[This is the second installation of BLOG WARS. BLOG WARS is an ongoing series of intense competitive blogging between my dear friend Nick and I. We muse on the same topic, and our responses fight to the death. Actually, it's not competitive at all. It just sounds cooler to say it is. It's really just us being nerds. Anyway, onward.]
Nick sez: Kim told me once that it's incredibly difficult to look for a job when you have one full time.
I sez: I wouldn't know the first thing about having a full-time job, but I'd argue that looking for a job when you don't have one is incredibly difficult for a whole other set of reasons.
Allow me to wax autobiographically for a moment, so you can understand where I'm coming from with this argument: In May of 2008, I graduated from SVSU with a major in English (professional and technical writing, specifically. PTW people get weird about calling it an English major) and minors in graphic design and communication. I had spent 2 years working for the campus fine arts publication, Cardinal Sins, first as a lowly editorial staff member, then as editor-in-chief, and then demoting myself back to a general staff member.
On paper, that lady looks like she's on the fast track to success. But then I throw a wrench in things by telling you that I was completely uninterested by everything involved in my chosen major and minors. I'm not saying they aren't good programs, lots of my cohorts were busy learning great things and producing quality work, I was just clearly not programmed to do the same. Creative writing courses gave me a reprieve (at least I was studying/writing things that interested me) and folks started bring up the possibility of grad school, but it was too little too late. And then, about a week before I would graduate with a degree I'd spent months already regretting, I got arrested. And though the hammer of justice certainly did not come down as hard as it could have, I was fragile enough that it didn't take much force to crush me emotionally and financially.
Thus began my painful bout of temporary stagnation.
I’d never felt more than a brief moment of self-doubt in my life, and experiencing it at such a crucial time was, to put it lightly, not easy. Just so I’m not a hypocrite, in regards to my previous rant about people thinking they are special: I don’t think I’m special. I think most people my age are just getting past the point of being handed participation ribbons instead of rejections. It’s easy to start thinking you suck. My generation is, for the most part, extremely coddled. It’s not easy to leave the Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood of college or high school or the job you’ve been in forever. It’s familiar and you know what to expect. Even if it’s horrible at times, you can foresee those horrible times and usually have people around to commiserate. But starting over…building a career, going to grad school…you are on your own with no idea what to expect. It’s easy to doubt that things will ever get rolling. And the worst thing is that self-doubt is even more powerful than self confidence. Confidence can let you move the proverbial mountains, doubt will turn you into one. I know it did me.
So, maybe, just maybe, sometimes we don’t try that hard to look for jobs. Maybe when we should be searching Monster we are trolling Facebook. And there have probably been a few nights where we could have studied a little harder instead of staying for one last beer, and maybe that would have given us a leg up in the long run. But if there’s anything I’ve learned during my stagnation period (and, in fact, I’ve learned a lot) it’s that nobody is perfect, for crying out loud. We could spend all day every day chasing the holy grail of the perfect job, but when we get there will we be living in a place we enjoy? Will we have time for our hobbies? Will we keep au fait on our loved ones, or let relationships fade? These things are important. Having a beer with an old friend is important. There, I said it. And I don’t feel guilty when something fun gets in the way of being productive. You know how when someone goes on a diet and cuts themselves off from every food they like, and then is either miserable or slips up and gorges? That’s sort of how I feel about the whole moving on thing. It’s been in those moments of frivolity and vice that I’ve figured out some important things. I’ve had the time to attend and help out with events that have solidified my ideas about art and community. I’ve gotten some of my most encouraging words concerning grad school from text exchanges while I’m bored at my crappy retail job. So, I mean, maybe goofing off has its strong points. Or maybe I’m justifying my nonsense. That’s certainly up for debate.
Ok, so let me try to summarize my rambling. Let me break it down, for your sake and mine: the world outside your comfort zone is mean and scary. You have to face it. But maybe you don’t have to face it right this second, and maybe you don’t have to face it every day. Maybe you can find the small beautiful moments even when your life feels lost in transition. I think, at least I speculate, that this might be something you never stop struggling with.
As for me, my wheels are starting to turn.
Showing posts with label blog wars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog wars. Show all posts
Monday, February 2, 2009
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
An introduction to my sick attachment to pop culture
(Nick, I apologize. This is not even remotely the topic I chose for BLOG WARS. But you've known me long enough to realize I have the attention span of a 3-year-old and am not so great at following rules.)
Let me take you back, back to a year we called 2000. Turn on the radio in 2000, and you were smack dab in the middle of the teeny-bop and crap rock boom when "artists" like pre-breakdown Britney Spears and pre-rehab Creed ruled the charts. It was a year of monumental artistic achievements like Will Smith's "Willenium" and Lou Bega's "A Little Bit of Mambo." I was 15 years old and listening to mostly punk rock and its various wussy incarnations. I spent most of my time listening to bands like The Vandals or the much wussier New Found Glory and causing innocent mayhem with my two best friends. At some point, we formed a band called The Seemonkeys (after a teacher walked by the three of us sitting in the hallway and called us the "see no" monkeys. You can see already how painfully clever we were). The band's artistic vision was to be a combination of Blink 182 and Josie and the Pussycats, which mostly meant that we wanted to play music with minimal difficulty and lots of sex and fart jokes, but also to look pretty doing it. Sure, we didn't actually own instruments and couldn't actually play them if we did, but we wrote several songs full of entendre and swear words and had a fan club who gave us money to support our shows that never happened.
Also in the year 2000, No Doubt released “Return of Saturn” named for the astrological theory of Saturn’s return: your 29th year, the year you become a productive adult. What sort of stake did I, in my mid-teens have in that sort of album? Not much, except that I religiously listened to “Tragic Kingdom” and not so secretly wanted to be exactly like Gwen Stefani. I didn’t take to it immediately. I think I, like most No Doubt fans (I assume other fans felt the same, the album wasn‘t nearly as popular as the band‘s previous…or maybe even latter. But who exactly were No Doubt fans? I imagine them all as teenage girls, but that’s only because I was a teenage girl. The wonderful/horrible thing about adolescence is that you don’t notice any demographics outside your own. I’m not sure if at 15 I even noticed anyone other than myself and the occasional cute skater boy) expected “Tragic Kingdom 2.” What I got was a different Gwen-slowed down, smoothed out musically, and lyrically introspective, conflicted, and maybe a little depressing. There were no girl power anthems like “Just a Girl” or songs about Disneyland. Instead, Gwen had turned into a pop-rock Sylvia Plath, singing about the perceived dichotomies of womanhood: can you be a badass independent lady and still want to get married? Can you be pretty without using it as a shield? Can you admire other women without turning into a jealous bitch? Why do the good girls always want the bad boys? She begged the questions I wasn’t prepared to ask at 15.
I can’t pinpoint the moment I returned to the album, or the moment it clicked in my consciousness, but I’m sure it was some time post-high school, post-9/11, likely around the first time a boy put a dent in my heart, but well before my Saturn return. I started to feel the relevance of lyrics like:
If you bore me then I'm comfortable
If you interest me I'm scared
My attraction paralyzes me
No courage to show my true colors that exist
But I want to be the real thing
But if you catch my eye can't be authentic
The one's I loath are the one's that know me the best
The sort of anxiety you can only feel when relationships start to last and be meaningful. Holding hands at the football game is easy, bearing your soul is excruciating. And the closer you get to knowing the real you, the harder you are to share. Or:
Now all those simple things are simply too complicated for my life
How'd I get so faithful to my freedom?
A selfish kind of life
The contradiction all women face growing into adulthood. If the Saturn return theory is right, I still haven’t made it to functional adulthood. Maybe the key word there is functional. I’m past the age of thinking I know everything, but not quite to an age where I can prove I know anything. For a woman, that moment in time is particularly difficult because it‘s one more gap in a life defined by gaps. At 15, I would have told you I was a fiercely independent woman who never needed a man for anything and would be a dynamo in any field I so chose to rule. At 25, I will tell I am a fiercely independent woman who realizes aspirations take work and worries that I’m not up to the challenge, and worries even more that the hours and dedication will ruin any chance of love or children or all those things I can’t ever be sure I want. At 25, I struggle more with my identity than I ever have. At 25, I take the time to contemplate where my relationships go wrong. At 25, this album is indispensable for me.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about how music/film/books/what have you sort of trace the course of our lives and I’ve also been thinking a lot about what it means to be a 25 year old female college grad with a blank slate of a future. Expect to read more on both.
Let me take you back, back to a year we called 2000. Turn on the radio in 2000, and you were smack dab in the middle of the teeny-bop and crap rock boom when "artists" like pre-breakdown Britney Spears and pre-rehab Creed ruled the charts. It was a year of monumental artistic achievements like Will Smith's "Willenium" and Lou Bega's "A Little Bit of Mambo." I was 15 years old and listening to mostly punk rock and its various wussy incarnations. I spent most of my time listening to bands like The Vandals or the much wussier New Found Glory and causing innocent mayhem with my two best friends. At some point, we formed a band called The Seemonkeys (after a teacher walked by the three of us sitting in the hallway and called us the "see no" monkeys. You can see already how painfully clever we were). The band's artistic vision was to be a combination of Blink 182 and Josie and the Pussycats, which mostly meant that we wanted to play music with minimal difficulty and lots of sex and fart jokes, but also to look pretty doing it. Sure, we didn't actually own instruments and couldn't actually play them if we did, but we wrote several songs full of entendre and swear words and had a fan club who gave us money to support our shows that never happened.
Also in the year 2000, No Doubt released “Return of Saturn” named for the astrological theory of Saturn’s return: your 29th year, the year you become a productive adult. What sort of stake did I, in my mid-teens have in that sort of album? Not much, except that I religiously listened to “Tragic Kingdom” and not so secretly wanted to be exactly like Gwen Stefani. I didn’t take to it immediately. I think I, like most No Doubt fans (I assume other fans felt the same, the album wasn‘t nearly as popular as the band‘s previous…or maybe even latter. But who exactly were No Doubt fans? I imagine them all as teenage girls, but that’s only because I was a teenage girl. The wonderful/horrible thing about adolescence is that you don’t notice any demographics outside your own. I’m not sure if at 15 I even noticed anyone other than myself and the occasional cute skater boy) expected “Tragic Kingdom 2.” What I got was a different Gwen-slowed down, smoothed out musically, and lyrically introspective, conflicted, and maybe a little depressing. There were no girl power anthems like “Just a Girl” or songs about Disneyland. Instead, Gwen had turned into a pop-rock Sylvia Plath, singing about the perceived dichotomies of womanhood: can you be a badass independent lady and still want to get married? Can you be pretty without using it as a shield? Can you admire other women without turning into a jealous bitch? Why do the good girls always want the bad boys? She begged the questions I wasn’t prepared to ask at 15.
I can’t pinpoint the moment I returned to the album, or the moment it clicked in my consciousness, but I’m sure it was some time post-high school, post-9/11, likely around the first time a boy put a dent in my heart, but well before my Saturn return. I started to feel the relevance of lyrics like:
If you bore me then I'm comfortable
If you interest me I'm scared
My attraction paralyzes me
No courage to show my true colors that exist
But I want to be the real thing
But if you catch my eye can't be authentic
The one's I loath are the one's that know me the best
The sort of anxiety you can only feel when relationships start to last and be meaningful. Holding hands at the football game is easy, bearing your soul is excruciating. And the closer you get to knowing the real you, the harder you are to share. Or:
Now all those simple things are simply too complicated for my life
How'd I get so faithful to my freedom?
A selfish kind of life
The contradiction all women face growing into adulthood. If the Saturn return theory is right, I still haven’t made it to functional adulthood. Maybe the key word there is functional. I’m past the age of thinking I know everything, but not quite to an age where I can prove I know anything. For a woman, that moment in time is particularly difficult because it‘s one more gap in a life defined by gaps. At 15, I would have told you I was a fiercely independent woman who never needed a man for anything and would be a dynamo in any field I so chose to rule. At 25, I will tell I am a fiercely independent woman who realizes aspirations take work and worries that I’m not up to the challenge, and worries even more that the hours and dedication will ruin any chance of love or children or all those things I can’t ever be sure I want. At 25, I struggle more with my identity than I ever have. At 25, I take the time to contemplate where my relationships go wrong. At 25, this album is indispensable for me.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about how music/film/books/what have you sort of trace the course of our lives and I’ve also been thinking a lot about what it means to be a 25 year old female college grad with a blank slate of a future. Expect to read more on both.
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