Three times in my life, I have ascended up the ranks in a job to assistant manager/manager. All three times I was good…but not that good. And the jobs knew it. I was loyal, hard-working, on time, good with paperwork and operations…but just didn't have what the other leaders did, be it smarts, drive, the right connections, or whatever. This led me to working my ass off to fake and finesse my way through those jobs, which is an awful feeling. At manager meetings, I was like the black sheep…everyone saw through me, knew I was an imposter. Good enough to get there, not good enough to hack it long term. But fuck it…all but one of those jobs didn't pay worth a shit anyway. The one that did was in Seattle, so even my good wage wasn't good enough in that high cost of living. Now I'm in a similar deal…a keyholder on the verge of a promotion that I don't REALLY deserve in some shit retail job that pays less than what you would make starting out at fucking Wal-mart. But you know what? At 47…that's as good as it's gonna get until I'm in the ground.