anxiety. I've heard a lot of people say that my job is all "firefighting"-- most of the time it's boring, until something breaks and suddenly shit has hit the fan and you're scrambling to the clean it up before anyone finds out. I don't do well under pressure, and while this job has certainly helped me improve in this way, some people thrive on the high-stress environment. I panic. I've accepted that I won't be winning World's Best Field Engineer, but I'm starting to accept it rather than view it as a personal failure. I try to tell myself that I'll find something that I excel at eventually.

The hardest thing about quitting this job will be that I didn't get what I was hoping for out of this experience. Some of that was unrealisticly rosy expectations, and some was being hired on during an economic crisis and then trying to go through training in the midst of a drilling moratorium. Hopefully by the time I quit, I'll have some good stories, some interesting memories, and a thicker skin.