Over the years, I’ve come to know that I am not a task-driven creature when it comes to anything useful, at least in a Marxist sense. I would totally get kicked out of any communist country because I don’t really have any wage-earning skills, nor any aptitude for obtaining said skills, nor any interest in developing any aptitude for obtaining those skills. I’d be off making a dress entirely of daisies and singing to myself while my comrades would slave away in the rivet-manufacturing plant.
If I had no clue before, my selection of study in college should have filled me in – ye good ol’ Literature/Art History duo epitomizes a field of study with a lack of practical application aside from teaching, which I was not able to break into. Frankly, there were so many rules to follow and bureaucracy to wade through to get a minimum wage tutoring position, which made me realize I didn’t want it enough, to slave away teaching remedial reading for barely enough money to fill up my car with gas.
I wanted to write. And paint. And bake goodies. And craft homemade greeting cards.
Sure, I can be practical – when forced. Take for instance many of my former jobs. It’s all about the math; working at soul-sucking job=paying the bills; paying the bills=subsistance. See, simple equations: practical, no?
But that only gets me so far.
My love of learning, growing, contributing beauty and laughter to the world, and aiding others in their journey seeps in until I am bursting with it, rather like the Hoover Dam at capacity. Not that I’ve ever seen the Hoover Dam, but it’s the only dam I can think of right now, since we don’t really have water in Southern California. To my knowledge, we’ve been in a drought since I started preschool when we learned the “If it’s yellow, leave it mellow” philosophy of living. But anyway…
When I live for my simple equations and take on the appearance of either a corporate drone or the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, my unhappiness overwhelms me because I am trying to be someone I am simply not. I’ve tried to be this person for years.
Who is this person I’m trying to be? Frankly, she doesn’t interest me, and I’d rather not go into detail, only she is stern, disciplined, and able to do boring tasks for hours on end. She is only useful to me during brief segments when absolutely necessary, but not for protracted periods of time. She is possibly of Dutch/German descent.
If I am not this paragon of Puritanical virtue and the Protestant work-ethic of my forebears, then who am I? I can certainly work hard, and am driven to succeed – only not at anything practical. Oh, how my mother has begged me to go into a useful, high paying field; I can’t count the number of times she has suggested, “Why don’t you go into nursing? That’s always stable.”
No! Difficult, overcrowded fields pique my interest and challenge me in exciting ways; literature and the other creative arts make me come alive. Didn’t the philosopher say that the world needs people who have come alive? Or someone said that.
I need to stop asking what the world needs, or worse yet, what I should be doing. As a person who has lived most of her life dictated by shoulds, I know that their paths lead only to the deepest depths of desolate despair. What the world definitely does not need is me in the deepest depths of desolate despair. I am not motivated by practicality, and I need to accept that about myself. I will never be the woman in the Gray Flannel Suit. Stop. Trying.