Seed: What Color Is Your Friggin' Parachute?
It's hard to imagine in light of society's current preoccupation with job satisfaction, but there once was a time when the word 'career' had yet to reach the mouths of those long forgotten windbags careless enough to speak it. Neanderthals, who seem to be getting smarter by the week, had little concern for such high falutin' verbiage. After all, you were lucky to reach puberty back in those days, so it stands to reason that finding a purpose beyond procreation and hunting/gathering would have held little intrinsic value. And it might have stayed that way too, if it weren't for those meddling Homo sapiens. Cut to a few years later, and suddenly every rube with a broom in hand is plying a trade of some sort. But the concept of careers as we know it today, seems to have been yet another touchy-feely Baby Boomer invention, which surprise surprise, has irrevocably set up future generations for a lifetime's worth of lingering resentment.
All this to say, by way of lengthy introduction, I am currently unemployed. I have only been unemployed for six days, but it might as well have been an eon. I'm starting to feel like that no good third cousin that every family talks about in disparaging terms. You know the one. Watches Judge Judy religiously. Always has a stain on his shirt. Talks about his previous job like he just clocked out, even though the last time he drew a paycheck, Lorenzo Lamas was a household name. I hope this is the kind of bugbear that will not overstay its' welcome, but statistics seem to indicate otherwise. Recent polling provided by newsfromrussia.com suggests that the average length of unemployment has climbed to 18.4 неделя. That's 18.4 weeks for all you non-Ruble heads. In other words, I could be in for a long haul.
As much as I would like to pretend otherwise (and often do), the problem isn't really the recent economic downturn or the job market vacuum. It's me. I have absolutely no idea what vocation I would like to pursue. You would think twenty-seven years into the game, I could have mapped out a career path that doesn't look like a four-year old with ADHD spray-painted it on the sidewalk. Sadly, I've awakened to the realization that this just isn't the case. I have been asked, "What kind of job are you looking for," so many times, it's as if the very question has cemented itself to the wax-covered labyrinths doctors graciously refer to as my eardrums. I want to respond with confidence, but instead I just shrug my shoulders and manage a polite "Meh."
My father, like any respectable pater familias, has expressed a desire for me to follow in his petroleum soaked footsteps. I remain cautious. And it's not because I've fallen in with the whole "oil is the root of all evil" crowd. In fact, oilmen have historically been some of the most interesting people to ever hornswoggle Mother Earth out of her natural resources. Hell, if insatiable entrepreneurs like E.W. Marland and Waite Phillips never existed, Oklahoma would have been ceded to anarchists long ago. That's right Istook. I said it. Anarchists. But thankfully, we were spared that indignity. No, I'm leery of the Texas Tea trade for another kind of reason. To be specific, several of my former acquaintances have recently joined ranks with the likes of Boone Pickens and his many minions. Rarely a day goes by without my old man emailing me the name of yet another friend who is hocking his or her services in hope of landing a job in the oil and gas industry.
Reading those forwarded emails, I feel a strange mix of embarrassment and failure. Embarrassment because I empathize with their desperate search for gainful employment, and failure because it seems my generation has learned nothing from the trials and tribulations of the Ewing Family. Do these people honestly not remember the 80s? C'mon folks, you know...A Flock of Seagulls, legwarmers, the OIL BUST. I still remember my parent's speaking in hushed tones about the bust as if it was the Holocaust or something. I'd like to think in the year 2008 we would know the ultimate fate of the oil business is inevitable. Pack it in. Game over. Good job team, but it's time to go home. Here's a gold watch for your trouble. But no, there are still a few well-meaning but misguided individuals, clinging to the hope that our energy dilemmas will be solved by a modern-day Jed Clampett. Don't get me wrong; there's still a little of the black stuff left, but it seems like people my age would want something a bit more reliable.
So I'm left to ponder a mind-numbing array of vocational opportunities, none of which I might add, scream out, "Pick me! Pick me!" I'd probably have better luck just drawing a trade out of a hat. It worked for Dr. Phil, right? One benefit of being unemployed is that I've learned to trick myself into believing certain jobs are a plausible fit. That's what those career aptitude tests will do to you. I think to myself, "I like the outdoors. I'm a good rule follower. I prefer to work alone. Why, I could be a game warden." But in the light of day, these career models are just another exercise in futility. And now, unemployables like myself have to deal with the added pressure of this 'career' nonsense. You can't just have a job anymore. No, you have to find something fulfilling and life-affirming. Sure there are people resisting this on a daily basis, but they don't get to enjoy the smug self-satisfaction that comes with finding your true calling in life. And if I desire anything in life, it's smug self-satisfaction.
Friends, what say you on all things career related? Oh, and it's good to be back. I missed this.
posted by A Contemporary Bunkshooter @ 8:55 PM,
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Response: He Works Hard for the Money
Well, Bunky, I hate to shatter the high esteem you hold for me because of my stellar career and meteoric rise in this place some affectionately call Dewey’s World. I know how devastated you were when Pee Wee Herman was pinched. The truth is, the very foundations of my career and all the early decisions that went into it were based on selling myself short. Not surprising really, since I’ve done that my whole life. I went to an easy college, chickened out of transferring to a more prestigous one, cowered from accepting an offer at a high-powered graduate school. I’m not sure when I started selling myself short or why, but I usually blame it on my sister and my mother; oh and my father.
I did have career aspirations early on, though. Here’s my list in order of how desperate I was to have the career:
Professional assassin
Sniper
Paratrooper
Intelligence agent (not a James Bond spy type, but like an analyst)
Preacher
City planner
Letter carrier
Librarian
Bus driver
Anyone can see that, like any good Pisces, I was pulled in different directions. I wanted to kill people, but I also wanted to help them. The problem was that no matter how many guns and knives I owned (a lot) and how many years my Soldier of Fortune subscription ran, I was ultimately too damned chicken to go through with one of those top jobs. After I got out of the cult, I just couldn’t bring myself to be a preacher. And, after I’d been to Europe a couple times and four years of college, I couldn’t allow myself to be a letter carrier or a bus driver. So, I was left with librarian, city planner or intelligence agent.
I laughed out loud when I read your account of the Oil Bust because I was affected by it, too. My worldview as a young teen just beginning to think about my future career was profoundly influenced by the Bust, but the funny thing is you’re affected by it the way I was by people telling me about the Great Depression. The Depressioneers were my age now when they were telling me to play it safe: “if you could keep your job, you’d make it through,” they told me. “So, find something that’s very secure.” My dad was no help, he grew up after the war when opportunity was limitless. He was unfazed by the Bust because, as he said, “I’ve never had any trouble finding work.” And it’s true, he hasn’t; he never went to college and never had a Career, but he was never unemployed (but he never worked with the black stuff). Still, those stories of the Depression weighed on me as I saw the unemployment lines on the news and friends moved away as their laid-off fathers took them to greener pastures elsewhere.
The thing about the Oil Boom was that people lived like there was no tomorrow. The new cars, big houses, rhinestone cowboy boots, and worst of all, the oil boom shacks thrown up by the thousands in far northwest Oklahoma City. Nine out of ten of the college kids I knew were Petroleum Geology majors or some other major related to the industry. By the time their four years were up they were lucky to be a bank teller and the ones who got a job moved to Dallas.
Combining the shaky economic times of my youth with my habit of selling my self short, meant that I went the librarian route. Not that I don’t love what I do, but notching reference questions on your belt is not nearly as exciting as notching heads of state you dropped from a fifth-story window at 500 yards. Or driving through a regentrified neighborhood in a former slum and knowing your plan made it happen. But I’ve got a career and as long as I walk the straight and narrow, I’m likely to keep it through good times and bad.
I’d say you’re in a good position, though, there’s an element of freedom in working non-career track jobs because you always know in the back of your mind you can chuck it and do something else. You don’t have to play games to get ahead and nix to all the kowtowing. Moving from job to job keeps it interesting and you can always say you’re gathering material for that next album. Now, I don’t like to give advice, but here’s what you do: marry a high-achiever and then follow her to another city while she fulfills her career goals. Or I hear stripping pays well.
posted by St. Fiacre @ 4:17 PM,
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Response: "Hey mister, wanna buy a cat?"
Smug satisfaction, Bunky? I think not. Each time I get a paycheck I thank God that I somehow fell into a profession which in Oklahoma puts me firmly in the middle class and doesn't leave me covered in grease at the end of day. Thankfully, I'm not dishing out hot pizza to mall rats or manning the cash register at the La Quinta Inn.
I always wanted to be a librarian. Well, almost always.
I dreamed of a farm in Africa. Well, not in Africa. But I did dream of a farm in South Texas. A cat farm, where I would tend herds of multicolored cats, exquisite animals desired as far west as El Paso (and possibly up into the panhandle as well). Although my artistic abilities have never been up to scratch (so to speak), I would spend hours doodling images of my ideal occupation, imagining my life as a cat farmer. Dressed in overalls, I'd wander among groves of apple trees, cats frolicking at my feet, hanging from branches, perched on my shoulder -- a veritable Garden of Eden minus the fig leaves and angry God.
It was a cruel day when I noticed that cats were all too familiar in my urban landscape. Most likely, I remember thinking, cats aren't going to be a big seller. Especially when they were practically giving boxes of kittens away at the local icehouse. Perhaps horses would be a better career choice. Sadly, as I researched the big ticket items that went along with housing horses, I could see that was another dead end career choice.
Perhaps I could write the Great American Novel, then. Yet after only two college-level literary courses, I felt something inside me die. Could I create anything that compared to Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County? How could I possibly top the picaresque stories of Mark Twain? Those masterpieces by Edith Wharton, Flannery O'Conner, Herman Mellville. Damn them all to hell --they'd beaten me to it.
After that, it was a long, miserable slog of occupational despair: local newspaper reporter, typesetter, desktop publisher, library assistant, temp, C-SPAN gopher, administrative assistant. Fed up with my tiny checks, I finally decided to go back to school. It was librarianship or die!
My decision had nothing to do with the librarians I'd encountered in my life. Up to that point, I'd never had a devoted book lover beam at me from over the reference desk and guide me to a literary wonderland, like Matilda's mentor in Roald Dahl's amazing novel for children. From what I remember, my elementary school librarian had been a battle axe with a fondness for shushing, the middle school librarian had kept the room sealed and locked, and my high school librarian had a permanent frown that reached down to her knee caps. No, it was merely the presence of books that did it. Those constant childhood companions, stalwart friends -- I wanted to be surrounded by books.
Like the Saint says, there is something attractive about moving from job to job. If anything, it gives you a wealth of experiences from which to draw when writing your own Great American Novel.
I'm sad to say, it won't help you much if you decide to open a cat farm. But lately, I hear llamas are all the rage.
posted by Adjective Queen @ 2:30 PM,
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Seed: "I am," I cried.
For the last few weeks my youngest has been struggling with some big questions. One night we were going through the bedtime routine. She was just out of the bath, scrubbed clean, and tucked in with still-damp hair moistening the pillow underneath. We sang a couple of old Hoagy Carmichael songs and I lay there a few minutes waiting for her to nod off. I was actually the one to drop off. But after about ten minutes in the pitch black, I hear, “Dad?”
“Yeah, Killer.”
“Isn’t it weird that we’re here?”
“Whaddaya mean weird? And whaddaya mean ‘here’?”
“I mean…just…that we…people…are…just…that they…exist.”
All of a sudden the grogginess of REM sleep washed away. How was I supposed to handle this? This one wasn’t in the parenting manual. I know it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but I wanted to handle it right. On the one hand, I didn’t want to just blow off the question because, well, it is THE question, isn’t it? On the other hand, I didn’t want to answer it too much because I didn’t want to give her the impression that there are any answers. But then on another hand (we’re Hindus) I started to worry that if I didn’t offer her any guidance she might develop some warped ideas and grow up to start some new religion. Even worse, I was afraid her overactive brain would run away with the thoughts and she might develop some anxiety or as they say in the trade, existential dread. On still another hand, I wanted her to have the scary euphoria of epiphany and all those other Greek words.
I eventually got her mind to stop racing enough to go to sleep, but then I started trying to reconstruct my own dawning. It didn’t take me long to remember because it is indelibly marked in my memory. I was six and I had just gotten home from kindergarten. My mom always made me take a nap after school (given the kind of kid I was, it was probably more for her sanity than my health) and so there I was lying in my little bed in my little room. The window was opposite me and it had that kind of ambient afternoon glow around the drawn drapes.
The rules were that I didn’t have to go to sleep but I had to stay in bed. No books, no toys. If I made it an hour, I could get up. That day the house was hushed. It was one of those times when you hear a hum or a rushing sound and you realize you’re hearing the silence. Then I heard an airplane flying overhead. I’d heard airplanes before, but on this day I wondered, Who was on that plane? How many were on it? Where were they going? How many planes are in the air at one time and where are they going? Before I could turn my brain off I had projected that single noise out to wondering how many planets had people on them and ultimately whether God existed. My mom carried the day, though. Not long after I had accepted the immensity of the universe and that I exist in it in a very small way, the smell of fresh-baked cookies wafted into the room and her smiling face peered through the door, "Cartoons are on. Time to get up!"
I’m still amazed that I remember that episode so vividly. In fact, it’s my most vivid memory. I’ve talked to the wife about it and she said she can remember her epiphany of self-awareness very clearly as well (there’s probably a good Greek or German word for this; I’m sure Bunky knows it). The funny thing is that when it happens you don’t mark it in your memory as the moment you became self-aware, but years later you recognize it as such.
By way of an update, since that night Killer will blurt out these heavy questions like, “What if God isn’t real?” “If you died before I was born, would I still be born?” The wife is worried she’ll develop anxiety issues, but I think it’s pretty cool to watch.
So, where were you when the lights came on?
posted by St. Fiacre @ 9:45 PM,
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Response: Weird to be you and me
Lying on my back, I watched the clouds pass overhead. It was 1970. I was 6 years old. Oblivious to the deeply philosophical ramifications of what I was about to do, I wondered what was at the edge of those clouds. I knew about the planets. (Although I think Pluto might have been called Planet X then. I just don't know.) But my mind rushed out past the planets. What was beyond them? What was beyond what was beyond them?
I started hyperventilating. Was being in the universe like being in a box? No matter how big a box, there was always something outside the box. Was there another universe outside our universe? I was freaking myself out.
Rolling back onto my stomach, I stared down through the lawn at a bug, trying to think about something else. Another weird thought popped into my head. What if my mother had not married my father? I wouldn't be me! Well, I'd be only half me, but not the me I was at that moment. If it had happened that way, if my parents had married other people, would I as the child of one half of that equation run into the child of the other half of that equation and recognize the part of myself that might have been?
Palms sweating, I sat up and tried to calm down. It's weird to be me, I thought.
This had to be my moment of self-awareness. And, like the Saint, I can remember it in vivid detail. The clouds are still as fluffy, the grass still as scratchy, the bug still as crawly. Periodically, more perplexing and befuddling questions came to mind. But I never talked to my parents about it. I kept it to myself. I already had a reputation as being strange; there was no need to underscore my oddities.
Not long ago, Sport went through the same thing, but instead of keeping it in, he vocalized it.
"Mom, isn't it weird being yourself?"
I knew exactly what he meant. I was thrilled to recognize in him my 6-year-old self. We had a good talk about just how weird it was. I don't think I did or said anything that might have pointed him toward warped ideas or a bizarre religious cult.
Although, if anyone was to be lured away by giddy, tamborine-playing cult members, it would probably be him. And the cult probably would be headed up by Killer.
Labels: self-realization, weirdness
posted by Adjective Queen @ 9:44 PM,
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Response: Existence is Futile
Actually Saint, I would point you in the direction of the Swahili word for self-awareness, "ufanyaji" (pronounced ooh-fawn-ya-gee), which funnily enough is now associated with a popular Tanzanian fruit drink. However, the word itself has much more sinister origins. According to Daniel Juergen's landmark 1976 treatise, Swahili: Deconstructing the History and Language of an African People, 700-1600, the term "ufanyaji" first appeared in the log books of Portugese slave traders around the turn of the 15th century. It could often be found scrawled on the walls of the stowage deck. But that's for another blog. And it's a complete lie.
My Own Private Idaho occurred in a much more recent time and place. In 1986, I was five years old. My favorite baseball team at the time was the California Angels, I wore an oversize Panama hat from the Bahamas everywhere I went, and I still, on occasion, wet the bed. That spring, my parents took me on my first snow-ski outing in Angel Fire, New Mexico. The entire week had been going swimmingly until suddenly, out of nowhere, smack dab in the middle of my mom's Famous Homemade Chili dinner, I realized that someday I would die. You would think I would have already learned that at such a relatively late stage. But no, it seems my brain cells were too clogged with GI Joe trivia and glue shrapnel. Up until that point, the worst news I had ever received was the diagnosis that my poodle had Irritable Bowel Syndrome. But I can't even begin to tell you the sheer horror of realizing I would not, in the words of Liam Gallagher, live forever. I cried for at least an hour, hurled obscenities at my parents when they tried to comfort me, and sank into a pit of self-loathing from which I thought I would never recover. I have since tried to replay that day over and over in my head, in the hopes of finding concrete evidence that I had in fact had a near death experience of some sort. Perhaps a terrible fall on the Bunny Slopes or a mild case of hypothermia induced me to reflect on the very thing I had been avoiding up to that point? But here we are 21 years later, and I still have no clue as to what prompted such a terrible and enduring moment of what I like to call "self-bewareness." In my most sobering moments though, I can trace back all of my life disappointments to that very day. Even now, when I eat chili, I ponder the fragility of human existence.
I am a person who worries almost constantly. But at the the root of every single one of my worries is that I will die. I mean really, if you reason out all of your own personal anxieties, you have to figure that at the core of each, is this constant fear of death. And there's no getting around it. You could be worried about giving a presentation in a room full of your peers, but really you're worried that you will "die of embarrassment." You could be worried that your family and friends will discover some awful secret about you, but really you're worried that you "die of shame." You could be worried about a serial killer living in your neighborhood, but really you're worried that you will, well, die of death. So faced with such constant trepidation, it's no wonder people resort to Owen Wilsonesque extremes. But you do have to keep it in perspective. With every year that goes by, I find myself thinking less and less about the Big D. Strange, isn't it? You would think the opposite would be true. However, the Ingmar Bergman Seventh Seal styled Grim Reaper of my youth has transformed himself into the affable Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey version. Most excellent huh?
I hope that the Super Giant Killer, like myself, and the Queen and the Saint before her, will take such monumental discoveries in stride. Life's too short to dwell too much on the infinite. Because, let's face it; we're never going to figure out why we're here, where we're going, or where we came from. And even if you could know, would you really want to? Well, I would, but only because I'm tired of worrying about it.
posted by A Contemporary Bunkshooter @ 9:43 PM,
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Seed: I was a middle-aged zombie
Last week I attended yet another concert. My son had to be there a half hour early, orchestra shirt pressed and clean, viola tuned and ready to go. I brought a book, hoping to get at least a chapter read while I waited. (At least this time we had real seats, not those uncomfortable bleachers native to every middle school gymnasium.) Of course, my hope was in vain. Girls on cell phones flapped around in flip-flops while boys followed a few feet behind, feigning disinterest. Mothers harassed their over-stimulated toddlers, fathers jittered their legs nervously, dying for a cigarette, each of us wishing to be anywhere but where we were. I’m all for showcasing my child’s growing musical abilities, but how many times must I be subjected to a slightly off-key Pachelbel’s Canon?
As I looked around at the hollow-eyed parents, run ragged by after-school sports activities, music lessons, awards ceremonies, gymnastics classes, and martial arts lessons, an image popped into my head. We all looked like zombies, mindlessly lurching toward some unreachable goal, seeking an unknown cure to relieve our pain. And my next thought was – wouldn’t it be really cool if we turned into zombies?
If ever I could transform into a zombie, it would have been at an awards ceremony, or "round-up" last fall, when, while waiting for my kid to receive his Student of the Month certificate, the school principal made us listen to the Pledge of Allegiance, Student Pledge, Teacher Pledge, a recitation of the school's core characteristics (perserverance, citizenship, respect, etc.), the Pledge of Allegiance, Star Spangled Banner, and the school song. As it went on and on, I started to feel like a member of the doomed People's Temple Group, watching as Jim Jones distributed the Kool-Aid. My bottom became numb. Small children wrestled free from their mothers' arms, breaking into sobs when they were once gain herded into strollers and buckled up. Grandparents adjusted their hearing aids. It was interminable.
Imagine the power of zombie transformation. In the middle of a reading of the school lunch menu, I would experience something akin to an out-of-body experience. I wouldn't even remember what had happened, only coming to my senses hours later, drenched in blood, a slightly sour aftertaste in my mouth, and the unfamiliar reflection of fear and loathing in the eyes of people I meet. Finally.
I'll bet it would cut down on scheduled after-school activities. "Remember, let's keep the program short, or parents will start turning into zombies."
Labels: concerts, school events, Zombies
posted by Adjective Queen @ 2:26 PM,
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