Ramping Up...
One of the things that I really enjoy about working at an amusement park is watching the process of it coming back to life each spring. Granted, I'm not especially fond of it once the park is open and crowded with people...I have to keep reminding myself that the only reason I get a paycheck is because they all show up; but it's really inconvenient to try and get anything done with them around.
Lagoon has finished its primary round of hiring. The various departments have started having their orientations, and started training operators for the rides and the games. For the past week, when I've left work each evening, there have been people walking around, standing around one of the rides or talking in front of one of the games.
I never realized it before, but there is a pulse, of sorts, to the park. Each ride has its own set of sounds, many of them rhythmic. And as more and more rides start running, those rhythms play over and through each other, in a sort of buzzing, whirring, and occasionally throbbing chorus of voices building to a crescendo of business operation.
I don't know why, suddenly, this year I've noticed this. Past years, I've been struck by the utter stillness of the park during the off-season--how sedate and utterly peaceful it can be, when you're walking on the midway in a fog, through which the only thing that's really visible is the star they hang from the Sky Coaster. I've been struck by the sudden eruption of life during the last week before we actually open, when the grounds crew is frantically filling in the flower beds down the center of the midway, and the face of the park is changing hour by hour. I've always enjoyed watching the transformation from regular season to Frightmares, but I can credit that to my own fascination with Halloween.
I think, perhaps, some of it has to do with my own evolving position at the park. When I was first hired on, the Entertainment Director went to great pains to try and keep us (the staff) limited in our 'regular park' duties, so we could stay focused on our specific jobs. Each year, they gave me a little more to do...re-designing costumes for a Frightmares show in need of a facelift, designing costumes for a new Frightmares show, assisting with the design of a regular season show--stuff like that. I took what had been a summer-only job and turned it into more than it was, to the point where they started taking things in new directions (we never used to do any of our own costume construction...it was all jobbed out, and we only worried about maintaining it...)
Then they moved, and we got a new director...and I had visions of what I could do with my job working under someone who had no pre-conceived notions of who I was or what I could do. That actually ended up being kind of a double-edged sword--because he already had in mind people to do some of the jobs I'd been hoping to work into, since he didn't know I could do them. But I still expanded on the job.
Last year, I felt stifled for a lot of the season. We had yet another new director--someone who thought of me as 'just' the wardrobe coordinator, and couldn't understand why I wanted to be doing so many other things (yeah, just like when I was at USU, I'm the resident Jack-of-All-Trades in my department at Lagoon.) It took a lot of talking before I got people to start to understand that...and it took our costume and makeup designer leaving us in the lurch before I got a chance to prove it was more than just talk. I was up to my eyeballs in extra projects for Frightmares...and I was happier than I'd been all season.
This year, due to the continued evolution of our department management, I've found myself involved in projects for the rest of the park. I spent a good part of the winter refurbishing Frightmares stuff for the Rides Department. And I found myself involved, for the first time, in doing interviews for employees for the 'general labor pool'. I have yet to see any of the kids that I interviewed show up in any of the small crowds I see on the park...but I feel like I've invested of myself in the park, as a whole.
I also, for the first time, find myself pretty much operating on my own. None of the department managers are keeping tabs on what I'm doing right now, and it looks like I'm going to be the one coordinating all the details on costumes with the designers this year (which was, in my eyes, what I'd been trained to do; but our production manager last year saw things differently. This year, however, she's doing a long-term substitute teaching job and won't be working with us until after the school year ends). A couple of years ago, I would have been really nervous about this. This year, I'm looking forward to it (of course, it doesn't hurt that I know both of the designers we're using this year, and like both of them on a personal basis).
It dawned on me, tonight, as I was weaving my way through fifteen-year-olds waiting to be guinea pigs on the ride-operator training for the Sky Coaster, that I really do thrive when I'm on the verge of being overwhelmed. If I don't feel like a job is going to be a challenge for me, like it's something I'll be able to coast through--well, then I'll coast, sad to say. But stack the odds against me, put me in a position where I've got to smartly use every minute and go to bed each night exhausted from trying to maintain the pace, and suddenly I AM working smartly and using my time wisely, and not just trying to stay a step ahead of things.
That's one of the reasons, I guess, why I'm making a living (of sorts) doing Lagoon and freelancing for other places, and have never even finished one of the novels I'm working on. There's no urgency to the novels, and I know I can write them, so it doesn't feel like a challenge to me (except for trying to keep myself focused on writing something that has no deadline.)
They say recognizing the problem is the first step to solving it. We'll see what I can accomplish in that respect.
One of the things that I really enjoy about working at an amusement park is watching the process of it coming back to life each spring. Granted, I'm not especially fond of it once the park is open and crowded with people...I have to keep reminding myself that the only reason I get a paycheck is because they all show up; but it's really inconvenient to try and get anything done with them around.
Lagoon has finished its primary round of hiring. The various departments have started having their orientations, and started training operators for the rides and the games. For the past week, when I've left work each evening, there have been people walking around, standing around one of the rides or talking in front of one of the games.
I never realized it before, but there is a pulse, of sorts, to the park. Each ride has its own set of sounds, many of them rhythmic. And as more and more rides start running, those rhythms play over and through each other, in a sort of buzzing, whirring, and occasionally throbbing chorus of voices building to a crescendo of business operation.
I don't know why, suddenly, this year I've noticed this. Past years, I've been struck by the utter stillness of the park during the off-season--how sedate and utterly peaceful it can be, when you're walking on the midway in a fog, through which the only thing that's really visible is the star they hang from the Sky Coaster. I've been struck by the sudden eruption of life during the last week before we actually open, when the grounds crew is frantically filling in the flower beds down the center of the midway, and the face of the park is changing hour by hour. I've always enjoyed watching the transformation from regular season to Frightmares, but I can credit that to my own fascination with Halloween.
I think, perhaps, some of it has to do with my own evolving position at the park. When I was first hired on, the Entertainment Director went to great pains to try and keep us (the staff) limited in our 'regular park' duties, so we could stay focused on our specific jobs. Each year, they gave me a little more to do...re-designing costumes for a Frightmares show in need of a facelift, designing costumes for a new Frightmares show, assisting with the design of a regular season show--stuff like that. I took what had been a summer-only job and turned it into more than it was, to the point where they started taking things in new directions (we never used to do any of our own costume construction...it was all jobbed out, and we only worried about maintaining it...)
Then they moved, and we got a new director...and I had visions of what I could do with my job working under someone who had no pre-conceived notions of who I was or what I could do. That actually ended up being kind of a double-edged sword--because he already had in mind people to do some of the jobs I'd been hoping to work into, since he didn't know I could do them. But I still expanded on the job.
Last year, I felt stifled for a lot of the season. We had yet another new director--someone who thought of me as 'just' the wardrobe coordinator, and couldn't understand why I wanted to be doing so many other things (yeah, just like when I was at USU, I'm the resident Jack-of-All-Trades in my department at Lagoon.) It took a lot of talking before I got people to start to understand that...and it took our costume and makeup designer leaving us in the lurch before I got a chance to prove it was more than just talk. I was up to my eyeballs in extra projects for Frightmares...and I was happier than I'd been all season.
This year, due to the continued evolution of our department management, I've found myself involved in projects for the rest of the park. I spent a good part of the winter refurbishing Frightmares stuff for the Rides Department. And I found myself involved, for the first time, in doing interviews for employees for the 'general labor pool'. I have yet to see any of the kids that I interviewed show up in any of the small crowds I see on the park...but I feel like I've invested of myself in the park, as a whole.
I also, for the first time, find myself pretty much operating on my own. None of the department managers are keeping tabs on what I'm doing right now, and it looks like I'm going to be the one coordinating all the details on costumes with the designers this year (which was, in my eyes, what I'd been trained to do; but our production manager last year saw things differently. This year, however, she's doing a long-term substitute teaching job and won't be working with us until after the school year ends). A couple of years ago, I would have been really nervous about this. This year, I'm looking forward to it (of course, it doesn't hurt that I know both of the designers we're using this year, and like both of them on a personal basis).
It dawned on me, tonight, as I was weaving my way through fifteen-year-olds waiting to be guinea pigs on the ride-operator training for the Sky Coaster, that I really do thrive when I'm on the verge of being overwhelmed. If I don't feel like a job is going to be a challenge for me, like it's something I'll be able to coast through--well, then I'll coast, sad to say. But stack the odds against me, put me in a position where I've got to smartly use every minute and go to bed each night exhausted from trying to maintain the pace, and suddenly I AM working smartly and using my time wisely, and not just trying to stay a step ahead of things.
That's one of the reasons, I guess, why I'm making a living (of sorts) doing Lagoon and freelancing for other places, and have never even finished one of the novels I'm working on. There's no urgency to the novels, and I know I can write them, so it doesn't feel like a challenge to me (except for trying to keep myself focused on writing something that has no deadline.)
They say recognizing the problem is the first step to solving it. We'll see what I can accomplish in that respect.
posted by Curtis at 7:21 PM
2 Comments:
Your description of the empty park and the life it holds then and when it's full of people is great. Maybe the setting for a short story?
A few years ago I was in Saratoga Springs, New York for a month taking a theater workshop. I didn't have a car so any exploring I did was on foot. Beautiful place. But one of the most memorable walking trips I took was when I happened on the huge Saratoga Springs horseracing track. It was June and the season isn't until late July through mid-August, only 3 weeks. This place was giant, all of the gates were open, beautiful lawns and old, old buildings, everything open - and I was the only soul walking through it. The size of the giant racetrack and just me was really strangely thrilling. Left a huge impression that your desription of Lagoon reminded me of.
Yeah, there's just something...I don't even know the word for it, really. It's a combination of awe-inspiring (being alone in a place that holds so many people when it's busy), naughty (being there when people aren't typically supposed to be there), and a few other things about being in places like that. I felt similar-but-different emotions when I went through some of the old castles and fortresses in Sweden.
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