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.

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.