The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => People & Places => Topic started by: Arachno-capitalist on March 19, 2007, 09:04:54 pm
-
Hello old people who have jobs. I am basically wondering what you think of life post-education. Aside from the fun social whatnot associated with college. I mean is it a good thing or bad thing to have a place you work at, where you do a job, and when you leave the work is done and you can do your thing as opposed to the education world where you don't really have a single "job" to do and your work follows you home every day?
Speak to me, sages of TOUAMB.
-
Depends on the day.
On the one hand, you don't know from stress. I remember during exam week everyone going "Oh my god I'm so stressed out!" and having little fainting spells. Man, I wish the most stressful thing in my life right now was that I have to study an exam. Stress is the mortgage. Stress is traffic every goddamn day and your car drives like crap but you can't afford a car payment right now. Stress is your kid being sick. (But you're asking more about the merits of work life vs. academic life, not necessarily family/personal stuff, so take that as you will.)
On the other hand, there's less petty and seemingly worthless crap. Oh sure, there's still plenty of it, especially in the first few years you're working. Once you've kind of established what you want to do, and you have a direction, most of the goofy crap you have to do at least pushes you in that general direction or some way or another. So (hopefully) there's less time-wasting, and everything is contributing more toward your overall goals.
If you ask me "Would you like to go back and relive college?", I would say yes if that meant I could try out different choices--I sometimes think about the whole "Sliding Doors" nature of our lives, and wonder how much differently my life would have turned out if I'd gone to another school. But to go back and do it verbatim--I dunno, it's close; I had a lot of fun in college and everything. But I think I like it where I am now better.
-
I have experienced many different variations of the 'having a job' thing, and while all have had their extremely sucky aspects, all of them are better than being in college.
-
College is a double-edged sword, at least in my experience.
The downside is that nothing you did in college means even one half of a doodley-squat after the second you get that diploma. Academia is pretty-much jerking off into a cup and then paying someone a large amount of money to tell you the degree to which your cup of spunk is awesome and meaningful and full of promise. The moment you are out the door, you ain't nothing. You're some dude who just paid $100,000 to have your excreta praised for four years and some change. The soul-crushing pointlessness of realizing that before you're done can be Kinda Brutal.
The upside is that you basically have no real responsibility in college and there are no consequences to mistakes.
The older I get, the more I realize that the upside outweighed the downside.
Having a job you dislike is Completely Awful. Having a job you love is Mostly Awful.
Working is awful. Not to be patronizing or anything but I have the feeling that your hard-right beliefs on Hard Work and Earning and Bootstraps and so on might end up ameliorated by actually having to be in that awful world where if you fuck up a little bit, you can't pay for the place you're living in anymore and... you don't get to stay. They make you leave. All the Talking and Ideas in the world don't mean a thang if you're fired and don't have the money. They completely make you leave.
And I know for Talking and Ideas.
Basically, stay in college until you would kill yourself from the boredom and hopelessness of how arbitary and ephemeral the act of writing a paper, getting a grade and then nothing happening with that work ever again. You will know you are ready to leave college when you would rather be hung by the neck until dead than take another fuck*ng test that doesn't even mean anything to the person putting a number or a letter for your efforts. They're just doing it to pay the rent and they hate you for it.
Around November of my senior year of college, I started getting That Feeling. Happily, my last semester I only needed to take 13 credits to graduate and mostly dicked around acting in friends' short films. If I had had to take it seriously, I would've had to quit or kill myself.
-
I was very disappointed by undergrad. I went to a very good, but very large, state school, and all my life I had envisioned college as this small liberal-arts experience with small classes and stimulating intellectual discussion, with everyone in black turtlenecks and being very erudite. Instead I got a lot of "Please make sure you use a number two pencil and fill in the dot completely," alternating with "Chug! Chug! Chug!" It was very fun, but I didn't get the type of learning experience I wanted. I wish someone (my parents, teachers, guidance counselors) had been more assertive about telling me that I'd be happier in a smaller liberal arts school before I left for college.
On top of that I paid my way through school 100%. So many years I was working 40 hours a week and going to school full time. It sucked. So I couldn't wait to be done and out working. In retrospect I probably should have made different choices, and it all turned out okay, so I have no regrets, but I was chomping at the bit to be done almost as soon as I'd started.
I got out into the work world as a corporate drone working not in my field per se, but definitely putting my education to use to some degree every day at work (BA in Linguistics and working as a translation project manager for a language services company), so that was lucky and rewarding. It was nice to actually have money, besides just the $7/hour or whatever wager jobs paid when I was in school. It was awesome not having any deadlines. Actually that's not true, I did have deadlines, but for some reason when I was in the work world it didn't feel like I had any deadlines. I'm not sure why that is but it was great.
What started to wear on me was the stress. More to the point, it was where the stress was coming from. The corporate world is about one thing and one thing only: money. It can be discouraging to gradually discover that the only reason for your existence as a cog in a particular machine is to put more money in other peoples' pockets. To have to do a less-than-stellar job on something simply because your boss isn't willing to pay for the best, because that will eat into his profit margin. So you deliver a translation for a medical device to a client, knowing you put a translator on it who doesn't have medical knowledge, because the qualified medical translator was 3 cents per word more expensive than the translator who specializes in vacation brochures, and your boss was not willing to pay the difference. Then you worry that errors in the translation might cost a life, and you spend your days and nights enraged that (a) your boss is such a greedy bastard to be able to make such decisions and still sleep at night, and (b) you yourself didn't stand up to that, because the last time you did your boss threatened your job, and dammit, rent is due.
I found that I loved my job but I hated the culture around it. So I found another company that shared my value for quality, and it was better. But the sad part is, it's still all about the money. No matter how much you resonate with a company's values, no matter how much they like you as an employee, if the money isn't coming, you could be gone. Nothing personal. It's just the way it is. They've got their rent to pay and so do you.
If you're not careful, you could find yourself taking jobs just for the money, and that can be downright miserable, even if your tastes are simple. Please don't fall into the trap of living an SUV lifestyle and then staying in a miserable soulless job simply to pay for it. You can't take it with you, after all. Even if you are living simply, it can be very hard in my experience to just do a job for the money, "to pay the bills," although many people do it and seem to have no trouble. It's just not me.
I will disagree with lfm, though, and say that having a job you love is not Mostly Awful. It's wonderful. I got out of my first, corporate career, and went back to school to get a teaching license. The second time around for college I went to a small liberal arts college and it was much better. However I was also at a point in my life where college had become simply a series of hoops to jump through to get to a goal. So it was no big deal. I think the first time through college becomes all-consuming for most people: you live and work and study on campus, for the most part, so it becomes your life. Returning students later on can easily tie their studies in to a personal goal, and also usually live and work off-campus and have very full lives outside of school. School is just an "add-on" thing that they do, like aerobics class. So that makes it easier to stomach in some ways, and harder in others (because the sense of "jumping through hoops" can be keener here).
Now that I've been done with college (again) and working for several years, I will say that I love my job. I'm more insulated from the moneygrubbing that was so disheartening in my previous career. I'm still affected by money, of course, but the goal of what I do is not to enable my blowhard boss to afford a new boat. Instead my worth is judged by how well I reach and inspire people, and the difference in my life is substantial. I've been teaching full-time for four years, and my paycheck is *still* a surprise every time I get it. I make way less money than I did before, but it's worth it.
Since I paid my way through school both times, the sense of urgency attached to keeping a job (to ensure the ability to keep a residence) is nothing new to me. It still sucks, being that dependent on it, but for me there wasn't a lot of difference between college and "real life" in that regard.
The important thing to remember is that you can always change, and should. Most people feed you this line about how once you're done with college, your "real life" will begin and you'll ride off into the sunset, and that's a load of crap. You may have to go back to college, or something like it, several times amid the three or four careers you have.
-
See, though, having a job you love can be the worst in some cases because... then you're getting bored and annoyed and bitter about having not enough money from... something you used to just love. It's like you're stabbing that passion through the heart with a tightly rolled up paycheck.
However, I'll concede the point that... people who had to work full-time in college anyway, the transition may be a lot easier or nominal. Personally, I never held a full-time job (or drove a car, for that matter) until after I graduated college so... my mileage varied significantly.
If, like me, the only jobs you have ever had were... like... summer internships or... fifteen hours a week making sandwiches somewhere where the trade-off for low pay was even lower expectations... it will most likely be a harsh-ass transition.
EDIT: Also, I am pretty much nowhere near having worked in a job that is My Calling. Which is Writing Funny Stories For Lots Of Money. There is the possibililty that if I got to that point, things would be pretty much okay. My girlfriend is finishing up her student teaching and is loving the hell out of it, yes. Her and Mof might just have the same calling or something.
-
Its likely to be harsh anyway. If you don't get fired at least once in your first 5 years - well, you'll be doing better than I did anyway. The thing about working for a living is that its so much more demanding than anything you'll have done before, provided you actually get into a job that challenges you. Putting in C level effort will get you fired. B level effort won't make you many friends among your coworkers or bosses.
-
I had a conversation with my mom about this last night - my parents are helping me buy a car (yay) as I prepare to live on my own, rent and all, for the first time this summer. My mom is arguing that I should wait for my car gift until later because the longer I can put it off the better, but I'm pretty sure I need to start dealing with stuff like this and working full-time now, because I only have a year of college left after this.
-
Well, it's 11.20pm and I'm trying desperately to finish putting together a piece of music for a documentary by tomorrow (it's going great, as you can obviously tell). The panic gives the livelihood a real zing!
I've tried a number of things now, and am working on putting together a business prospect that might get me out of IT at least (I'm hitting burnout on an industry filled with fucktards and changing tech). I had a fairly nice job as a graphic/web designer, only the employers refused to acknowledge that I knew more about it than they. Even down to them trying to use some evil, expensive, proprietary method of doing eCommerce, despite me offering them nigh on free ways that would suit most of the customers... That and they tried to give me a, literally abhorrent contract. I refused to sign and walked, along with my friend who was working there with me.
And so I'm freelancing in competition with them, while working on music, film scoring and screenplays. Like I say, there's an awful lot of panic, be it about deadlines or money, but it's in many, many ways considerably more satisfying than any of the jobs I've had working for other people. I guess, at the end of the day, that just isn't for me. I can stand it to a point, but unless I can find something I like, where for once they aren't assholes, I just snap after a certain period.
Well, basically, if you're looking at anything creative, it's a world of pain*!
Back to writing african hiphop I guess...
*I'll get back to you when I'm loaded though... fnar
-
Basically, stay in college until you would kill yourself from the boredom and hopelessness of how arbitary and ephemeral the act of writing a paper, getting a grade and then nothing happening with that work ever again. You will know you are ready to leave college when you would rather be hung by the neck until dead than take another fuck*ng test that doesn't even mean anything to the person putting a number or a letter for your efforts. They're just doing it to pay the rent and they hate you for it.
I feel like this and I am in high school.
I work five hours a day (far more time than I spend in school daily), and have worked at various offices during vacations for the full eight. I am perhaps much more happy to useful tedium than to abstract bullshit than most people. I also have essentially no responsibility- no rent, no health insurance, no children to take care of. I do pay for my food, transportation, and hobbies, but these costs are negligible insofar as I can see. I also make $18 an hour, a staggering amount for someone of my age and inexperience.
Take this into consideration (as well as the fact that I am in high school, which limits severely my experience and makes most of my classes incredibly agonizing) when I say that work is approximately a hojillion times better than school as I know it. And my job description is "do shit that even the miserable soulless stereotypical office workers find too tedious and petty to force themselves to do."
For me, this is temporary (as previously stated, I intend to become a librarian), but if you asked me if I could live like this for the rest of my life, with a corresponding increase in pay to allow for more things I must pay for, I would definately say yes. So long as you are the sort of person that can leave work behind you when you leave the office, money is fantastic. If my statement seems incongruous with MoF and LFM's keep in mind that I assume you are intelligent enough to take a job that with an acceptable pain-to-salary ratio and spend your salary to offset whatever you might endure at work. You're there about nine hours a day- that leaves plenty to enjoy yourself.
$.02
-
In the quarter-and-a-half I spent in graduate school before Taking The Break, the part of it I enjoyed was the research -- that is, the part that was basically like a job -- and the part that burnt me out fast was the coursework. I'll freely admit that this may have been a consequence of going straight from undergraduate, but... goddamn, if I had to choose between sitting in yet another goddamn lecture learning incredibly detailed material I will be expected to remember and regurgigate verbatim for precious little purpose, or working longer days in exchange for making meaningful progress on a project I care about, I'll take the job every goddamn time, even if the job is (as it was) treating mice with drugs, killing them, extracting and dissecting their brains, and then homogenizing each brain region for DNA analysis. Even despite getting bitten by mice.
(fuck*ng mice.)
On the other hand, I just spent today at school with my mother (an elementary special ed teacher in rural Louisiana) helping her proctor standardized tests, since her school is stretched ridiculously thin and dependent on volunteer help to get through the testing season. After a "pretty easy day," as she called it, my entire body aches in weird places and I bear the scars of nearly being outwitted by a brain-damaged nine-year-old. I think the moral of this story is that, while mileage may vary, some jobs are just goddamn hard.
-
18$ an hour!? Wow. I am hoping to make more than my last job wherever I work this summer. And that was... 7.50 or so?
-
You know, the thing is, it's not clear that there's any point in asking this question, because it's not like you have a choice. You can't really decide to be in college forever instead of having a real life. Even if we tell you that life after college sucks, what can you do other than make the best of it?
-
To that, do what I didn't and travel for a year - be it through Europe, Southeast Asia, or Chile/Argentina. I toyed heavily with the idea of taking a year in 1990 and checking out the countries where the Wall was coming down. It would have made for some primo anecdotes that I'll never have the chance for again. Dancing on Marx's grave would have been damn sweet.
-
Ah well, if you are looking for sage advice from the elders than I would definitely second this:
The important thing to remember is that you can always change, and should. Most people feed you this line about how once you're done with college, your "real life" will begin and you'll ride off into the sunset, and that's a load of crap. You may have to go back to college, or something like it, several times amid the three or four careers you have.
-
dude, I am so going to Chile after I graduate. That country is the motherfuckin' bomb.
Or at least, it was when I was there in 7th grade. All of my relatives seemed like characters from James Bond movies.
...of course, I don't know Spanish.
-
I am so going to Chile after I graduate. That country is the motherfuckin' bomb.
So you would say that Chile is... rad?
-
I was sort of casting around for a third destination and thought, hey, why not countries emerging from brutal dictatorships? There has to be some history worth experiencing there.
Also I had a friend from Argentina when I was in 8th grade. And I speak Spanish - or I used to.
-
When I needed post-college, real-life advice, I listened to Baz Lurhmann's "Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen," and Chris Rock's parody, "No Sex In The Champagne Room." I figured reality was somewhere in the middle, and I was right.
The #1 piece of advice I give the young'uns is to buy a condo/townhouse/house/whatever as soon as you can. Renting apartments is like flushing money down the toilet, one picture of Andrew Jackson at a time. You might even fire off a little pistol (http://achewood.com/index.php?date=05112004) as each one goes down. The only exception to this rule is if you're planning on only spending two or three years in a certain town before packing up and moving on.
-
I raced through college as quickly as I could while working two jobs to make sure I graduated at the same time as my (then) wife, as she had been in for two years when I started. Then I couldn't find a job in my degree (Technical Communication), so I had to work at Sam's Club and shit like that. I worked 75 hours a week for a year and a half. Then I got a job up here (Prudhoe Bay) working roughly 20 hours a day for two weeks, alternating with two weeks off. After doing that for two and a half years, I found myself really considering taking my own life or just jumping in the truck and racing off down the Al-Can. My wife dropped me like a brick around then. I was making a pretty good living, but I couldn't do it anymore. I would be fried crisp the first 5 days I was home, then semi-conscious for 5 days, then I'd start dreading going back to work. I have worked a variety of jobs since then, and now I make about 5 times as much as I did at that first job, and I'm an Engineer - something I have no formal training in. I'm much happier now.
My suggestion is to finish school and get on with your life, but either:
1) Make damn sure everything you do outside of work is a total gas and exactly what you want to do. Leave no stone unturned. When you want to go to Belize or Monaco for a vacation, do whatever it takes to get there. You see the guy or girl of your dreams? Go make it happen, and fuck the consequences. Want to quit your job and follow the Polyphonic Spree or Jay-Z on tour? Get after it. Don't regret a damn thing.
2) Find the job that is exactly what you always wanted to do, even if you aren't sure you can do it. Nail the everloving shit out of the interview. Force them to beg you to take the job. Love what you do, every day you go into work. Make it so you are restless before you go to sleep, because you are so excited to make the magic happen at work tomorrow.
I am probably around 35/65. I really do enjoy my job now, although it is still very high stress and I don't get enough sleep. Probably most people are a balance of both of the above, but make sure it is in balance. If you are 20% #1 and 10% #2, you need to find another mixture.
Also Golf, I would say the rent vs. buy thing is more complicated. Depends on interest rates, what the situation is where you live, and what you mentioned.
-
If work was fun they wouldn't have to pay you to do it.
-
The thing is, though, they SHOULD pay you to just have fun.
They completely SHOULD.
I know this. Not in the way you "know" Dave Matthews is a total douche or the way you "know" 2 + 2 = 4... I'm talking a deep down in your gut "know". The way you know the sun is gonna rise tomorrow "know". The way you know the winter will yield to the spring "know".
You were born knowing it, you live knowing it, you're gonna die knowing it.
This is the way I know they SHOULD pay you just to have fun.
-
Eh, I don't buy it. If we got paid to have fun, after a week we'd probably still find shit to bitch about.
-
Not me, dog. Not me.
I was blessed and saddled with a deeply overactive imagination.
I, for one, could Just Have Fun until the goddamn stars went out. I know this for a fact.
Maybe it isn't this way for Most People but I may have been designed differently than most.
-
I often wonder what my life would have been like had I thrown caution to the wind and followed my dreams.
My parents convinced me that I couldn't make a living as an artist, which is what I really wanted to do. I decided to get a degree in architecture instead. The problem is that I didn't have the social engineering part of it down, and I also ended up having a nervous breakdown, and...well, I ended up with a nice job doing mapmaking in rural Alaska, and I get to do volunteer Fire/EMS too.
Well, for me it is good to have an 8-5 job with excellent benefits and a fuck*ng ridiculous amount of personal leave time (I get 30 days a year...six weeks, suckers...and at my next anniversary I'll get even more). A regular routine keeps my mood up despite the crazy daylight hours we have. I often wonder what I would be doing with my life if I had gotten that coveted art degree. In getting my architectural degree, the insane 90-hour workweeks plus having to support myself with a job really burned me out. Like...I haven't been able to pick up a pencil and just draw for pleasure since 2001 (I got my undergrad degree in 2002 and did a year of grad school after that, which only made things worse in the creativity department). I have tried...believe me, I have tried. It's just not there anymore, and it really saddens me. I wish that I could be independently wealthy so that I could spend some time at mountain retreats in the Colorado Rockies, meditating and getting Rolfed and the like, until I regained enough strength to start using that part of my brain again. It feels like I'm an amputee with that creative part of my life inaccessible to me now. It's really painful to me. I wish I could get it back.
Anyway, I am grateful for my life and I really do enjoy it up here.The downside to my average middle-class highly-routine life? Well, I live someplace that requires a $1,600 plane ticket every time I want to go see the folks that I really care about (Kellichou, our younger sister, our parents, and my friends back home in Colorado). Also, I have a boss that believes that I should only get to leave ONCE a year. I can't bear to be away from Milan and Lennybruce longer than a couple of weeks, so I get to cash out a sizable portion of my leave every year, which is nice...but spending actual real time with my family more often than ONCE A fuck*ng YEAR would be nice. Oh well...them's the breaks, I guess.
My dream is to move back to Colorado to be close to my sisters, get a small condo with an indoor carpeted staircase for the little boys (my cats) to play on, and be happy. I'd like to get a racing-yellow Ducati 749, a home cardio facility, and convert my basement into a studio space with an external vent for my etching cabinet for printmaking. I would host big family get-togethers and get to hang out with family and friends as often as I wanted.
Ideally I'd have a rich husband and a big-ass estate that I could help design, a private Gulfstream, a pied-a-terre apartment in Paris for perfume shopping trips, a huge art collection, and a haute couture wardrobe, but I'm aiming for the attainable stuff.
-
My parents convinced me that I couldn't make a living as an artist, which is what I really wanted to do.
My parents, who have RIDICULOUSLY improbable careers (mom is an artist and dad is a baseball statistician/writer), were pretty much against my going to art school as well, but they were totally cool with my trying to be a novelist. Weird! But, I guess it makes sense, my mom kind of cited herself as a reason not to be an artist.
-
I agree, they should pay you to have fun. And they do, if you know how to find your fun and make it work for you. The hard part is realizing that sometimes the fun lives where you least expect it to. If all else fails, make your own fun. I have the most fun job on the planet. I look forward to going to work every day, I love my colleagues, and my paycheck is still a surprise after 4 years. This isn't to say it doesn't have its crappy times. It does. There are periods where I dread going in. Or where I have to stay until 10 pm (like, pretty much, all of last year). But even then, man it's a blast. I don't make shit for pay, but it's so much fun I can live with it.
Also, too often people assume that they only way they can have a dream be part of their lives is to have it be their job. Screw that. You want something a part of your life, make it a part of your life. You can still be an artist without being paid to make art. I dance professionally, sure, but it's totally a side thing for me and it can be because my company is so small that it isn't a full-time job for anybody in the company. But still, the level of work and the production quality are to a professional standard.
Linnea, I would advise you to just start drawing again. Forget if it even looks good or if you even feel inspired. Just draw one thing a day, every day, for a year. Artistic skills need to be cultivated on a regular basis. Don't let that part of you die. Let it be what it is, for you and only you.
I don't have much patience for people who say, "I could have followed my dream, but I didn't (and now I'm sad about it)." So often we hear about famous artists or actors or dancers who "followed their dreams" by going to acting school or whatever, but it only seems like a pat, perfect path in retrospect because they've made it. Then people get it in their heads that (a) the only people who really are "actors," say, are people who get paid to act; and (b) that their way of getting there is the way one follows that dream. I say that's bogus. If you want something to be part of your life, make it a part of your life. Who cares if you ever get paid a dime for it or if you ever go to school for it. Yeah, we're not all cut out to be the next Cate Blanchett or Jackson Pollack or whoever. But that doesn't mean we aren't artists. I would *die* if I couldn't dance. So I make it a point to include it in my life. Is it my profession? Not when compared to other "real" professional dancers (i.e. people who get their dental coverage and social security withheld by a dance company). But when you consider that I put 20+ hours per week into my practice, and I approach it with the mind of a professional, then yes. I have decided that it's worth it to make it a part of my life.
This is a nerve for me. I apologize if my expression of this idea comes across as insensitive.
My advice for anyone embarking on "Real Life" (TM)...whatever the hell that is...
1. Money is nothing more than congealed energy. It is a means to attain life experience and to fulfill basic biological needs.
2. We are here to acquire experience, not "stuff." No one goes to their deathbed saying, "Gee am I ever glad I had that plasma TV" (unless of course television is a vital experiential value for you)
3. Nothing is ever worth being miserable to your core.
4. That said, you can do just about anything for a limited amount of time.
5. Just don't let yourself get used to it, or before you know it, you'll have done it forever and will be saddled with regrets over the road not taken.
6. Don't be afraid to change. There is nothing wrong with not having a plan, and in fact it can be quite exciting.
7. Be excellent to eachother, and party on, dudes.
And finally, some words to reflect on (http://hobbes.ncsa.uiuc.edu/desiderata.html) when life seems confusing.
-
Pretty much the one kind of writing I have never tried is The Novel.
I have burned and disavowed more songs, screenplays, short stories, poems, essays and stage plays than many people who are Paid for It write in their entire lives and yet... The Novel seems so daunting. So... fuckin'... BIG, you know?
Plus you have to DESCRIBE so many physical things. Evoking, extrapolating, what people say, what people think, these are things I am Pretty Good At as a writer. But physically describing what something looks like? I am for crap. I am a crap dude at Describing Physical Things.
It is for illustrators or camera people to make the things look like things, you know? I tend to deal with personalities and ideas not... stuff.
I only have one idea long enough for a novel, anyway, and if I wrote it, I'd pretty much be declared crazy upon someone reading it. It would be all a court would need to put Mike in a wrap-around-coat with locks on the back.
It is about the CIA switching which assassins they send after John Lennon and Ronald Reagan, by the flip of a coin, and what the world looks like with Reagan iced and Lennon merely winged instead of vicey-vee.
Vonnegut and Philip K Dick build a last-ditch Fantastic Machine to try and save the Second American Revolution and it works in a way they did not intend, there is a janitor who falls sideways through time, an invisible train named The Thunderchild.
It is about mourning and what comes after mourning and how sometimes there is more hope for change in bald-faced despair as opposed to the sickly sweet gloss of an Age of Tightly Supressed Horrors, such as is our time.
It would prove I was crazy, even if I COULD describe objects.
-
damn. at this point in my life, I would love if I even knew what my "dream" was.
-
I finished my degree last year and last week I started my first 'real' full time, honest to god 9 to 5 job.
I love the fuck out of this.
I am in a lab all day, working as a team on a project, I'm low on the food chain but I can actually give input to the project. At the same time have my share of just crap I do each day and I don't have to take anything home with me that I don't want to. Fan-freaking-tastic.
Until last week I was working at a petrol station and I this job is easier (and better) and it's purely because
a) I know my hours
b) I like my co-workers
c) I like what I'm doing
That said I'm working as part of research group so even though I'm getting paid I'm part of the oft despised realm of 'academia' and the people I am working around are lifelong academics and students which I think creates a bit of a different environment.
Then again ask again me in a few weeks.
-
In like 1st or 2nd grade I remembering being on the playground and all the guys wishing that we could just look at boobs all day for a living. I totally should have been more specific, because while that's what I do now it is not very exciting.
-
1st or 2nd grade? Wow. I totally thought boobs were gross at that age.
...actually, I probably thought they were perfectly normal and natural. That's the kind of hippy garbage my parents taught me as a kid.
-
Boobs were always awesome.
I never had a "girls are yucky" phase. I had crushes in kindergarten and they never stopped.
I pretended to be a little bit of a "girls are yucky" kid to try and fit in more with my peers but, as with all things with kids, when you fake something to fit in, kids smell your fear and reject you.
I also had a pretend imaginary friend. Like I pretended to have an imaginary friend because I thought that would cause adults to think I was less weird. This set the standard for the rest of my life.
-
yeah, I mean, that's actually the case. Now that I think about it, I totally tried to smooch girls in kindergarden.
they didn't have boobs then, though. I don't remember my opinion on boobs.
I had an imaginary friend, though.
-
1st or 2nd grade? Wow. I totally thought boobs were gross at that age.
...actually, I probably thought they were perfectly normal and natural. That's the kind of hippy garbage my parents taught me as a kid.
I don't think any of us liked girls, we just knew that boobs were awesome and whoever created Playboy was the greatest man who ever lived.
-
Even weirder was when my younger brother caught on to what I was doing and made up a FAKE pretend imaginary friend, so as to make fun of what I was up to in front of the adults. It was as though the Earth was standing atop a turtle and it was turtles all the way down.
-
I sold my imaginary friend on eBay.
As for my dreams, I had parents who told me that I could basically do whatever the hell I wanted, no matter what anyone else said.
This makes my dealings with certain, more regimented types... difficult. They don't quite understand how I am going to pull off this whole "write because I can do it without making crap" thing. They don't get why I am not living on the street on welfare, seeing as I didn't even technically graduate Highschool.
It's sort of scary that I might be living my life just to spite that nice jewish honor student girl who told me that I CAN'T do things my way, that I have to do it the normal way.
-
What does her ethnicity or religion have to do with it?
-
Or gender, for that matter.
-
Because I really really like nice jewish girls. I have a sarah silverman crush.
-
Because I really really like nice jewish girls. I have a sarah silverman crush.
Crap, that's the oxymoron siren!
-
If it makes you feel any better, the one time I had to deal with Ms. Silverman in the course of my job, she was neither a loud baudy tomboy nor an actually-quite-sweet normal person. She was your standard vaguely-pleasant-but-completely-aloof rich actress lady with a little yippy dog.
-
By nice I mean doable.
-
oh my god, Sarah Silverman. Holy fuck. Yes.
-
She is hot, yeah, but significantly less in person.
When divested of her swarthy-tomboy public persona, she is another pretty lady who is probably too skinny to be able to menstruate. Attractive, definitely, but... without the attitude, it is diminished.
-
mets, you got some high standards.
-
Comedians are mostly people who often sad on the inside.
I would make her happy.
Inside.
-
mets, you got some high standards.
It isn't high standards.
It is that, in person, she is way too thin and has a cliche little yippy dog.
In person, she is Basically Every Actress.
Her persona is ten hells of hot, there is no question. On the television or in the movies, as the swarthy-tomboy with Crazy Opinions, I would totally be All Up Ons too. Her persona is the rudest.
But her persona ain't her. That's all.
-
[Master Thespian]ACTING!!![/Master Thespian]
-
Pretty much the one kind of writing I have never tried is The Novel.
I have burned and disavowed more songs, screenplays, short stories, poems, essays and stage plays than many people who are Paid for It write in their entire lives and yet... The Novel seems so daunting. So... fuckin'... BIG, you know?
Plus you have to DESCRIBE so many physical things. Evoking, extrapolating, what people say, what people think, these are things I am Pretty Good At as a writer. But physically describing what something looks like? I am for crap. I am a crap dude at Describing Physical Things.
It is for illustrators or camera people to make the things look like things, you know? I tend to deal with personalities and ideas not... stuff.
I only have one idea long enough for a novel, anyway, and if I wrote it, I'd pretty much be declared crazy upon someone reading it. It would be all a court would need to put Mike in a wrap-around-coat with locks on the back.
It is about the CIA switching which assassins they send after John Lennon and Ronald Reagan, by the flip of a coin, and what the world looks like with Reagan iced and Lennon merely winged instead of vicey-vee.
Vonnegut and Philip K Dick build a last-ditch Fantastic Machine to try and save the Second American Revolution and it works in a way they did not intend, there is a janitor who falls sideways through time, an invisible train named The Thunderchild.
It is about mourning and what comes after mourning and how sometimes there is more hope for change in bald-faced despair as opposed to the sickly sweet gloss of an Age of Tightly Supressed Horrors, such as is our time.
It would prove I was crazy, even if I COULD describe objects.
Dude, who says all novels have to describe shit? Write your novel without describing any things in it. It will be awesome.
-
Oh totally. Like Marguerite Duras. Her novels were these mind-boggling cyclic things with almost no description, mostly dialogue... and frankly, mostly the same banal dialogue over and over again but with a slight difference, like he faced West once and East another time, yadda yadda. It was the birth of the New Novel movement (Le Nouveau Roman) in French literature, and everyone went ape. It was a pack of clove cigarettes in literary form.
Personally, I hate Hate Haaaaaaaaate her work. But you know, maybe I'm just not erudite enough. :) That said, too much description makes me want to kill people: e.g. Steinbeck. I loved the idea behind what he wrote, and why he wrote it, and why his work is important. But his work itself... all that description made me hate being alive, hate people, and seriously consider taking up cutting.
Incidentally, lfm, you've probably already heard of this but if you haven't, this may help you get over your novel anxiety: NaNoWriMo (http://www.nanowrimo.org/), because its focus is process over product.
And as an aside... based on the description you gave, (a) I would totally read your novel, and (b) I think I love you.
-
and (b) I think I love you.
MOF, either you've got a whole lotta love to spread around, or else you say that to all the dudes.
-
you hate Steinbeck? Really? Damn. I haven't read him in a while, but when I read a bunch of his stuff a few years ago I loved it to death.
-
Steinbeck. I loved the idea behind what he wrote, and why he wrote it, and why his work is important. But his work itself... all that description made me hate being alive, hate people, and seriously consider taking up cutting.
Steinbeck's writing made you hate being alive, hate people, and seriously consider taking up cutting? I didn't even think he was terribly, terribly wordy. I'd say enjoy your Hemingway, but with the chance you are taking with your literature, you might want to stick to appliance manuals.
-
I love the general stories Dickens wrote, you know, the plots?
And I despite his fuckin' writing style. So... much... pointless fuckin'... description.
That is the problem you get when you are serialized and paid by the word.
"And the clouds... the clouds hung low and gray in the sky like... loosely-formed gorilla turds."
JESUS.
-
LFM, and you say you can't describe things?
-
I'm currently on my second life cycle.
All through high school I was convinced I would be an architect because I loved buildings and constructions and all of that, and then I take my first architecture course and find out that I fuck*ng hate drawing all that shit. Whoops. Luckily I went to a state college with a bunch of friends (Auburn) and not a private one further away with no one I knew (Washington U), because it was my first experience dealing with something I Had To Handle On My Own. I ended up with a degree in Geography, because it was (and still is) fascinating to me. I even got an internship one summer and loved what I was doing. I was going to go to grad school and everything.
And then... I didn't. I got a MCSE and an IT job, like everyone else that year, and made okay money doing a job that was challenging and sometimes enjoyable when I got to learn something new. As the learning and problem solving opportunities dwindled and the dealing with angry secretaries who call me to their desk whenever Word crashes even though there's nothing I can fuck*ng do about it opportunities increased, I started hating it. I was working the helpdesk phones and it happened. I just decided that being comfortable wasn't worth hating my life for 9-12 hours a day.
Two months later I started my first class at a second school, learning skills I'd never even considered before, in a strange town that I didn't like, but loving every second of it. Classwork wasn't tedious, it was a step towards Doing What I Wanted. Working 90 hours a week on projects didn't bother me that much. I even met someone really special and fell in love for the first time in my life.
So now I'm living in a town that costs twice as much and making half the money, and I don't know how long finances will hold up, but I love what I do. And if I could get a loan (I have great credit but a lousy salary) I'd be buying a place. I'm actually excited about getting into work tomorrow.
I guess what I'm saying is that life with a goal is pretty good, whether you're in school or working, and if your goal is "making money" that doesn't really count. Now is almost always a safer time to take a risk than later. If I'd tried what I'm doing now instead of working in IT I might very well have made a fortune. Or I might not have, but I wouldn't feel like I'd wasted a few years in a crap job.
And also, if you have to move away from someone you love, do what you can to rectify that situation immediately, or you'll get "comfortable" living apart and stop working towards reuniting. You don't have as much time in the future as you think you do... and sometimes a car crash on the other side of the country can change your life forever.
Regret's a bitch. Don't let it happen.
-
Dude, who says all novels have to describe shit? Write your novel without describing any things in it. It will be awesome.
This sounds like good advice. On the other hand, does the world really need more novels? Maybe you can have a better idea. Something people might actually read.... like, hmm, messageboard posts? Wait, I'll have to get back to you on this...
-
It probably won't assuage your fears when I tell you that less than an hour ago I was sitting in front of my computer thinking, "I really wish I was back in Weinstein again."
And I haven't lived there since 1992.
-
Thanks for the welcome!
Sadly, things change a lot at A-CAP in a very short period of time (you can't go home again). When I was there, they had maybe a third to a half as many dorms as they do now; I had to look up Lafayette just now to even see where it was (well, where on Lafayette it was, anyway). At the time, Weinstein was the only A-CAP dorm with a soul, and you could go to the cafeteria at 7:30 in the morning in your robe and slippers when it was 15o outside with a foot of snow and everyone else had to walk three blocks over from Brittany. And, hell, Brittany didn't even have air conditioning, the savages.
Plus, on my very first day freshman year, I had an 8:30 class in the Main Building. I overslept and woke up at 8:26. Yet I made it to class on time. That's when i knew Weinstein was the coolest dorm around.
All that "first-year residential experience" BS hadn't been instituted yet; you had "dorm-style" and "apartment-style", pick one, and stay as long as you want.
Okay, now I'm depressed.
Well, more depressed than usual.