A microphone, a stage, and 5 minutes. In a room full of fellow losers.
Does that sound great, or what?
I just received this invitation for a party, in a bar, in Chicago.
Unfortunately, I’m so perfectly qualified to attend that I can’t go, because I failed either to live in Chicago or to have enough money for a plane ticket.
My husband and I finally had an argument over this whole job thing last night… sort of remarkable, really, that it took us this long.
We are supposed to make our final decision about the new job today, and The Mid-Level Guy (T.M.L.G.) was supposed to get back to us yesterday morning with his counter-offer.
By 9 pm. last night we’d not heard a word, and began making plans about how to handle his silence. Tensions were a wee bit high.
We finally got T.M.L.G’s email at about 11 pm… no, he hadn’t heard yet from his superiors with the money part, but hey, before? When he said pretty dismissively that he couldn’t do anything for The Wife? Turns out maybe he could get Almostgotit a very low level, very poorly paid secretarial job in his own Development office after all, which could be a great entree into Development in general, which we all know is a growing and lucrative field.
Yes I do know, says I, to Mr. Almostgotit. And I’m trying very hard to appreciate his efforts.
But might I point out, says I additionally, That it’s the other city’s highest level Development/Advancement people (among others) who are calling me directly, on the phone (not just sending emails via my husband) and talking to me about writing and PR jobs in Development — instead of ignoring my updated resume altogether and offering an entry-level clerical job instead, citing my fracking “organizational skills?!?”
All else being truly equal, we both would rather stay in Tennessee, but
No one will ever just hand you a job, says Mr. A. You’ve got to try harder, or get another degree.
Maybe, counters I. But lots of people, especially those not occupying your own particular little part of the world, would say instead that the best way to get jobs is though connections, And how crazy am I to turn my back on this only time, ever, that so many people are going to bat for me, in the other city, right now??
(Besides, I add, much later. Besides. How can you say I haven’t tried??)
The man here is trying, says Mr. A. We should consider his offer. He’s right about it being an entree…
No, says I. If I wanted that kind of job, I could get one on my own. There are a million of them at The Institution that Shall not Be Named ( TITSNOB. *) Thank T.M.L.G for me, of course, but I am a terrible, terrible secretary. And I know exactly the job he’s talking about… I used to bring my paperwork to that person, buried in a basement office in a sea of filing cabinets and paperwork. That’s all she did. I’d die there. I’d DIE.
If you could get one of those jobs on your own, why haven’t you, says Mr. A.
Because I haven’t applied for any of those jobs, says I, a wee bit too loudly. And if I did want to be a secretary, I’d certainly not be one at TITSNOB, as the standard pay elsewhere in Knoxville is almost twice as much. I know, because I’ve looked into it, several times.
If we want to stay here, we need to find out more about the job, at least, says Mr. A. Do you even KNOW what you want?
Some, says I, voice stupid and wobbly. I know some of what I want. And I know I don’t want to be a secretary.
This isn’t just any secretarial job, says Mr. A., but could lead to higher things…
No it won’t, says I. It won’t. Name one secretary at TITSNOB who has ever gone on to other things, beyond more responsible secretarial jobs? Besides, there is so much paperwork at that place that I’d never have time for anything else. The world needs paperwork people, TITSNOB needs more than most, and some people are satisfied being paperwork people. Many paperwork people are delightful, but for me those jobs are a DISASTER.
Slight rolling of the eyes from Mr. A.
I’m not just being dramatic, or snotty, says I. I’ve failed in four clerical jobs, remember, and grown past them in any case? I keep wanting to push the envelope. I find the work-arounds that work better. I get in trouble in clerical jobs. I’m one of those people that OTHER job ads ask for: “A self-starter,” and that is exactly what TITSNOB does not want in its secretaries. I know that better than anyone else — remember?!?
We both have very mixed feelings, and clearly we are both a little whacky. But how I would love to thumb my nose at TITSNOB and ride the hell out of town without looking back. And how delicious it would be for everyone here to know that the deciding factor in our leaving was the great job someone else just gave to his wife — the formerly-known-pain-in-the-butt we call ”Almostgotit.”
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*Re TITSNOB: No, the acronym doesn’t really work, but that’s okay because TITSNOB doesn’t really work either.
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** Re Penelope Trunk: This post isn’t, strictly, like one of Penelope Trunk’s, because (a) I got my husband’s permission to talk about our argument and (b) I did not mention anyone’s genitalia, shaved or otherwise.
Proposed:
Very few of us will do the right thing, economically, unless we have to do it.
Doing the right thing because we have to do it still can be a positive experience.
Both Republicans (situationally) and Democrats (legislatively) believe in forcing people to do the right thing.
Republicans and Democrats take turns being right — and catastrophically wrong.
Maybe there are few definitive solutions at all.
Maybe there are more solutions than we can imagine.
Maybe most of us are getting poorer.
Maybe that doesn’t matter as much as we think it does.
Maybe we can’t make money doing the things that we love.
Maybe that will break our hearts.
Or maybe that will force us to discover how to love what we do, instead.
Maybe we’ll do everything right and still fail.
Maybe we’ll make one mistake after another and turn out just fine.
In one of my stupider moments, I agreed to be a block representative for our homeowner’s association. No one else would do it, and mostly all I’ve had to do is go to very boring meetings.
But a few days ago, a neighbor began circulating a petition for our block of homeowners to secede from the rest of the neighborhood. Turns out this man is not in fact a homeowner, has never been to a neighborhood meeting, never shown at work parties, never contributed money, and never bothered to get any of his facts straight.
Most of us had never even met him before,either. I spoke to him at length, could get nothing out of the whiny little man that made any sense, and concluded he couldn’t do much harm.
I was wrong.
As the day progressed, I became increasingly amazed at how much havoc one person could cause. He brilliantly found the people who were most ready to take offense, most likely to listen to his irrational arguments and half-truths, most eager to hear and even help him spread rumors of who was insulting whom, and which group had conspired against which other.
I pondered an appropriate response, and finally sent around a letter. I didn’t mention the man or his petition, only re-introduced myself. Said I was available. Mentioned some great things about both our block AND our neighborhood. All better now, right?
Wrong again.
The man came to my door. “Everyone” had told him to talk to me. “Everyone” demanded $500 to fix a vague something he could provide no further details about. But he had “letters,” he said. He invited me to come up to his house to listen to the 17 angry messages on his answering machine (I declined.) The “11 people” who first asked him to be their spokesman? Too afraid to tell anyone their names because of what might happen to them if they do.
Oh. Bloody. Hell.
After about the tenth round of “everyone is pissed off” I finally used his name very deliberately (own it YOURSELF, jerk-face, and no more of this “everyone” crap) and said X, *you* are pissing *me* off, and I think we’re done talking. He was taken aback, but quickly rallied and triumphantly declared that now he would add “The NEIGHBORHOOD says our block is pissing them off!!!!” to his list of grievances he would be reporting back to “everyone.”
And darned if he didn’t, the little cockroach, wreaking even more havoc.
The worst was the woman who called me in full attack mode. I was so dumb-founded by her unrelenting nastiness that I couldn’t even hang up on her. I had a relationship with this woman. She’s a little silly, sure, but she’s also all alone so I’ve taken the time to tour her silly little garden, coo over her silly little dog.
In the wake of all this drama, for the past several days I have worked almost non-stop at researching and compiling a handy and fact-filled “Neighborhood Q&A.” (AKA “Chill, yo.”)
I’ve rewritten nearly every word. I’ve shortened, sharpened, considered and reconsidered. I’ve read bits aloud to myself. I’ve moved large pieces back and forth, deleted them, rewritten them. It seems a little obsessive, but also seemed truly necessary. Writing it out has settled and refocused me. I feel more like the words are making me than I them. They have been my best friends. They’ve put me back together, held me up and re-energized me.
They are strong, true, simple, tough words now (also a tiny bit funny) and they are finally done. 13 pages, 40 copies. Attached to 40 copies of the neighborhood bylaws.
It goes in all their boxes tomorrow. And then? To hell with it. My neighbors are either going to knock it off or I am going to resign. We’re going to get THIS failure over with as fast as possible.
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. ~Thomas Edison
Try again. Fail again. Fail better. ~Samuel Beckett
One fails forward toward success. ~Charles F. Kettering
With our eldest finishing his second week at college, we are all quickly getting our first college failures out of the way. This is good news. It’s good to fail as quickly as you can, to learn as quickly as you can, too.
For instance: we thought we could manage without his having a cell phone. I hate cell phones on a visceral level, and they are bloody expensive, besides. And didn’t *I* manage college without having a cell phone?
But it turns out that our son does need a cell phone. Moreover, his parents need him to have a cell phone. Our 18-year-old has not yet activated the phone in his room, nor does he regularly check his email, nor does he write letters, either. Too busy, too overwhelmed, too inexperienced, too new? Whatever the reasons, we’ve been largely out of contact with him for these very important first few weeks of his college experience, and guess what? There have been some problems. Together, the three of us have failed to manage that much separation, all at once, this soon in the “growing up and leaving home” process.
Furthermore, all of his friends arrange their meals and other social activities together by cell phone. (Or on Facebook, but you can only go into so much detail with so much efficiency on Facebook. )
Turns out, too, that cell phones are herding devices, serving the same function as the call of migrating geese, who honk constantly back and forth in order to organize themselves in proper V-formation.
Who knew? We only learned all this, about cell phones, by failure.
I also learned (again) that my own successful experience (going to college without a cell phone) does not necessarily make me an expert about someone else’s experience. The problem is that I was successful in college without a cell phone. All of us were, back then, of course. But things are different now, and consequently my husband and I had something new to learn, right along with our son.
But we had to fail, first, in order to learn it.
Mikael Rudolph is a college buddy of mine. That was back in the stone age, but even then he was a fabulous mime. Come to think of it, that’s also probably when he got so good at taming rocks — but more about that in a minute.
Mikael is also a cancer survivor, having had a fairly miraculous cure of a tumor that appeared in a rather undignified location, and as a result is currently writing a play called (ahem) Cancer, My Ass.
You may not have heard of Mikael, but I bet you’ve heard of the world’s most famous mime,Marcel Marceau. Marceau once said of Mikael that ”In this style… he is a master. Absolutely. It could not have been done any better.”
I KNOW. Wow, right?
But mimes don’t get no respect, and Mikael wanted me to share what he CLAIMS to be a possibly-fictional tale of his disastrous journey to Chicago to audition for an “America’s Got Talent” casting director.
REJECTION. Oh, if only he had bouncing breasts, was married to someone who bites the heads off of live bats, or had apprenticed with Donald Trump.
But here: judge for yourself, and don’t miss the pet rock.
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Related post:
Once Several Times Upon a Mattress
We’re back from our vacation, but I accidentally shut one of our two cats in our bedroom for the entire week we were gone. He’s fine, but our bedroom is not. Imagine what a cat can do, over and over, in seven days. We’ve hauled the mattress into the yard just to get the smell out of our house.
That awful odor speaks more eloquently of squalor and general, personal failure than anything else I know.
Quite a contrast with the borrowed place we stayed in Oregon: a large, airy home with spotless floors and everything perfectly in place. An enormous, fully-equipped kitchen. A triple garage, no oil stains, holding neat rows of sporting equipment: cross country and downhill skis, bicycles, golf gear, a nice boat.
Photos of a happy, athletic family pose on nightstands next to large beds in huge bedrooms, each room decorated according to a theme – golfing. Skiing. Black bears. Pine trees.
Not a single cat, though.
No fluffs of cat hair, either. Also, no random piles of stuff, no old kitchen with chipped counters and divots in the floor. No junk in the laundry room, and certainly no actual laundry — just an expanse of gleaming, maple cabinets holding a very clean box of detergent, a box of trash bags, and one neat little paper bag with crisp-folded cuff to catch the non-existent dryer lint.
Even more amazing was the discovery, in the kitchen, of several half-consumed chocolate bars, foil wrapping neatly folded over the uneaten portions, as well a HALF-EATEN box of expensive chocolates in one of the perfectly-organized kitchen drawers. Which finally proved, of course, that the homeowners are actually ALIENS.
Ah well.
We can’t afford a new mattress. We’ve already over-extended ourselves this summer, assuming I’d have a job by now. And to think I used to teach financial planning.
Today I called a friend, needing to confess that I have a foul mattress in my yard and no, we didn’t get to the dump with it this morning as planned, so we will have a mattress in our yard forEVER now, probably. Inevitably to be joined, soon, by a nasty old couch. Yes, she agreed gravely, but your need to add a couple of dirty, barefoot children running around in diapers and snotty noses.
We both suffer from severe middle-class anxiety, you see. Certain that we’re each about to slip down to an Unacceptable Class of Human at any minute — if we haven’t already – we expect the news to arrive shortly in some horrible letter.
My friend bravely concluded that tenement living really isn’t that bad.
Another dear friend, feeling a bit more constructive, said she wishes she could fly here from Michigan and help me clean the stinky room and set the contents on fire in the backyard, but
Is your neighborhood zoned for cat pee bonfires?
Therapy for three, please. Preferably with some chocolate-abstaining, wealthy athletes in Oregon.
