Potential waster

You post, as usual, brings up a unique perspective, Pangloss. I have had similar experiences, working in a dead-end job with people who have no desire to find another avenue. This happens a lot in the service industry. People are professional servers, sometimes pulling down as much as $33k a year, which isn't great money but considerably better than most and even tastier when you consider how much of that isn't getting reported with taxes. But when conversations arise over our lives, the fact that I have a college degree is an often flummoxing fact.

Why don't you get another job? You are over qualified for this, they say. And I am. And I hate it when I look at them and say to myself that while I appreciate the work and do a good job, I feel I am better than this job. I do not live based on these earnings and I will not do this the rest of my life. Serving is awful work and if I did it forever, like many of them will, then I'd consider myself a burnout.

The only thing I consider redeeming about myself when I think this is that being aware of how ruthlessly patrician it sounds perhaps means that I don't mean it as much, or at least know what kind of asshole says this stuff. Like I have the right to scorn a job. But then again, a lot of the people there have kind of burned out. Drop outs who have smoked themselves THC stupid and rednecks who are so convinced that they've got something bigger coming around the corner but won't give up "a good job." Maybe this is the end and it's all they need or want. But there are people who work there also who are on breaks from getting their degrees and will never finish, and I know they don't want this as the end. They have skidded off the track.

I don't ever know how to feel about these things. I am overqualified to be a bartender and so I am not out of bounds of saying that I want to find more challenging work. But then the people who work there who never planned on doing that forever but now have to do so. I think what I'm facing is the question of whether I can think of wasting potential as a bad thing, bad enough to reflect on the character of the person who wasted it.

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.

Crawling into a cave

I wish I had sword blessed by the Pope, Martin, so that you could slay your two hell-spawned Doppelgangers. But, alas, I am short that part of my armory.

I wholly understand anger at people who attempt to sympathize with your position without knowing what you've gone through. They offer platitudes like, "Oh, I'm sorry, but don't worry, it'll sort itself out. You'll find something." Yes, I know that, you don't have to tell me that. Don't pity me. What makes me even more mad, though, are the people who think that they have the solution for you. "You should go to law school," one woman at church told me. She's a high-powered corporate attorney who only works two weeks a month and flies to New Orleans to do it. "I'm really not interested in being a lawyer," I told her. She looked like she'd swallowed a blowfish. She was offended that, even in my bad luck and soul-searching, I still had dreams and principles that I would follow and would shun her profession altogether.

Experiences like that are why I seclude myself away, crawl into a cave. In my town, that's not too hard, since I have no friends left here. I go to church sometimes but more often than not don't, not out of lack of faith but out of desire to avoid people asking about my future. I don't go out on Friday nights: I sit at home and read essays by Faulkner. Most of the people from college I don't talk to, because all we can do is talk about the past; we are living worlds apart now and have no common ground. So my day-to-day consists of much job searching, much reading, and far too much thinking, alone.

I am a hermit, existing but not living. But until I find a path out, I would not trade it for your position, Martin. For I do not have to worry about exposing my dignity or self-worth to others' disdain. I can hide, disappear, until I am ready to emerge with a path to travel. I am willing to pay the price of loneliness if it means keeping my sense of self-worth.