On mountains and volcanoes
I am looking for a job. Jobs, according to popular wisdom, are vital to independence, survival, and success. Each job is a step in a winding staircase off the landing of higher education, ascending, hopefully, to “career!” and ultimately, “fulfillment!” I have not arrived at either just yet, and find the staircase to be riddled with intriguing secret passage ways, booby traps, and cobwebbed chutes. Such mysteries draw me away from the sacred quest for Meaningful Employment to pursue esoteric crafts and short, seasonal commitments that give me over to the sky and the mountains for the day to get dirty and, as a happy bi-product, get paid. So this fall, with another sun-burnt summer of hard labor in Colorado’s Mount Massive Wilderness behind me, I find myself jobless and without prospect for the third or fourth time in two years. Panic!
It’s the well-meaning questions that bring on the cold sweats: “Sarah! What have you been up to? Really? Um, interesting. . .What’s next?” This last bit, delivered with a piercing laser stare and sharky grin, seems to say, “and when are you going to do something relevant that draws on your bachelor’s degree, hmm?” “Ah,” I’ll say, my heartbeat bursting into a staccato sprint, “I, uh, hey! Is that a hobo spider crawling out of your collar?! Gotta run!”
Once I’ve escaped the prying well-wishers, I hunker down for hours at the local coffee shop, surfing the internet for the Perfect Colorado Job, preferably something having to do with writing or conservation that is located in a quaint yet sophisticated mountain hamlet with affordable housing and no ski industry. Naturally, this job does not exist (nor does the cute hamlet), so I apply for close approximations in Aspen and Durango, thinking, “my progress in life depends on landing one of these writing jobs NOW and never working as a trail grunt again.”
Then, the wait begins. Unemployment seems to be about waiting, and this makes me long for the regimental routine of a job—my life structured into neat eight hour blocks of labor, each week punctuated by a 48-hour play time. How easy things would be then, I think, and how fulfilling. But for now, I settle for twiddling my thumbs and a hungry sense of purposelessness—I have no answers, it seems, not yet.
So when I go to meet my friend Elise, a successful producer for Colorado Public Radio, for her birthday, I prepare myself for the usual painful barrage of “what next?”s from her friends. Instead, I meet Alec. Alec is a thin fellow with sunken tubercular eyes and a stiff demeanor. He seems nice enough until he turns to me sympathetically and says “So, I hear you’re unemployed. Me too.” He smiles sadly and offers me his fist, as though there is some secret handshake for the pathetic, jobless masses. I smile back, and give his knuckles a cursory punch, hoping he won’t pursue the topic any further. Alas, he forges ahead with a 20 minute litany of self-pitying gripes: his talents are going to waste, teaching doesn’t allow enough space for personal accomplishment, there is no staff turnover at non-profits, he is finally (sigh) settling on restaurant work, bussing or waiting tables. “Hmm,” I say, my eyes glazing over as I fumble for an adequate response to provide him with the solidarity he seems to crave. But I can’t do it—I feel different from Alec somehow. Lighter, maybe, like this is something I’ve chosen rather than a yoke upon my shoulders.
As I drive home alone later, I crab along in traffic—the lock of cars pulsing forward then slowing to a crawl, then pulsing forward again in an irregular rhythm. I drive under complicated mouse trap overpasses, past prefabricated beige homes, me and my battered van caught in the ebb and flow of the city’s heartbeat. This is structure, this is routine, this is waiting, I think, this traffic, these jobs leading to these sprawling houses, these fabricated, packaged dreams of big screen TVs, powerful cars and 2.3 blond children. Is this what I want?
I mull the question as I arrive home, unlock the door, plop down on my parents’ couch and turn to the refuge of the unemployed everywhere: daytime television. There is a documentary on the History Channel about the Yellowstone super volcano. When the thing finally blows, the narrator intones ominously, everything within a hundred mile radius will be incinerated in a matter of minutes by pyroclastic gas and ash flows. The ash cloud, ascending tens of thousands of feet into the atmosphere, will fill western airspace with tiny glass shards that shred your internal organs from the inside. Natural disasters are the ultimate benchmark: human endeavors shrink in the face of volcanic eruptions, meteor strikes, tsunamis. What matters then? If I were to die with hundreds of thousands of others in a massive volcanic eruption, would I be glad for all the days spent plugging away in an office towards some abstract goal? Would my accomplishments weigh more than my animal contentment at scrambling up a mountainside at sunrise to snack on almonds and chat with friends? Given my history as an obsessive achiever and my recent, desperate drive for employment, the answer surprises me: No.
It’s the well-meaning questions that bring on the cold sweats: “Sarah! What have you been up to? Really? Um, interesting. . .What’s next?” This last bit, delivered with a piercing laser stare and sharky grin, seems to say, “and when are you going to do something relevant that draws on your bachelor’s degree, hmm?” “Ah,” I’ll say, my heartbeat bursting into a staccato sprint, “I, uh, hey! Is that a hobo spider crawling out of your collar?! Gotta run!”
Once I’ve escaped the prying well-wishers, I hunker down for hours at the local coffee shop, surfing the internet for the Perfect Colorado Job, preferably something having to do with writing or conservation that is located in a quaint yet sophisticated mountain hamlet with affordable housing and no ski industry. Naturally, this job does not exist (nor does the cute hamlet), so I apply for close approximations in Aspen and Durango, thinking, “my progress in life depends on landing one of these writing jobs NOW and never working as a trail grunt again.”
Then, the wait begins. Unemployment seems to be about waiting, and this makes me long for the regimental routine of a job—my life structured into neat eight hour blocks of labor, each week punctuated by a 48-hour play time. How easy things would be then, I think, and how fulfilling. But for now, I settle for twiddling my thumbs and a hungry sense of purposelessness—I have no answers, it seems, not yet.
So when I go to meet my friend Elise, a successful producer for Colorado Public Radio, for her birthday, I prepare myself for the usual painful barrage of “what next?”s from her friends. Instead, I meet Alec. Alec is a thin fellow with sunken tubercular eyes and a stiff demeanor. He seems nice enough until he turns to me sympathetically and says “So, I hear you’re unemployed. Me too.” He smiles sadly and offers me his fist, as though there is some secret handshake for the pathetic, jobless masses. I smile back, and give his knuckles a cursory punch, hoping he won’t pursue the topic any further. Alas, he forges ahead with a 20 minute litany of self-pitying gripes: his talents are going to waste, teaching doesn’t allow enough space for personal accomplishment, there is no staff turnover at non-profits, he is finally (sigh) settling on restaurant work, bussing or waiting tables. “Hmm,” I say, my eyes glazing over as I fumble for an adequate response to provide him with the solidarity he seems to crave. But I can’t do it—I feel different from Alec somehow. Lighter, maybe, like this is something I’ve chosen rather than a yoke upon my shoulders.
As I drive home alone later, I crab along in traffic—the lock of cars pulsing forward then slowing to a crawl, then pulsing forward again in an irregular rhythm. I drive under complicated mouse trap overpasses, past prefabricated beige homes, me and my battered van caught in the ebb and flow of the city’s heartbeat. This is structure, this is routine, this is waiting, I think, this traffic, these jobs leading to these sprawling houses, these fabricated, packaged dreams of big screen TVs, powerful cars and 2.3 blond children. Is this what I want?
I mull the question as I arrive home, unlock the door, plop down on my parents’ couch and turn to the refuge of the unemployed everywhere: daytime television. There is a documentary on the History Channel about the Yellowstone super volcano. When the thing finally blows, the narrator intones ominously, everything within a hundred mile radius will be incinerated in a matter of minutes by pyroclastic gas and ash flows. The ash cloud, ascending tens of thousands of feet into the atmosphere, will fill western airspace with tiny glass shards that shred your internal organs from the inside. Natural disasters are the ultimate benchmark: human endeavors shrink in the face of volcanic eruptions, meteor strikes, tsunamis. What matters then? If I were to die with hundreds of thousands of others in a massive volcanic eruption, would I be glad for all the days spent plugging away in an office towards some abstract goal? Would my accomplishments weigh more than my animal contentment at scrambling up a mountainside at sunrise to snack on almonds and chat with friends? Given my history as an obsessive achiever and my recent, desperate drive for employment, the answer surprises me: No.
posted by gold leader at 3:20 PM
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