"!!!!!"
So, in the space of my hour long first composition lesson of the semester, my professor told me the “secret to networking in L.A.”, advised me on how to change my entire mental outlook to better suit myself for success, instructed me to find religion, and determined that my temp job is “killing my soul” and that I should quit it immediately.
Yes, she really said “killing your soul”.
….and I thought I was the only dramatic one.
Thing is, she’s kind of right, and I know it and I’ve known it all along, before I even started it, its half of why I quit the last one. The routine starts, and I’m just another douchebag in a suit riding the train into the city and eagerly looking forward to my morning cup of starbucks so that I can get my small vat of empty calories to propel myself through my empty existence.
And maybe it’s in part a product of the city, and maybe it’s the jobs I pick, or maybe it’s just a pre-existing propensity that I can’t seem to shake (although it didn’t/doesn’t feel like this when I’m in school) but I’ll be sitting or standing or slouching on the train, and I’ve got this (non)expression on my face, and it’s not a smile, it’s not a frown, it’s not any of the mildy descriptive synonyms and variations of either….it’s a nothing. A big nothing. Blank. Zip zero. Neutral.
And that’s how I feel. Like I’m a car parked on a hill and put in neutral, sliding downhill by default.
Sometimes I just want to shift into reverse and gas it, get it over with.
I’m afraid of graduating, because there are so many thing left that I feel like I don’t know, but its more than just that. I also feel, in a way, like school is the only thing that keeps me from becoming completely despondent. When people ask what I do, why I’m here, I can tell them that, and despite the fact that I feel like a complete failure who’s done nothing, for some reason they’re still impressed. “oooh you’re a graduate student” “ooh at NYU” “oooh in something MUSIC related”. “I wish that I could do that”
Yeah, well join the club. So do I.
On some level I know that I must sabotage myself somehow, but I don’t really know how. I feel the pull of my class tugging at me, and there’s a little voice in my head telling me that no one who grew up like I did ever really leaves that bracket, that no matter how much education I get or accomplishments I think I have, I’ll never really shake it, and I’ll still end up at best lower middle class, living better than my parents did only by virtue of the fact that I will never have a kid to support. It’s not really only about the resources that I (don’t) have holding me back, it’s also the fear of ending up where I was that rules me and ironically seems to keep me from moving forward.
Because I’m less than a year away from having a fucking Masters degree, and what am I? I’m a glorified fucking secretary. And not even in a field remotely related to anything I give a shit about! Part of me is terrified by the prospect of my only doing well in school because taking orders is the one thing that I’ve ever been truly good at, doing what I’m told, completing the steps, and all the while cursed by the fact that I’m smart enough to see beyond and through the system but not quite smart enough to surpass it.
I told my professor that I’m scared, and she said that it’s perfectly normal, and she doesn’t think less of me for admitting it- and then when she said I had to believe that by sheer numbers, if I kept relentlessly networking, I would get there, I said, “It’s not that, it’s that once I do meet them, I’m afraid I won’t be good enough for it to matter” and she looked surprised, and then troubled, and told me “You really can’t think that way. You have to think “I’m already there- I’m already a composer, I’m already an engineer, this is just a dry spot. You’re too negative. That’s why you’re working that job, and that’s what that job is doing to you. That’s why you have to quit. Now.”
But when I start to believe that, I hear the voice of my background in my head saying, “What, so now this perfectly good job isn’t good enough for you? Now you don’t have to work like the rest of the world? Just who do you think you are? Why are you special? Why don’t you have to suffer with the rest of us? Why don’t you have to earn it?”
I’m trying to be so many things at once- I see those kids in Williamsburg and on some level, even the ones I like, I despise them. Them with their parents money to tide them through not being able to support themselves- them with their complete lack of that sort of anxiety, just falling into having the things that so many people kill themselves their entire life trying to get….and I see those kids that grew up like I did, and I’m bored by them, and though I try to deny it, part of me looks down on them for not pursuing education the way that I did, for not looking outside the box. I want to succeed in the art sphere, I want to be vindicated and justified by all those people, while still keeping my blue-collar stripes, still being able to say, “I earned it. It wasn’t given to me” The working class in me hates the liberal snob in me, while secretly wanting to be her, and the liberal snob in me looks down on the working class in me,for which she feels intensely guilty, and the whole thing is a big old party of disrespect, pushed in and packed down into a petrified lump of “!!!!!!!” sitting in the pit of my stomach. All. The. Time. And the thing is, I thought I was over all that class bullshit, but being in the city has changed that.
I’m a mess. But at least I’ve mastered the “nothing” expression, so if you’re the guy sitting next me on the train, you’d never know it.
Yes, she really said “killing your soul”.
….and I thought I was the only dramatic one.
Thing is, she’s kind of right, and I know it and I’ve known it all along, before I even started it, its half of why I quit the last one. The routine starts, and I’m just another douchebag in a suit riding the train into the city and eagerly looking forward to my morning cup of starbucks so that I can get my small vat of empty calories to propel myself through my empty existence.
And maybe it’s in part a product of the city, and maybe it’s the jobs I pick, or maybe it’s just a pre-existing propensity that I can’t seem to shake (although it didn’t/doesn’t feel like this when I’m in school) but I’ll be sitting or standing or slouching on the train, and I’ve got this (non)expression on my face, and it’s not a smile, it’s not a frown, it’s not any of the mildy descriptive synonyms and variations of either….it’s a nothing. A big nothing. Blank. Zip zero. Neutral.
And that’s how I feel. Like I’m a car parked on a hill and put in neutral, sliding downhill by default.
Sometimes I just want to shift into reverse and gas it, get it over with.
I’m afraid of graduating, because there are so many thing left that I feel like I don’t know, but its more than just that. I also feel, in a way, like school is the only thing that keeps me from becoming completely despondent. When people ask what I do, why I’m here, I can tell them that, and despite the fact that I feel like a complete failure who’s done nothing, for some reason they’re still impressed. “oooh you’re a graduate student” “ooh at NYU” “oooh in something MUSIC related”. “I wish that I could do that”
Yeah, well join the club. So do I.
On some level I know that I must sabotage myself somehow, but I don’t really know how. I feel the pull of my class tugging at me, and there’s a little voice in my head telling me that no one who grew up like I did ever really leaves that bracket, that no matter how much education I get or accomplishments I think I have, I’ll never really shake it, and I’ll still end up at best lower middle class, living better than my parents did only by virtue of the fact that I will never have a kid to support. It’s not really only about the resources that I (don’t) have holding me back, it’s also the fear of ending up where I was that rules me and ironically seems to keep me from moving forward.
Because I’m less than a year away from having a fucking Masters degree, and what am I? I’m a glorified fucking secretary. And not even in a field remotely related to anything I give a shit about! Part of me is terrified by the prospect of my only doing well in school because taking orders is the one thing that I’ve ever been truly good at, doing what I’m told, completing the steps, and all the while cursed by the fact that I’m smart enough to see beyond and through the system but not quite smart enough to surpass it.
I told my professor that I’m scared, and she said that it’s perfectly normal, and she doesn’t think less of me for admitting it- and then when she said I had to believe that by sheer numbers, if I kept relentlessly networking, I would get there, I said, “It’s not that, it’s that once I do meet them, I’m afraid I won’t be good enough for it to matter” and she looked surprised, and then troubled, and told me “You really can’t think that way. You have to think “I’m already there- I’m already a composer, I’m already an engineer, this is just a dry spot. You’re too negative. That’s why you’re working that job, and that’s what that job is doing to you. That’s why you have to quit. Now.”
But when I start to believe that, I hear the voice of my background in my head saying, “What, so now this perfectly good job isn’t good enough for you? Now you don’t have to work like the rest of the world? Just who do you think you are? Why are you special? Why don’t you have to suffer with the rest of us? Why don’t you have to earn it?”
I’m trying to be so many things at once- I see those kids in Williamsburg and on some level, even the ones I like, I despise them. Them with their parents money to tide them through not being able to support themselves- them with their complete lack of that sort of anxiety, just falling into having the things that so many people kill themselves their entire life trying to get….and I see those kids that grew up like I did, and I’m bored by them, and though I try to deny it, part of me looks down on them for not pursuing education the way that I did, for not looking outside the box. I want to succeed in the art sphere, I want to be vindicated and justified by all those people, while still keeping my blue-collar stripes, still being able to say, “I earned it. It wasn’t given to me” The working class in me hates the liberal snob in me, while secretly wanting to be her, and the liberal snob in me looks down on the working class in me,for which she feels intensely guilty, and the whole thing is a big old party of disrespect, pushed in and packed down into a petrified lump of “!!!!!!!” sitting in the pit of my stomach. All. The. Time. And the thing is, I thought I was over all that class bullshit, but being in the city has changed that.
I’m a mess. But at least I’ve mastered the “nothing” expression, so if you’re the guy sitting next me on the train, you’d never know it.