Perpetually Saturday

“And Who Are You?”

In Italy, the first question you will get asked at a party is, “How old are you?” It’s not considered a rude question at all. It’s not equivalent to asking a woman’s dress size, how much money is in your bank account, or if you get regular plastic surgery. In fact, the question gets asked with such a bright-eyed sincerity of interest that you can’t help but answer, as if the answer is nothing to you. If you’re under 35, the answer most likely is nothing to you.

Of course, the first question people ask you in America is, “What do you do?”

We don’t know how to interact with a stranger until we know this answer. And I’d venture to say that we don’t often ask it with a sincerity of interest. We ask it with a tad bit of statusing (it’s no wonder that Facebook, an American invention, would have “status updates”).

I think one of the hardest things to be in this country is a person without a job. Should you ever be out with people who do actually go to an office, a cubicle, a workplace on a daily basis, and another person comes up to you, it’s tough to be without the answer to “What do you do?”

You could try and steer the conversation in another direction: “I don’t think that waiter should be on fire, do you?”

Or you could try and dig into some depth by sharing a piece of yourself with that person. You could say, “I’m taking some time off to figure out what I really want to be doing with my life. Find those things that fulfill me. Inspire me. Feed my soul.” (The person listening to this will respond with one of three things: 1. “Wow, you’re really brave.” 2. “I wish I could do that.” 3. “Is that waiter on fire?”)

In America, we think that the answer to what we do defines who we are. It’s our commodity. It’s the thing we can sell to other people to buy their interest in us, or to fill up that sense that we have success because we have status. (How very American of us to add a level of capitalism to our personal lives like this.) Ask any retiree, or any stay-at-home mom what kinds of interest they generate from others when they answer what they do all day and you’ll see what I mean about how our jobs define us, and how not having a job relegates us to being as interesting to others as micro-economics classes are to art students.

In Italy, one of the rudest questions you can ask someone is, “What do you do?” An Italian will look at you hurt and surprised that such a thing would even come out of your mouth so smoothly like that. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners? “Why do you want to know?” they’ll ask before the once delightful and pleasant conversation comes to a dead stop.

It’s as if the question doesn’t really attempt to get at the heart of anyone.

Ode to Youth

I remember being a student. Although, I think I remember it more fondly now than it actually was then.

Still.

I remember sitting in coffee shops with my nose two inches away from an open library book with my notepad next to me as I furiously took notes. Or, sitting with classmates around a large wooden table with our coffees in front of us as we attempted to study. Usually my classmates were people in which the only thing we had in common was the class we were taking and a need to pass it.

Lately, I see students out and about, all fresh-faced and eager. Preparing for what’s next. Thinking that whatever they are working on is the most singularly important thing in the world. No one has ever read the passage the way they have. No one has ever gained the kind of insight they are gaining. No one can make sense of this particular concept because it’s ridiculous, immature, nonsensical and confusing.

There’s a little piece of me that wishes I was still a student with my books and my classes and the pressure to learn more, study more, write more, read more.

Mostly, I wish I still had that feeling that everything I was doing was awesome, delicious and life-changing.

I look at kids in bars, in coffee shops, around the University District and I love their optimism that they are going to be different than the generation before them, different than their parents. Just different. They will have this amazing job right out of college that will pay them six figures and show that stupid English teacher that no, you really don’t need to know the difference between its and it’s because that’s what an assistant is for. Thank you very much.

The first job hasn’t happened yet. Parents are still footing the bill. No loans have come due yet. Friendships are still forever. The dreams are being formed. The details figured out. The expectations are still high.

I love that cockiness. I love that belief that the world is full of potential and opportunity. And that sincere belief that we are all capable of making the world exactly as we want it to be. What could possibly ever prevent it?

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

Ring! Ring! Your Future is Calling

I’ve been afraid of the phone before. Refusing to answer it. Putting it on mute so I won’t be tempted. Leaving it at home so that if someone does call, I’ll know in my own sweet time.

My phone will be the means of finding out information that I’m not exactly sure I want right now.

Having left my job, I jumped right in to the job market and interviewed for another job within a week. Just like you need to process and figure out why any relationship didn’t work out, you need to do this about leaving your work behind too. What exactly happened there?

Instead of dwelling about this and finding answers, I’ve been revising my resume, setting up interviews, sending links to work I’ve done, going to offices and sitting across from people at big tables to talk about “what I’ve done up to now.”

It all lead up to a phone interview last Thursday in which I discussed my past, my present, and what I wanted to do in my future. We talked about passion and accessibility and writing copy for a product so that other people would quickly understand and appreciate the product. We discussed five year plans and expectations and hopes.

And then we hung up. I haven’t heard a thing since.

Which in most ways is great. Except for the phone thing. I don’t want to answer it. I don’t want to know either way. I kind of like this unknowing because it still means that all things are possible. I can still work on my personal projects. I can still watch my stories in my slippers while eating bonbons. I can still apply for other jobs. I can imagine that each one of them is The One for Me.

When the phone rings, I don’t know what I’ll say. So maybe it’s best for now that it doesn’t ring. At least for another couple of days.

To Have or To Be, That Is My Question

I used to dream in Italian. Sadly, I wasn’t fluent in my dreams either. I spent my dream time trying to conjugate verbs. More specifically, I’d go over and over the verbs to be (essere) and to have (avere).

“Ho, Hai, Ha, Abbiamo, Avete, Hanno.” And with equal importance, I’d repeat, “Sono, Sei, è, Siamo, Siete, Sono.”

Over and over again so that “I have, You have, She has, We have, They have” flowed off my tongue just as easily as “I am, You are, He is, We are, They are.”

It wasn’t as if I was trying to create whole sentences so that I could one day say, “I am traveling to Italy with my boyfriend so that he can get a taste of the good life there.” Instead of my brain working out whole sentences, it was just focused on those two verbs.

For me, the question of to have and to be has always been at odds with each other. They compete for my attention in not just my dreaming life, but my waking one too. To have is about things, about materialism, about porcelain figurine collections and new cars and owning a house and 401k plans and health insurance and fabulous leather couches, new iPods and computers and big screen TVs.

I find this complicated. Like a goldfish, I think you should only have as many things as your bowl permits. If you need a storage space or a bigger house or apartment to store all your stuff, then it’s time to get rid of some of that extra stuff. Only… I really like having stuff. I like having books and comfortable furniture. I really like having a 401k plan.

But I really like to be, too. To be for me is about knowledge, insight, learning new things, going to have coffee and sitting for hours in a coffee shop, it’s about conversations with people, about education, culture, listening to music, watching movies, going on vacations. Being immersed in life and enjoying the now of it. This is less complicated. In fact, I have historically been really good at this one.

Years ago, my sister met a psychic and for Christmas that year, we all got the gift of going to this psychic, too. It was the year that we all learned a thing or two about our past lives. The psychic concentrated on the three that were supposed to be “informing” my present life. One: I was a scholar in the Middle Ages who had no material wealth, only a robe and an ability to sit around reading all day; two, I was a robber baron during the Industrial Revolution who made tons and tons of money, and had an enormous house with lots and lots of things in it; and, three, I was an inventor in the early part of the 20th century who created a revolutionary invention but was then screwed over by a group of rich greedy men in the patenting process (robber barons!!!).

Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress

See? I have a long-standing history with this dilemma and apparently I’m still being “informed” as I have a lot left to figure out. I’m either poor as a church mouse but highly educated (ahem), or rich beyond measure and an apparent bastard (damn it!).

I suspect a lot of this is about balance and trying to reach a happy medium between the two. Gray areas and balances are not my wheelhouse. But I’m trying. I tend to swing from one area (to have) to the next (to be) with gusto. It’s a little why my traveling has decreased but my comfortable furniture has increased. Both have occurred along the same timeline of my increased supply of technology devices and my decreased coffee shop time. I will admit that I have had a 401k for some time now and it has increased, too. Every so often I get a letter in the mail with my balance and for that moment, I’m pleased. Then I find my way back to the couch and read for a few hours.

A Languid, Drifting Thing? No Thanks.

Someone asked me this question once, “What would you do if you won the lottery and never had to worry about money again?” It was followed by, “There. Whatever your answer is, that’s what you should be doing.”

But I’m not completely sure that question is all-knowing in the end. I think it gives a hint toward the activity I might want to pursue, but I think the whole lottery thing throws me off. Having all the money I’ve ever wanted or needed is not an especially good thing. I think having to make money helps me strive.

I have a close friend who has so much money that she doesn’t have to work.

I have another close friend who was married to a man who made so much money that she didn’t have to work either.

Imagine this: never having to work.

Admittedly, I like this idea very, very much. It sounds really nice, doesn’t it?

But there’s something that work for pay does for me. It provides structure in my day: the time I leave for work and the time I come home; for some it provides a social network of friends and connections that they can use when they want to buy a house, say, or know of a really good dentist; work provides me with an income so I can go out to eat, pay my electric bill, or afford a Hawaiian vacation. And there’s something else that I’d venture to say work does not just for me, but for a lot of people: it gives a sense of purpose.

Granted, work isn’t the only means of finding purpose. Family or faith does that for people, too. But I’d say that for an American, work is the big definer of who we think we are. It’s the biggie. It’s a part of our getting-to-know-you questions. “What do you do for work?” new friends will ask us. And when we tell them, they say, “Well, that’s one way to make a living.” We even get a “cost of living” increase on our paychecks. The words work and living are almost synonymous.

Winning the lottery? It would almost be a curse. Of my two friends who don’t have to work, I would have to say that both of them seem a little lost. Without a need for money, they are on a permanent vacation: they can wake up whenever they’d like, they can do whatever they’d like. But in the end, sometimes that means that they might wake up at 11 in the late morning, go to bed at 2 in the early morning, and in between, they sit and watch TV all day. Without that monkey on their backs forcing them to make money, they are without a routine that drives them into action, into goals, into purpose.

It’s a little like Odysseus. There he is, the big hero returning from battle, heading home to his wife and kingdom. Along the way, he hears a siren song. He’s enchanted. He follows it. Up on the island, under Circe’s spell, his men turn to pigs. And he ends up flabby and suntanned. He has everything he needs brought to him. All his needs and wants are met. He doesn’t have to lift a finger. He languishes on that island because he isn’t doing the work he’s made for. The man is a soldier, a warrior, a king. He isn’t striving. He isn’t working. He basically isn’t himself anymore.

We all have something we’d like to be doing. Some of us even have gifts and talents that help point us along the path of what we should be doing. Little nuggets in us glow when we’ve come upon our purpose. We even know it when it’s happening: we feel good, we feel happy. Just like we know when it isn’t: we feel angry, we feel stressed. Those nuggets are in us so that we can answer a question like what would we do if we didn’t have to worry about money. That answer is still critical. It still shines a light. It still gives us a sense of what we might try, just for the heck of it. Just because it might lead to something else.

There’s something to figuring out what we want to do with the time we’re spending on this planet. Of finding the things that make our time feel worthwhile and significant. How we spend our time really is how we spend our lives. And as work usually gets about 8 hours from us every day, that’s a significant amount of our time being spent at something that should be at least be connected to what feels like purpose.

…It’s What Happens While You’re Busy Making Other Plans

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

I used to be able to sit in coffee shops all the time and write and write and write and write. The sounds of the espresso machine hissing away was nothing more than white noise. Little kids running around screaming “bla ba ba bla!” had no impact on me. Conversations at the next table just floated into one ear, hung around for a bit, and then moved on if there was no tidbit to hold on to. If there was a tidbit, I’d write it down.

I’ve discovered that my ability to sit and write in a coffee shop has greatly diminished over the years. I’m now easily distracted. I want to see everyone who comes in. I want to watch the kids with sticky hands try and touch their moms. I want to watch the older people stroll by on the sidewalk, one on a walker, the other leaning in to be a part of the conversation.

Sitting in an office for the last few years, away from a window, in front of a computer, I felt cooped up. Because of all the work that needed to get done—faster! faster!—I began to multitask, a misnomer if there ever was one. Check this. Look at that. Flip screens. Write this quick email. Respond to that request. Check that out again really quickly. Just a look.

As with most people who multitask, I found that the amount of tasks grew and widened but they never got finished. The faster and the more frequently I checked on things, the more I felt like I needed to stay put and keep checking on more things. I stayed at my desk more and more.

I began to joke that my body was becoming chair-shaped.

I ate lunch at my desk. If I left to go get a bowl of soup, I felt like I needed to get back immediately. And always, I felt this pressure to keep busy and keep checking and keep working. Even as I did this, I was aware that most of what I was working on didn’t warrant this kind of watchfulness and attention.

I know there are people out there who love what they do and will put in the hours, and the emotional and physical costs of their work, because they have a passion for what they’re doing. There are people who go to work everyday and just really like it. Or they really like the people they work with. I admire and envy those people: I want that in my life, too.

There are also the people out there who feel trapped in their work. They work long hours because they need the benefits. The health insurance. The money. For their families. For themselves. Or they work at something because they just don’t have the energy when they come home to find something else. I think all of us at one point in our lives have been this person: trapped, exhausted, stressed and unhappy.

It’s okay that I can’t write in coffee shops anymore. I can relearn it eventually, if need be. Right now, there’s so much happening at any one point and I don’t want to miss anything. I want to see it all. Take it all in. There’s a lot of life out there. A lot of conversations to have, a lot of coffee to drink, a lot of discoveries to make, a lot of sitting and watching what’s going on in the world. And when I’m done sitting? I’m going to get up, amble along and head off to the next point.

Day 11: And Now for Something Completely Different

I just got off the phone with my friend Rachel.

She thinks I should either become a personal trainer.

Or a cake decorator.

I’m pretty sure she was serious.

Day 9: It’s Probably Just Crazy Talk

Shortly after I stopped teaching English, I ended up temping at the Department of Printing for Washington state. The building was a large warehouse-like box with one wall of windows, and banks and banks of florescent lights. The space was divided into thirds: the first third housed the offices along the windows, reserved for the few managers and the one director of the department; the next third was the support staff stuffed into cubicles, with little personal effects on their desks like photos of kids and boyfriends; the last third contained the printing presses and the men who ran them, their ears covered by giant earphones, their eyes covered by safety goggles.

For three weeks I sat at a desk and moved papers from one pile into another pile. That’s all I did, all day long. I used to think that “Paper Shuffler” was just a term coined for an activity, not a person. But then I became that person.

After three weeks, they asked if I would like to stay on permanently. I was flattered. But I said no. The lack of direct sunlight, the industrial pounding of the presses, the over all sadness of working in an enormous cement box dimly lit by buzzing lights all contributed to my answer.

I suspected there was something better out there and I’d just temp my way along until I found it.

The other day Larry commented that most of his friends are unhappy in their work situations. He wondered if it was the economy. Perhaps employers don’t feel a need to compete in order to maintain a healthy and happy productive workforce. His comment makes me wonder if workplace discontent isn’t just a matter of the economy, but also a matter of generational divide.

Other generations felt that they were lucky to have a job and were grateful just to be working (talk to anyone who grew up during the Great Depression). The idea of an employer maintaining (let alone creating) an environment where employees felt challenged and excited by their work, inspired and supported by their colleagues and managers? Downright crazy talk.

Photo courtesy the Library of Congress

Both my grandfather and my father would be the ones at the Department of Printing working for 20 years with their goggles on, throwing their hands up in disgust at people like me who are looking for something more rewarding, more satisfying, more soul-enriching than moving paper from one pile to another. “It’s a job, isn’t it?” To them, you’re lucky to get a paycheck and you should be thanking your employer every day for it.

Maybe it is a luxury to be able to keep looking until you find a job that, at the end of the day, provides more than just a paycheck. After all, this repression we’re in is very real and has sent thousands and thousands of people to the unemployment line. Maybe it is asking too much to look for a company run by managers who see the value and importance of a healthy, happy and therefore productive workforce, a workforce that by-and-large enjoys their work beyond the paycheck. It does seem rather like a fantasy land at this point. Maybe I shouldn’t be looking for the next thing to be satisfying or even rewarding, let alone both. Maybe I should just be on the hunt for “something okay for now.” I don’t know yet. I really don’t. But it doesn’t hurt to look.

Day 6: Divine Time

In the last couple of days, two people have asked, “What gives me satisfaction in my work?”

It seemed serendipitous because neither of them know the other. Apparently, I’m supposed to be thinking about the answer to that question. Saying, “Paycheck” seems a little like saying “Fine” when someone asks you how you are. It’s expected. It’s perfunctory. It doesn’t really get to the meat of anything.

There’s a big, grand answer on the tip of my tongue; I just can’t get to it yet. But while my brain is working on The Answer, something small popped up and suggested that at least part of the answer might be found in something I started doing lately: returning to the activities that I’ve enjoyed in the past like writing, taking photos, working on videos, hanging out in coffee shops, and meeting with friends for lunch. Why? Simply because those activities lead to “divine time.”

When you sit down to something, and the next thing you know, four or six or nine hours have passed… and you didn’t even know it? That’s divine time. It’s when you forget everything around you by getting caught up in the pleasure, the joy of what you’re doing that you don’t even think to look at a clock. It’s when the pressure of time disappears and the activity alone rises to the surface.

I would venture to say, most people in the workplace today are not working at the kinds of things that involve divine time. They know exactly when their lunch is, when they need to return from lunch, how much longer they have to work from lunch until when they can leave. And in that last half hour of work? They watch every minute go by with anticipation.

In just the few days I’ve spent at this, I have no idea what time it is. It’s peaceful. The day just unfolds. A little of this. A little of that. A plan for this. Working on that. It puts a smile on my face. I think that smile helps me recognize the importance of this piece of information. I don’t know if divine time is The Answer. But I suspect that it plays a significant part in it.

Courtesy Nickolas Muray, the George Eastman House Collection

Day 4: The Glory of White Space

Most people don’t know me as a little academic, sitting encased in my overstuffed chair with a non-fiction tome in one hand, pencil in the other, making notes in the margins and *thinking* about things, head lolling sleepily off to one side. Writing papers about sacred space, about cultural landscapes, about atomic bombs and the landscapes we save and the ones we destroy. Frankly, I don’t know me as that person anymore either. That was a lifetime ago. A Wyoming landscape ago. At least a couple of chapters ago.

The biggest transitions, or chapters, in my life have included getting divorced when I was 27 and moving to Wyoming to go to graduate school; heading off to Italy three times in two years to travel and then to live; changing careers after teaching English in community colleges for eight years; and now.

Right now I’m between that page at the end of the chapter where there’s white space, and the next page that starts the chapter. In that white space, so much can happen. Plots can shift. Characters sit in limbo. The author has the opportunity to redirect. There’s a little tension in that white space while the last chapter has a chance to settle and the next chapter has a chance to form.

I love the stories about the people who have always known exactly what they’ve wanted to do in their lives. The ones who chart their course and head off, seemingly knowing exactly where they’re going. The firemen who say they knew when they were 5 that they wanted to fight fires. The writer who knew at 12 she was going to write. The actor who saw his first performance at 8 and planned to take the stage the first chance he got.

I love those stories because those people just seem to know exactly where they’re going. It’s the yin to my yang: I have no idea. And I kinda like it that way. It’s also why I love the stories about the poet who worked in a hotel for years, then worked on a ranch and then started teaching and then just picked up a pen and tried a poem and then another until he got the hang of it. Or even the one of Grandma Moses who didn’t start painting until she was in her 80s. She spent her whole life working at other things until she found herself in a one-woman art show.

Those are stories about that white space. It’s the place where everything is rich and full of promise. How wonderful for some people to know exactly what they’ve always wanted to do and head off to do it. How equally wonderful to have no idea and head off to figure it out, one chapter at a time.

Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress