Half a life

Its harder than some think. Its not a vacation its not the road to riches. Working in the oil and gas sector of Alberta and having a family away is one of the hardest things I have ever tried to do in my life. This is a simple explanation of what life can sometimes be like for those who are meby interested. Sometimes I do good and sometimes I fail miserably all one has to do is please everyone all the time. I see my family for 2 weeks! That is wonderful, a great thing that not alot of people get to do all the time on the other hand I miss everything they do and celebrate for the 2 weeks that I spend with a bunch of other transplanted workers for families across Canada. At work we start the week joking saying how its nice to get out of the house and pretty much whatever else it takes to convince yourself that you can make it thru another 2 weeks away from a normal life in a ultra polluted mud pit or dustbowl (pending on the season) that is inevitibly cutting your life short thru the various chemicals and pollutants in the air that you are told should be harmless. No really it is that bad don't let anyone tell you different. At work I speak with my distant family everyday and hear about how their day is going, tell each other we miss each other and always leave the conversation thinking there is so much more I want to say. We bang thru the week starting with little arguments around day 4 and then they escalate around day 10 thru 14 to the point of 'I really don't know why I work here!" Then days off roll around and we get to go home to the family full of somehow stranger like faces that love you but look different every time as 2 weeks changes people. A couple days into the break we readjust into a family setting and by one week in we are comfortable again. Then life is normal at home and there are little arguments over this and that usually nothing too serious but enough to put an edge on. The problems at home and work are never really solved because its always looked at as well its only a couple more days then I go to my other life and everything will cool down. Leaving it all to build up more and more everytime we make the transition. Eventually everyone has enough and leaves the job they are at thinking they are done with the Oil. But like a drug your finances are dependent on it and it sucks you back in hopefully to a decent shift a 14 n 7 or sometihing like that anything but the dreaded 10 n 4. Thats a simple breakdown of what it is not much of an explanation but enough so you can get the drift of what happens there. We all just want to retire early and spend the shortened end days with the family assuming that the family does not quit on us as we have quit on so many of the jobs that take us away. Classic Irony in the end.