Ch-ch-ch-changes...

So things are changing for both of us, Pangloss. I'm going to Wisconsin and you're headed out Colorado way. Quite a change from our prospects a mere month ago. Dismal prospects have shifted to bright opportunities, dark alleyways have opened into illuminated...alleyways.

Alleyways, of course, are narrow. They box you into a route. No turn around, no lateral movement, no offshoots. There may be a the garbage of a Korean restaurant in the way, and a mangy, rabid dog. But the only way to travel once you're inside the alleyway is forward, until you find your way out. You have to endure it the entire way. Right to the point where the metaphor loses all reasonable purpose.

I think my new job is steering me to a position of creature comforts, financial stability and social cachet. No more insulting patrons sneering at me. But I wonder how brave I am to pursue the things I sought. Will I break it off? I leave tomorrow.

The odd thing, and maybe, who knows, we can return to our subtitle's motivation with this thought, is that both of us are heading into relatively recession proof industries. The economy is going through all sorts of hell right now, but I'm going into healthcare and you're guiding wealthy WASPs down mountains. Neither of these situations will be affected. How weird is that?

A real job, Geppetto

So this is what it's like to be emerging from the Twilight. I did have a successful interview, Pangloss, and the result is that I have a job -- a real job. I'm moving out of the basement and into an apartment. Never again will I work for tips. Such a rich and wonderful feeling I thought I'd never know.

And your thoughts are well received, Pangloss. The primary anxiety I've faced since receiving the job offer has been a continuation of the same fear I expressed in my last post. One of the post-grad hopes I had strongly embraced had been the fact that for my lack of direction I also had a lack of obligation. This new job, while not an obligation in the same way that, say, a kid, a wife or major debt might be, is nevertheless such a reassuring reentry into the security of stability that I fear I might pick up a kid, a wife or major debt just to ensure that I would never leave it.

But don't worry, Pangloss, because I'm not abandoning our blog just yet. For one thing, I have an entirely different set of anxieties to worry about. Like moving to a new place where I know almost no one, taking a job I have no idea how to do and attempting to do all of the things that adults do without very much experience. I also get the added bonus of going an entire month on my own without any income, as checks come every month. So that's fun.

An interview

Pangloss, sorry I have been so long in posting a response. You see, I was out of town. I had a job interview. For a real job.

It was a crazy experience -- the company paid for my flight to their location, paid for my stay at a (nice) hotel, bought dinner, breakfast and lunch, and picked up every taxi bill as well. My first thought, as soon as I arrived at the hotel, was how bizarre it seemed that a company would be so interested in me. After all, six months before any given day this week, I was probably drunk on Spring Break. I thought, if these people only knew me well enough, they'd realize how silly it is to hire me. But then, that's how a lot of people feel, I bet.

Of course, this company is a real company with huge revenue numbers. They're capitalist to the bone. They're expanding rapidly. They're the opposite of what I thought I would do when I graduated. And now that I'm in the running for a real job with real pay and real benefits, it unsettles me that I am so excited at the possibility of abandoning the hopes I had when I was in college for a life that eschewed conventionality in favor of vibrancy. What does this mean for me?

For starters, I haven't completely abandoned my ethics. The company is incredibly gracious and very concerned about doing the right thing. It's not Google, but they're motto is not very different from Google's "Don't be evil" mantra. So I've either a) found the shining example of responsible profit-motive or b) been seduced. Either way, though, I've let something slip since college. Taking this job, if I'm offered it, doesn't mean that I'm entirely selling out, but it does mean that already, in the three months since graduation, I've become something of that person I used to disparage. You know, the college-age liberal who was not quite so willing to forgo the luxuries provided him in the safe environment of the university when he was on his own. "Fight for world peace, until you find that you might have to go without HBO!"

It also means that I have to abandon, at least for a few years, my plan to go international. It once was incredibly formalized and had since devolved into little more than foreign vagrancy, but it still holds a dear place in my heart. Deny that? For a job? Where is my gusto? In six months, I might only be able to find it in my locker at the country club.

The company, though, really was great. I'd love to work for them, at any age, which is part of what makes this process so frustrating. If I had already gone into the great big world to have my adventure, then this is exactly where I'd like to work when I came home. The company really seems perfect, save one thing. While they may have arranged all flights and accomodations, I did still have to pay for parking at the airport.

The temporary job

Well, Pangloss, it's good to hear that you found employment. I'm guessing that you have yet to find a real job, due to the fact that you're still posting on this blog, but perhaps your stars are changing. Or at least you can leave the attic, where you spend all your time posting hateful screeds on a blog.

I will say this: there is real danger in these temporary, time passing jobs. As I said before, you can trick yourself into thinking that all of this will pass. After weeks and weeks of not making any money while unemployed, the cheese you collect from your first paycheck will look like a winning Powerball ticket. Finally, you think, I can afford to buy all of the liquor you have needed for so long. Then you do some quick math and think that if you keep this going under present circumstances (living at home without real bills) you will save up thousands of dollars. Thousands of dollars -- oh, the glorious things you can do with thousands of dollars. Maybe you will hang onto this position a little bit longer...

I look forward to hearing stories from your new job about crazy employees, burnout managers and irate and idiotic customers. Congratulations.

Why I want a real job

I guess what I was trying to say is that satisfaction rarely comes from the work you do to sustain your life, no matter the time period. The major work of a poet such as John Donne came after years of angling for a small parish minister position, whereupon he could neglect many of his church duties in favor of writing his own poetry.* So we get cubicle jobs and then compose amazing literature in hidden Microsoft Word documents. "The boss is coming -- minimize your magnum opus." But this little tete-a-tete we've been having points to a larger issue (and hopefully away from the dour self-absorption towards some appropriately cynical humor.)

The issue, of course, is how some bright young men like ourselves decided that we needed real jobs and then found it to be absolutely impossible to get one. The situation is ridiculous. I spend my nights now slinging drinks at a restaurant bar or, worse, serving pasta dishes named after my manager. It is heartbreaking to realize that you must recommend a plate of risotto named after the person who has you hauling leaky ice buckets up and down stairs while she sips Pinot Grigio from a coffee cup. Pangloss will undoubtedly curse my good fortune to have any type of employment, but I tell you this: when you want a real job and all you can find is "the thing I'm doing before I find my real thing," you risk lulling into a sideways contentment. At first, I was only going to be home for two weeks. Then I was only going to be home for two months. Then I was going to be out by September, or maybe October. October 13th (my birthday) at the latest. Now, it seems, I could be as long in my parents' basement as May. What the hell happened?

The economy sank so quickly during our last year of college that you would have been smarter to have booked a cruise on the Hunley. Even though I've sent out a dozen applications, I've not made it much farther than a phone interview (apart from my previously detailed dealings from hell). So what are we to do? We have to keep living at home, or start to incur a ton of debt, or live at a level so reliant upon rice and beans that our teeth are sure to rot within six months. Pangloss, it would be nice to live in an era where a man could take some time to work alone, live alone, travel, and when he wanted to shake the dust from his boots, he could. Now, though, if you haven't been sucking internships since you were four, you probably aren't qualified for an entry level position. The lull in your employment history looks like a leprous skin tag.
"Don't touch that guy, Bill."
"Why not, Gene? He's a nice young kid, could probably use a break."
"Do you see that unemployment spot? Right there, above the part where he still lists a college professor as a reference. If you touch it, you'll get it too. Do that and you might as well clear out your desk by lunch time and go home to tell the kids that they should stop growing if they want clothes that fit."
"Wow, I can't believe I missed that. Thanks, Gene -- you saved me and my pubescent kids. Hey kid -- fuck you! Pay your own parking."

But this thought remains with me -- before I graduated, I did not want a real job. I wanted to find work that involved helping people. Making money did not matter, earning potential did not matter, stock options did not matter and even the prestige of the position did not really matter. I don't want to dig ditches, but I don't need a job that carries lots of social cachet. Then again, if I wanted to dig ditches, I'd probably need an M.A. in that, too, and 3-5 years experience shoveling. "No time lifting cow shit from here and putting it over there? Sorry -- I think we have more qualified applicants." But after graduation, moving home, living with my parents and explaining to women I meet that I am in a transitional phase that makes it absolutely impossible for them to come home with me, I can't think of anything I want more than the stability guaranteed by a real job. I want to be independent, as I thought I would be by now, and I will take corporate buzzwords and casual Fridays to get that independence. I must guard against finding myself sideways content with that, too. If I had a good, easy job, I would probably rationalize my way to retirement. I don't want to do that -- an extraordinary life will not be found behind a desk.

There is one other reason I want to get a real job -- vengeance. I'm not resentful of the bad economy; I am absolutely furious with it.


*Correction: John Donne did not neglect his clerical duties. My mistake -- he did, however, work for a long time in a job that paid little money and found his satisfaction through the extracurricular interest of composition. (8/14)

Corporate ass-kissing

I knew that I had become cynical in the two months since graduation, but until I reread these posts, I did not realize how brutally unhappy I have been. And Pangloss is right -- a Real Job is something I want to have, but not something I want. Dissect that syntax and see what it tells you about commodification in modern society.

Pangloss, I think you're correct in saying that the modern world trains us to love things and forces us to play Pavlov's dog to the bell of prestige, but you must be careful not to overly romanticize the past. It's easy to do that, but "a world of farmers and ranchers, artists and craftsmen" would incorporate a lot of the things that you think are so detestable now. Farmers and ranchers often had subsistence existences, where the thing that kept them alive consumed all of their life. You know this, and maybe you wish for a farming existence more present in non-western or ancient cultures. But I guess when I think of life as an artist in another era, there was still the same corporate ass-kissing. After all, can you imagine trying to convince a spoiled Duke that you really were the best person for him to patronize as a poet?

Do I want a "real job"?

"Real jobs," as Martin has described them are a source of peculiar and confused emotions for me. Although I am actively pursuing one, I am deep into questioning why I am doing so and for what end I am pursuing this avenue.

Most "real jobs" today do not entail what I like to do. That is, sitting inside on a beautiful day, staring at LCD screens, talking to people on the phone, filling out forms, having meetings. In fact, those are perhaps my least favorite activities on the face of the earth. I would much rather be outside, doing something active, or contributing something worthwhile to human existence. However, those jobs usually either don't pay you enough to live on, are few and far between, require lots of qualifications, or don't exist. So if I want to have my root canals at least marginably affordable and to hope to have a chance of maybe owning a small house one day, I have to seek a "real job."

But why? I have no desire to pursue a conventional career. That means investing in something I don't value and don't like, sort of like Social Security. Which means I'm condemned to either working a non-career job or being perpetually stuck at the bottom of the corporate ladder.

The fact that motivated, ambitious, intelligent people in this world have almost no choice but to participate in this system of alienated existence is insane. In order to simply live, one must further the very thing which makes them dislike life. They cannot live simply and pursue honest, though less glorious, jobs for that is not what our civilization values. Progress, growth, wealth creation, consumption -- this is life as we define it now. We worship those idols so fervently that we are blind to the fact that there, for centuries, was another path.

I would prefer that we were a world of farmers and ranchers, artists and craftsmen, where life was slower and more valued, where life was measured in seasons and eras, not in quarterly profit projections. Where life was a spiritual and philosophical journey, not a struggle to ensure the triumph of consumption. That is how much of humanity has existed across its history. Of course, there is no going back now, not without changes that no modern person would ever tolerate, and certainly not with the chronological snobbery we wallow in.

Plenty of you corporate types will laugh and berate me for my "old-fashioned" or "obsolete" yearnings. He doesn't understand how great affluence, technology, and leisure has made human life! they'll say. What a rube, wishing for days he'll never see! That's fine, perhaps you are happy and proud of what you've done. But no man can count himself truly humble unless he can look at what he has created and somewhere in his mind wonder if there is not a terrible, unseen cost, questioning whether what was old has truly been replaced by something better. I contend that is has not.