anyway, i was sitting today reading a bit and waiting for my class to finish up with their writing (which is apparently when i think these really deep thoughts that always spawn blog entries that nobody cares about but me) when i started sort of thinking (as i often do) about my (apparently someday-to-exist) career and what i would like to do for work. obviously, i've been thinking about this more and more the older i get and the more i generally suck at doing anything consistently enough to make it worth my while. well, generally when i start thinking about this, i think of a lot of different things i could do with myself and then ponder the imponderables about each for awhile. lately, however, and specifically today, i found myself just thinking about the different types of writing i could do and where and how i could do them - nothing else really sprung to mind (interesting. firefox spellcheck accepts "sprang" and "sprung". but not "firefox".). anyway, it was then i realized that somewhere, on some level of my brain, i had decided just by default that i wanted to be a writer of some sort. this is pretty cool, i guess. just a little shocking. but the more i thought about it, the more it made sense. based mostly on two things:
1) i've finally reached the point where writing is just writing.
after years of high-minded, well-intentioned speeches about this to my students, it's finally true for me. there's no longer a vast divide in my mind between "fiction", "non-fiction", "poetry", "songwriting", "essay-writing" and whatever else. i mean, obviously each of these genres have some of their own expectations that have to be met, but otherwise...it's not really being obsessive about how you write that determines the end result, but what that end result is trying to achieve. for example, if i'm writing a seminar paper for a class, i'm now using bits and pieces of skills i've gathered from each of those types of writing to write that essay instead of trying to split my writing into various paradigms that don't cross over and meet in any way. it's a much more comfortable style of writing, better and more interesting (i think) and i'm finally not a huge hypocrite when i'm teaching. and that's always good.
2) a good career is like a relationship (the squeezy, gooey kind, not the high-five, butt-patting kind).
i should start out by saying that i think there's a sort of inbred bastard child idea of the american dream that says that there's basically a career out there for everyone. i mean, i even remember taking tests all the way up through high school that supposedly told me what i was meant to do with my life. i'm not sure i necessarily agree with this idea and more than i agree with the everyone-has-a-soulmate idea, but, like that idea, this one is so thoroughly grounded in our culture that at least in some respects, i'm willing to roll with it.
so. whether there is or isn't a job that you're destined to do, the odds are very much in your favor that there will be one thing that you'll do for 30 or 40 years to keep yourself from starving to death. that said, most of us fancy-ass white people have a say (at least to a point) in what that thing is. else we wouldn't all be going to college, picking majors, etc. well, the problem is what happens when you finally get to this job and it's not all cake and ice cream (or if you're a troll, onions and tubers)? i don't know. that's what i'm trying to deal with. i may not buy the idea that everybody has a soul-job (that sounds a little gross), but obviously there are some things that some people enjoy doing better than other things. i like teaching better than retching. writing better than wringing. walking better than christopher walkening. etc. so if we're going to live inside the idea that you sort-of get to choose your profession, what happens when you suddenly get to 26 and realize that there is no "perfect" profession for you? my answer is thus: pretend like your career is a relationship. actually, don't pretend. because it is.
some days you're going to wake up and your job is going to have forgotten to clean the hair out of the shower drain, it's going to have left toothpaste smears all over the sink liner (or, in rare and strange instances, the toilet bowl), and on some days it's going to send you flowers and give you free baked goods. awesome. that's the way the rest of life is, why shouldn't your job be the same way? now, i'm not trying to be a martyr complex apologist. if your job is, per se, beating a raping you every morning, then you should probably call the police and get the fuck out of there. but. expecting your career to be the be-all and end-all to your fulfillment and not being able to accept occasionally hating what you're doing is probably a little disingenuous. i mean, you're not going to dump someone because they forgot to do the towels with their laundry once, are you? i mean, maybe you are, but if you are then you're probably a jackass and don't deserve a cool job anyway. i'm not sure if this metaphor worked, but it seemed great when i thought of it. but then so did that rewarmed pizza from two days ago when i first ate it. and now i feel like it's reenacting Burning Man inside my stomach.
because all these words with no pictures make-a me sad, have a picture.
No comments:
Post a Comment