The following took place within an hour of us meeting.
Him, joining a conversation already in progress: Oh really? When did you go to Niagara Falls?
Me, deadpanning: My honeymoon.
Him: . . .
Me: I’m kidding. It was Family Vacation, 1994.
Him: Well, it was a popular honeymoon destination for a while!
Well, this was supposed to be more thoughtful and much less slapdash, write-something-before-I-fall-asleep-like, but Lori e-mailed me a question about wine and I had to write back a tome with more disclaimers than actual recommendations, but my gosh I feel it is my duty to counteract the unfortunate damage done to Merlot’s reputation, thanks to that horrid, horrid (though thoroughly entertaining) movie. Merlot is lovely! There are some terrific merlots out there! Find one! Love one!
Anyway.
Five years ago today, I began my first Real Job. One with a salary and a health plan and paid vacation days and everything. I was thinking this would be a two-year gig. They made me an offer requiring a three year commitment. OK, three years it is! I’d been planning on taking a leisurely vacation between school and starting work, because when would I ever have the time again? They pushed to get me in the door ASAP, so in less than three weeks I found an apartment to sublet, landed a roommate to look for a permanent place with, packed up and moved halfway across the country. I didn’t do any real work until August, and I still haven’t made it to Puerto Rico for two weeks on the beach. Let that be a lesson: Forget work; take the damn vacation.
Obviously, my three years have turned into five, and every day I worry that 25 years from now I’ll be telling you about the lovely plaque they gave me at my retirement party, along with the touching tributes and the congratulatory sheet cake from Costco. That, I fear, is The Inevitable. Or one of the potential inevitables in my life.
And, in a move that does absolutely nothing to prevent that inevitability from occurring, nor does it further my goal of returning to the East Coast, they just offered me a promotion. And I accepted. Because when it comes to managing my career, I have a mantra, and that mantra is: If Someone Hands You a Promotion and Throws More Money at You for Doing Essentially the Same Amount of Work, Take It. I think I picked that one up from Dale Carnegie, but you’re welcome to it.
The long and short of it, then, is that despite all of my efforts to change things, The Universe has spoken: I am apparently doing what I am supposed to be doing right now. And I’m OK with that pretending to be OK with that. I don’t have time for Puerto Rico these days, but a case of Merlot should help the cause.
Oh, suburbs, how I hate thee.
With your low-density housing,
asphalt-paved boulevards
and endless strip malls.
I curse the need to drive everywhere,
the utter lack of public transportation.
Or sidewalks, even.
The abundant new construction,
cookie-cutter houses, and scrawny trees
make my heart weep.
But, damn, do I like being able to run four errands over my lunch hour.
You know, if you don’t want to run again, I respect that. But if you don’t run because you think it’s gonna be too hard or you think you’re gonna lose, well, God, Jed, I don’t even want to know you.
A while back I had dinner with my friend Danielle and, as we put back a bottle of wine, we discussed our respective career plans and personal life exploits and hatched plots to Escape from
Of course, in looking ahead to the future, we also analyzed the past — what worked, what didn’t, how we ended up where we are. About her selection of undergrad majors, she said, “Everyone said it was hard, so I was going to do it.”
And in that one moment, our eight years of friendship suddenly made a lot more sense.
I don’t know that I choose things simply because they’re hard, but I certainly don’t shy away from things that are challenging. (See, e.g.,: moving to
I really don’t mind new challenges, but what is driving me nuts is the seeming endlessness of the quest. The pursuit of a goal, without any intermediate victories to sustain me, my god, it is soul-sucking. It makes me question whether the pain is really worth it. It makes me wonder if I shouldn’t stop with the banging-head-against-a-brick-wall lifestyle.
I expressed some of my doubts to Danielle, explained why my pursuits are nearly in vain, why perhaps I should focus on a slightly more attainable goal — like single-handedly curing cancer — rather than continue headlong down this endless path of futility, how I have to come to terms with the fact that maybe things aren’t going to work out for me like I want them to.
She looked at me, and asked pointedly, “But you’re not giving up, right?”
And the thing is, for all my doubts (not doubts in my abilities, mind you, doubts that The Universe will come through for me) and all my pragmatic thinking and the reminders that maybe I won’t get what I want, I.Will.Not.Give.Up.
So. What’s next?
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