on how the world makes failures of us all
Aug. 29th, 2007 12:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aruanMy mother is reinventing herself for the fourth time in her life. First was giving up an award-winning hairdressing career for homemaking when she became pregnant with me; second was moving to the States with my brother and me, not speaking a word of English; third was getting her Realtor's license a few years ago and divorcing my stepfather, and now she's starting nursing school in the fall with the goal of opening her own assisted-living facility. She turned 51 this year.
Despite all that, she doesn't feel like she's accomplished anything. On paper, she's had two failed marriages, doesn't own the house she lives in, left the only country that will ever be home for her, has very little savings and will have to settle for a nine-hour layover next month as likely her one chance to see Paris. And it makes me unspeakably sad that that's how she sees it, when I know what she overcame between the lines just to be alive today. Those two kids? Smart and successful. She learned a new language and got certification in a field that remains incomprehensible to me. She cooked meals when she didn't have time to sleep, she took us to school and dance and baseball and told us nothing mattered if we weren't happy. Life without her would've been incomprehensible to me then, and empty now. She made every sacrifice - the fact that the world doesn't value her contributions shouldn't make them less meaningful.
But in another way, she did exactly what the real world demands - working, raising children, routines and schedules and wages. There's a reason why the highlight reels of one's life fit into a flash before death. Choosing to carry on every day through that kind of numbing mundacity seems more and more impressive. What would she have needed to accomplish to feel like she made good use of those 51 years? What does anyone? Become the CEO of a company? Cure cancer? Raise a family? Climb a mountain? Outside of comic books, there isn't much of a demand for saving the world, so feats get measured on a much smaller, different scale.
But that scale should never be getting out of bed in the morning and making it to work. Yet as much as I hate my current employment and Lakeland and all its accoutrements, I've been waffling on the job search. After an especially bad day, I'll sit down at the keyboard and do a little more work on my resume and dream up the next career I will have, which differs depending on the week: Air Force officer, campaign worker, park ranger, tour guide, librarian, computer engineer, civil engineer, public relations, convention support staff, TV/movie set worker, waitress, ski instructor, flight attendant, lawyer, Disney park worker, Starbucks barista, etc. But then I get up the next day and go back to work, and it's not so bad, or even one of the rare good days, and I think, every job has its bad days.
But my mom reminded me of the danger that every day, one becomes a little more numb to all the things one hates about one's situation. I remember in the early months of my job the rebellion building slowly inside of me, then ranting and crying and making grand plans to one day get on Interstate 4 and just drive. I remember researching job options, buying a copy of What Color Is Your Parachute?, thinking about finding a career counselor in the area. Eventually though, it tapered into dragging my feet getting ready to go in to work, getting increasingly lax about the business part of my casual wardrobe. I can't actually do less than my best when it comes to the stories, mostly on behalf of the people involved, but short of that, there should've at least been a talking-to about the rest. Not a word from anyone. Thanks, hiring freeze!
Keep going like that though, and I'll wake up one day just like a lot of other people in my office, wondering how those 10 years passed by. But unless we take it upon ourselves to make that move - not pushing significant others to get jobs elsewhere, not hoping the car is irreparable to finally breathe the air of communal transit, not wanting to finally have one of the dozen sketchy people I meet in a week threaten me (no, really, I've had that kind of wild thought) - the likelihood of a sufficiently severely jarring event is slim at best.
It's not because I'm afraid to leave. Everything is still as easy as it seemed in high school - want to do something? Go out and do it! What's stopping you? It's just that now, I know a little bit more about the realities of living on my own and holding down a job and making a life work. It's not always easy, and it's certainly not cheap. You hear about people being unemployed for months, taking jobs out of desperation, working three of them to make ends meet. It's not as if journalism is a terribly robust field at the moment, either. And while no, I thankfully don't have any terribly expensive addictions, debt or children relying on me, there's still me. The bottom line is, my job pays decently, and not just for a recent college graduate; it offers health insurance and 401(k) and all those things I'm supposed to want from my workplace. I put six years, including my entire college education, into getting where I am, and have what most of my graduating class only dreamt of: a full-time job at a good-size, reputable paper. Giving up what everyone says I should strive for feels so counterintuitive. And yet, I'm unhappy.
My biggest problem though is that I don't know what my problem is. Is it journalism as a whole, or just where I'm working now? And if it's the former, what do I want to do instead? Is it enough to start applying or do I need to go back to school? Where do I want to go? What standard of living am I willing to accept?
Is 24 too early for a midlife crisis?
Despite all that, she doesn't feel like she's accomplished anything. On paper, she's had two failed marriages, doesn't own the house she lives in, left the only country that will ever be home for her, has very little savings and will have to settle for a nine-hour layover next month as likely her one chance to see Paris. And it makes me unspeakably sad that that's how she sees it, when I know what she overcame between the lines just to be alive today. Those two kids? Smart and successful. She learned a new language and got certification in a field that remains incomprehensible to me. She cooked meals when she didn't have time to sleep, she took us to school and dance and baseball and told us nothing mattered if we weren't happy. Life without her would've been incomprehensible to me then, and empty now. She made every sacrifice - the fact that the world doesn't value her contributions shouldn't make them less meaningful.
But in another way, she did exactly what the real world demands - working, raising children, routines and schedules and wages. There's a reason why the highlight reels of one's life fit into a flash before death. Choosing to carry on every day through that kind of numbing mundacity seems more and more impressive. What would she have needed to accomplish to feel like she made good use of those 51 years? What does anyone? Become the CEO of a company? Cure cancer? Raise a family? Climb a mountain? Outside of comic books, there isn't much of a demand for saving the world, so feats get measured on a much smaller, different scale.
But that scale should never be getting out of bed in the morning and making it to work. Yet as much as I hate my current employment and Lakeland and all its accoutrements, I've been waffling on the job search. After an especially bad day, I'll sit down at the keyboard and do a little more work on my resume and dream up the next career I will have, which differs depending on the week: Air Force officer, campaign worker, park ranger, tour guide, librarian, computer engineer, civil engineer, public relations, convention support staff, TV/movie set worker, waitress, ski instructor, flight attendant, lawyer, Disney park worker, Starbucks barista, etc. But then I get up the next day and go back to work, and it's not so bad, or even one of the rare good days, and I think, every job has its bad days.
But my mom reminded me of the danger that every day, one becomes a little more numb to all the things one hates about one's situation. I remember in the early months of my job the rebellion building slowly inside of me, then ranting and crying and making grand plans to one day get on Interstate 4 and just drive. I remember researching job options, buying a copy of What Color Is Your Parachute?, thinking about finding a career counselor in the area. Eventually though, it tapered into dragging my feet getting ready to go in to work, getting increasingly lax about the business part of my casual wardrobe. I can't actually do less than my best when it comes to the stories, mostly on behalf of the people involved, but short of that, there should've at least been a talking-to about the rest. Not a word from anyone. Thanks, hiring freeze!
Keep going like that though, and I'll wake up one day just like a lot of other people in my office, wondering how those 10 years passed by. But unless we take it upon ourselves to make that move - not pushing significant others to get jobs elsewhere, not hoping the car is irreparable to finally breathe the air of communal transit, not wanting to finally have one of the dozen sketchy people I meet in a week threaten me (no, really, I've had that kind of wild thought) - the likelihood of a sufficiently severely jarring event is slim at best.
It's not because I'm afraid to leave. Everything is still as easy as it seemed in high school - want to do something? Go out and do it! What's stopping you? It's just that now, I know a little bit more about the realities of living on my own and holding down a job and making a life work. It's not always easy, and it's certainly not cheap. You hear about people being unemployed for months, taking jobs out of desperation, working three of them to make ends meet. It's not as if journalism is a terribly robust field at the moment, either. And while no, I thankfully don't have any terribly expensive addictions, debt or children relying on me, there's still me. The bottom line is, my job pays decently, and not just for a recent college graduate; it offers health insurance and 401(k) and all those things I'm supposed to want from my workplace. I put six years, including my entire college education, into getting where I am, and have what most of my graduating class only dreamt of: a full-time job at a good-size, reputable paper. Giving up what everyone says I should strive for feels so counterintuitive. And yet, I'm unhappy.
My biggest problem though is that I don't know what my problem is. Is it journalism as a whole, or just where I'm working now? And if it's the former, what do I want to do instead? Is it enough to start applying or do I need to go back to school? Where do I want to go? What standard of living am I willing to accept?
Is 24 too early for a midlife crisis?
no subject
Date: August 29th, 2007 07:34 pm (UTC)It's not unusual to not know what you want to be when you grow up -- my mom's about to hit sixty, and she still doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up; both my parents have had a bunch of drastically different careers. It's not a midlife crisis, it's just existential ennui :)
The best advice I can give you is this:
1). Build up as much of a nest egg as you can. Not only in money -- although that's important too -- but in professional good will, skills, and experience. Do anything and everything you can to get a varied set of skills on paper, with people who can attest to your abilities to do them and do them well. Build contacts. Network. That way, if something strikes you as something you'd like to do, or some opportunity arises, you have the grounding necessary to get up and go. Doing other things in the context of your existing job will also let you try out some of the other roles available, and see what you like better.
2). Remember that nothing is impossible. There's a balance between "suck it up and deal" and "stake everything on one crazy roll of the dice", but don't ever feel like you're locked into doing what you're doing now. It's never too late to start over, and you always, always have a lot of options.
3). Keep looking. Try things through hobbies, or volunteering, or just drop-in-and-chat-with-people, to see what's good and what's bad about all the things you're thinking you might want to do. Try things out for a bit, and then consider further. Don't feel like you have to make huge scary commitments to change -- change in your life can come gradually as you fall into things because you like doing them, not because you sit up one morning and say "yes! I'm going to reinvent myself!"
Hang in there. I've been there, and in some ways I'm still there, but this too shall pass.
no subject
Date: August 30th, 2007 07:58 am (UTC)OMG YES. That is exactly it, that needing to get out, get gone, get as far as possible from everything that could possibly be contributing to the ennui. So sad to hear that's not actually a solution, though not surprising.
Save money, check. I definitely have enough to start over, more than once if I leave once a job offer has been made elsewhere. Journalism is thankfully one of those degrees that make people sit up and think you're competent. New skills, OK. I've been thinking about community college, coding/Web design/programming classes. Volunteering in some kind of teacher's assistant capacity would help clear up some things, too.
I think at this point I've become so myopic with the bitterness about the current situation that everything else seems like a good idea. But the tips in #3 were enlightening and much less scary than walking away from what I'm doing wholesale. Even though I've got a mountain of respect (and a little envy) for you for doing just that when the situation became untenable.
Thanks, really. I'm trying to be level-headed, but man, the open road sure sounds great and feels much easier than making the effort to have a destination.
no subject
Date: August 30th, 2007 08:18 am (UTC)I think that sort of existential ennui is really common -- I mean, we're told at very early ages that we're supposed to be successful, we're supposed to love what we do, we're supposed to pick one thing and stick with it, and we're programmed in that direction every time we turn around. Overcoming that programming is really fucking hard. Accepting that it's okay to wander around for a bit is really difficult.
But yeah, I think the best thing to do when you're having that itchy-restless feeling is to recognize that you don't live to work, you work to live. Do things outside of work, do things that are different in your current work environment, do things because they sound cool, do things because you've always wanted to. In the process you learn more about what works for you and what doesn't.
I walked off because it was killing me (literally; my health was deteriorating so badly from the stress that my doctor was starting to get really worried). Scariest fucking decision I've ever made, man. I still don't know if it was the right one. But God, that job was killing me.
no subject
Date: September 8th, 2007 05:12 am (UTC)It is really hard for me, raised primarily in the American culture and school system, to think that far outside the box. You're absolutely right, we're programmed to follow paths, achieve certain goals (college, etc.), commit to companies, and that you can be happy if you just do these things, but when you come out the other end and you're not, people have a tendency to throw up their hands and not have much to offer either. The advice seems solid enough, but in practice leaves a lot unaccounted for.
I'm glad you made a good decision, if an uncertain one - your health should never be secondary to anything. And that's what bad jobs do, they wear you down physically and emotionally, and you're either walking around sick or crying all the time. Yeah. Now if I can just take our good advice already...