78uuu lumière des étoiles

Dusty:Starlight:Culture



We do what we do
2005-02-01   8:50 a.m.

How sad it is, how sad you are, when you find out your precious unique idea has been done a million times over. How terrible, too, when an editor points this out in a curt and antagonistic email. I'm choking on the publish or perish pressure that my career choices have immersed me in. That said, I do believe I'm included in The McNeese Review's upcoming journal issue. Apparently my discussion of multi-cultural feminist teaching, no matter how contrived I thought it was, was well liked. You're just so damn impressed, I know. Me too.

I was sitting, considering this, at a v.-important-meeting yesterday where some people were allowed to yell and some people were only allowed to smile, nod, and be as compliant as possible. "You're a moron" and "I want to smash your face in" don't really bode well coming out of a bunny rabbit's mouth.

Cause that's what I am, a bunny rabbit. I can hold my own, bouncing happily, but if attacked, I'm pretty low on the food chain, without too many defenses, so I must be watchful and quick, always considering my survival, having to work with my ability to foresee danger or out-strategize potential harm.

Is this my life? Our jobs define us, no? Prestigious, yes. Impressive, yes. Intimidating enough to make gross men stop hitting on you in bars when they finally squeeze out of you what you do for a living, yes. Comfy, no. Stable, are you kidding?

"What an interesting life you have," some one way older said to me during the intermission of a play. "I was a career girl too, you know."

"Interesting", I said, "doesn't exactly describe how it feels to work without benefits". This, of course, I said with bitterness as at the time, I'd had to shell out $290 for malaria prophylaxes while my traveling partner, in all his HMO-provided glory, paid a mere $20. But I was too harsh, I reacted too quickly. Interesting indeed describes the range of human experience I've been able to observe these past few years, working with students and colleagues always in transition, pulling bits of this and that and turning them into lessons about humanity or language, philosophy or behavior at my fancy.

After the intermission ended, the phrase rolled over and over and over in my head, because it's so dated and archaic. Career girl. How hard it was to be such in certain times. How limited my possibilities would have been at one time - how much I would have had to struggle just to afford the luxury of my career and all that I do to keep on top of it. What I have had to do to keep on top of it doesn't include scrubbing stairs or emptying garbage cans during all night shifts, and for this I'm lucky. Though as I began it most definitely included waiting tables, this was still just a wise choice I made, and not out of total necessity - I was supported tremendously by scholarships and grants and the shelter of my parents' house as I was completing what was necessary to be hired for the work I do now.

So despite my grumblings and bitchings and my keeping a watchful eye on my union's doings and plans for my and other worker-bees' security, I can now understand that what I do qualifies as interesting, and qualifies me as lucky, as that older, perhaps wiser woman once said to me before I could appreciate it. At the end of the v.-important-meeting, I didn't feel so small, I in fact felt lucky once again, appreciative that pushing my thirties, I've still managed to escape that "daily grind" feeling, that "my work is worthless" feeling, that "I exist only to make my boss richer" feeling that so many people I love seem to suffer from. My world is a collage, it's fragmentary, it's different each day but then holistically, dramatically different every four months. The challenge is infinite, and though I'm not often appreciated in the capitalist sense of the definition, I feel validated and vindicated because what I do feeds and drives me, and because I am actually happy that what I do defines part of who I am.

And as for that capitalist validation - watching incoming earnings statements and gathering them together for the accountant reveal that I still am the top income earner, despite the stability of my husband's job. How interesting to consider that I have built levels of stability for myself rather than falling into it via a job description.

Feh, all this talk about stability, which so often truly means monotony, when one thinks about it, does set my mind reeling for other places, namely Peru. My Spanish is TERRIBLE, so this, between writing etc., is what I have to spend time on.

What I'm spending time on now, though, is listing other places I want to go. How I wish I could be in Addis Ababa for the celebration of Bob Marley's birthday. I'm a fan, sure, but what a dream it would be to be so immersed in celebratory, self-sustaining community for so long, to write and create at leisure, and not take into consideration submission guidelines or format or conference agendas or editor's little sarcastic death threats.

Do you love your life? I decided that there's no reason not to, no matter how much we think it sucks.

xox