I want to be better than I am, I said

And she told me, "don't we all?"

I often wonder if I will ever be satisfied. Even after I get all of the education I want, all of the careers I fight to get, all of the love, affection, and respect I feel I deserve, will I be satisfied?

Is that what mid-life crises are about? Some motherfucker with everything he ever wanted just going berserk because he still wants more? Say Randall has fought for thirty-some years to find someone to love and who loves him, and he marries him. Say Randall finally gets that promotion and is now lead on a new project that he is excited about. Say Randall and his hubby have two beautiful children through a surrogate or something, and they put those kiddies behind a nice white picket fence in the middle of Suburbia-ton or something. The kids start going to a good school, the career is going great, and Randall finds himself supremely unsatisfied for no particular reason. So, because we are of the United States and consumerism is central to our national psyche, Randall goes out and buys something expensive to make himself feel better. A new car, or a studio to do his art in, or a brand new electric guitar, or a computer with all the extras. When that gets old, Randall starts checking out the younger men and women at work. Maybe he takes one out and they have the sex. Still Randall feels nothing, but at least now he has the drama and guilt of his sideshow to keep himself occupied. And that's when it hits him. He just needs to be occupied with something. Like a soap opera, or a videogame. It's like he has finished all of his goals, and is now just waiting to die before everything he worked for crumbles. People with real adversity in their lives are probably happier, or at least have fewer existential crises, than people who end up with all this extra life to live.

I really think that's part of it. People are relatively new to living past forty and they have little else to do after that point.

I don't think people in my generation will have this problem en masse. We of the underemployed and overeducated will most likely never truly get our feet firmly underneath us. I get the impression that those of us who have outwitted anachronism don't hold to such final dreams. It is, obviously, tempting to translate ambition into forms that others recognize. I'm trying to break free of that. Every time someone asks me what I want to be when I get older I recite the list of careers I hope to have because its a lot quicker than telling the truth. And it sounds a hell of a lot less pretentious. But I don't just want to be a teacher or an international political analyst. I want to be someone who never forgets the mission. I'd like to leave this world less harsh and more interesting and enjoyable than I found it. However, that sounds like a job posting for a superhero.

WANTED: One man to stand for Truth, Justice, and American Way. Must have mission. Must want to make world a better place. Must have package large enough to fill out spandex. Cape optional. Please respond to large spotlight projecting your symbol against a cloudy night with further inquiries.

There's this part in the movie Clerks 2 that I feel accurately describes my qualifications. Dante is arguing with Randal about how they've done nothing with their lives and how he should have tried harder in college or somesuch. The details escape me. Randal comes back with a rebuttal though that kind of shook me:

"We were just killing time with those classes! One semester we took Criminology, for chirst's sakes. What the fuck were we training to be? Batman?"

At that point of the movie I turned to myself and said to myself, "Self, that sounds just about right."

Not that I ever took criminology or anything like it, but if one were to scrutinize my transcripts one would discover that I am qualified for maybe three jobs in the world. The next Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the next Richard Hofstadter, or the next Adlai Stevenson. International superhero/detective/historian/intellectuals. I've often thought of those three men, along with Edward Said, Benedict Anderson, Seneca, Thomas Nagle, Hannah Arendt, Voltaire, and Rousseau, as a kind of intellectual justice league. Seneca is totally the Martian Manhunter.

Anyway, I guess my point is that I hope I am never satisfied. I hope I die just after I get sick of resting on my laurels from accomplishing everything I ever set out to do. And I hope that some kid puts me on his list of the intellectual justice league. And that I get to be Superman or Batman or something.

He's killin' all you jive turkeys

Look.

Lots of things change for me between posts. For example, last night I was beginning to write another, "poor me, woe is my life," post. But then I talked myself out of the nasty mood I was in. With help from my girlfriend. Even though I told her that her pep talk, "sucked."

I am very thankful that I am surrounded with patient people.

I was getting desperate (before the sucky pep talk). I've got family issues, as always, and I've been unemployed for a few more months than is exactly comfortable. My money situation was starting to look like Bear Sterns in late 2008. However, now I am working - for around minimum wage. With any luck I'll be able to make ends meet.

Still, I'm forcing myself to get past the desperation. I pictured bitching to my old roommate and how he'd react. Reprinted below for your perusing pleasure is that conversation.

Me: Imaginary Good Ole' Roommate (IGOR), I'm having a tough time these days. I'm sad all of the time and taking it out on those around me. I think part of it is my issues with my father. Mostly though, I'm just sick of sending out countless fucking job applications and getting nothing back. Even reality TV shows have the good grace to say, "No, you suck." Sometimes I feel like I've developed the worst superpower ever. I can turn my resume invisible. If only I could harness this power for good!

IGOR: You must be kidding me. This is like all of those times in college when you were loved, cared for, did well, and bitched constantly. Try harder, you pansy. Maybe if you break a nail you'll at least have something to bitch about.

Me: That reminds me of something one of my favorite professors told me. I sat down in her office and began to complain about how tired I was (because I had little else to say). Not at all impressed she asked me why. Before I could answer she said something like, "because there seem to be at least two different kinds of tiredness. The first one you have to earn. Are you tired because you have been trying your best at everything - really giving it your all? Or are you tired because you have done very little? Earned tiredness can be very satisfying. Lethargy, on the other hand, is something you have to force off, perhaps with the assistance of Health Services. Should I make you an appointment?" While at the time I considered her a bit of a dick for calling me on my shit, now I kind of see her point. In those days I did little other than hang out with friends, make time with my girlfriend, play videogames, and make full use of the fact that you tended to leave me alone in the dorm while you made time with your girlfriend. When I did finally get serious about my work, I slept like a much younger and less troubled version (or a hypothetical much older and more satisfied version) of myself.

IGOR: So? Stop making everyone around you forget why they wanted to hang out with you in the first place. Shut up and get on with it already. Want to play some videogames?

Me: Maybe later. I have to go be bad tempered around my girlfriend for a while.

IGOR: Cool.

Still, I learned from my imaginary conversation, and today I feel much better. And I took my girlfriend out to dinner to make up for being a dick for the past few days.

I still feel a bit desperate. I'm more than a year out of college, and I still don't even have the first step towards my eventual greatness down. I'm an ambitious motherfucker. I don't think I'll ever be satisfied to be a retail clerk. Or manager. Or owner. I need to really get my ass in gear.

Up and In in Manhattan New York

I tend not to write when things are going well. Here's to changing the status of that quo.

Things are going well. For me. I feel these days I have to be specific. Our education system is shot, what had seemed like a sure thing for reforming health care seems to have died (in Massachusetts of all places - trust the assholes that already have health care to care the least about it), and more and more people around me are unemployed or scared to lose their jobs.

Things, for me, are going well. Sorry, everyone else. My heart is with you all. I just have less time to care now that I am not one among the legions of unemployed. Now that I'll be working 40 hours a week (plus overtime) for a livable wage, I'll think less of things unrelated to, well, myself. Or at least that seems to be the cycle.

I just reread my last entry (made several months ago). In it I included a list of jobs I would love to get. The one I got is not on that list. I am nonetheless elated because I can now pay for my school loans, apartment, food, travel (well, commute, but it sounds better listed as travel), maybe a date here and there, and possibly a beer once a month or so. Woo hoo!

In my head, as I'm writing this, my tone is as flat and dry as possible. I imagine some of that bled through. Regardless, in all seriousness and emotional honesty, I am excited to have a job. I am even excited about that job. I realize this blog is open to all that may wander across it and so I will abstain from the use of names and so on, but I will be working as a scientist of sorts. Yeah, it surprised me too. I am looking forward to learning something new here. And I am also kind of proud of how amazingly diverse my resume will be.

So, though I am still relatively poor compared to how I have lived in the past (e.g. I have enough to take my girl out to a nice dinner once, but it means I won't have enough for a metrocard that month), I am happy. I am less restless. And therein lies the next problem.

Throughout my life I have struggled with two states of being more than all of the others. I am either restless or restive. When I am comfortable, I am happy. And I produce nothing. I do nothing spectacular, or even extraordinary. When I am restless I imagine that I'm tough to be around. I'm either jumping out of my skin or exhausted and I can't get comfortable in any position. I am unhappy when I am restless, but I produce and create with voracity and excitement and from those things I derive satisfaction that rivals the happiness of comfort.

So now that I am up and in, as it were, I am terrified of complacency. I know I will settle into my routine and my immortal ambitions may be compromised. Which may be okay. Maybe I don't have to rule the world. Maybe I can be a really good dad. Or a really great guy to be around. Maybe I can be a great teacher. These things don't approach the only scale I care to think about at the moment - that is, global - but maybe a compromise of sorts is sane and will make me happy. And maybe happiness is all I can hope for.

Or, on the other hand, perhaps I should flee from happiness like a Batman movie done by Martin Scorsese. Maybe I can never truly settle and any happiness I ever achieve without some kind of satisfaction will feel empty and hollow until I attempt to avoid ever thinking about my ambitions and they become the things that haunt me at night like fear does children. I really don't mean to ever demean things like parenthood or teaching, but they seem to me like the things that most people do and that some (albeit not many) do well. I want to be remarkable. I want to stand apart. And though I suppose I could do that as a parent or a teacher, or even as a friend, I want more. I want scale. I don't care if I'm ever famous - don't get me too wrong here, I'm not made for the spotlight - but I would like to do something that changes the course of human history. Like inventors and philosophers have done for ages, I want to come up with that thing that takes humanity from where it is now and helps it to look back in a few years and say, "Damn, I can't believe I thought that was a good idea at the time."

I suppose. Regardless, I have a job. And a place. And I am comfortable, for the moment. What I need now is energy. I guess I need something to go wrong. Talk about tempting fate. Fuck.

Down and out in nowhere New York

George Orwell once wrote a book called Down and Out in Paris and London. I picked it up because I've been poor, and was sure that I would be poor again soon, so it seemed like a good idea to do a little research. The book is great, for the most part. It becomes a kind of travelogue of a poor vagabonding European.

I am, once again, poor. Before, it wasn't my fault. My dad was a relatively new cable guy and my mom was a grocery store cashier. We had no money because we had no real income to speak of. Two newlyweds with two kids living in the bottom half of a rented house on long island doesn't really smack of money. Now, however, it is my fault. I have not yet gotten a job. Without a source of income, what is left of my thin savings (scraped together from working campus and summer jobs for the past four years) will wear away soon enough.

I need to get a job. More than that, however, I want to get a job. I thought the reason I have been paralyzed all summer because I couldn't settle on a career path I was interested in. In reality, I think, it is because I was much more interested in taking a break. I love having summers to read, watch movies, set my own schedule and the like. I should have been job searching, but I could not get myself behind the idea. Every week I would swear that the following Monday would be the starting point.

Now, however, I'm getting bored. I want out, again. And I don't have school to escape to this time.

Here are some things that I am thinking about:

I want to work for a publishing company. Preferably one that focuses on new non-fiction (history, IR, political commentary...). Masochistically the idea of reading through hundreds of terrible manuscripts to find a few gems sounds good to me.

I want to work for an NGO specializing in foreign affairs like the Council on Foreign Relations or the Center for Strategic International Studies. I am currently looking at a bunch of cool internships.

I want to do something in education, though now that I am drifting further from college the kinds of opportunities I am interested in seem to be dwindling. I do not necessarily want to teach because I fear that I am so much more interested and passionate in the subject than in the actual teaching that I would make for a terrible teacher. I would not mind teaching at the tertiary level, except for the inevitable moral qualms about doing nothing with my life and perpetuating a cycle of school for school's sake. I want to do something outside of the school for once.

I want to write again. Preferably non-fiction. I could be a good research intern or somesuch, eventually aspiring to writing my own articles and maybe even books.

This is what I'm working with. Today, Tuesday August 11th, is my Monday starting point.

Plato and I

The last line of my last post has been bugging me.

I have no insight to offer.

Insight is the doing of wisdom. The word seems to come from the Platonic understanding of the universe wherein what we perceive is just the shadow of the true world thrown on the cave wall. To see past the facade, into the true nature of the thing. "Penetrating vision or discernment," says Dictionary.com. To imply that vision is penetrating is to imply that there is something to penetrate.

I have to insight to offer = I cannot see past the facade, I cannot see into the true nature of thing, my vision cannot penetrate.

My vision has never been more than adequate anyway.

The highest praise I have ever received on an essay was that I offered rare insight into the subject matter. That's right! I did not simply demonstrate proficiency in the content area, I saw into the truth of the subject. I pushed past the superficial and observed the deep, complicated truth of the subject.

And now I have no insight to offer.

Look. I am no Platonist. Not that I've read enough Plato to even fully comprehend what that means. I do not believe that beneath the surface of our perceived reality lies a more true reality. I do not believe that I am immobilized and chained to a wall observing the shadows cast by the real world behind me.

I am of the opinion that truth should come free of a capital 't'. I think that, while absolutes exist, shades of gray predominate.

However, I do believe in insight. The perceived world is just that - perceived. While it exists whether or not I perceive it, my perception may be superficial. My observations may not push past the obvious to get at the center of the thing.

Insight takes work. That is where I was going with this. Rather than throwing my hands up and declaring that I am all out of insight, I should have set myself to the work of penetrating the superficial and seeing beyond the obvious.

On talking to strangers

Other people are suspect.

I am very lucky in that I can usually tell what I'm thinking. After I sit down and work it out I can generally be certain in my beliefs.

I have to make a relatively tough choice by Thursday morning. Do I purchase a building that will take at least a year to get together? Do I wait and search more thoroughly for something that is a bit more expensive but can be ready sooner? Do I take my time or do I leap without looking?

I tend to be pretty impulsive, but I hate when people do not think things through.

The people offering the building are great and I am sure they have only the most genuine of intentions, but I'm not sure that we have compatible interests.

Business reminds me more of some branch of anthropology with its glittering subjectivity and pretensions at fact than of the serious investigation, analysis of relevant facts, and synthesis of conclusions that I had thought it would be.

I can offer no insight today.

Lord I was born a ramblin' man

When it's time for leaving, I hope you'll understand.

Facing the rest of my life as an unsegmented whole with only prospective plans to mar its unblemished surface is daunting. I know it's a false perspective to see it like that; like a man staring up at a sheer cliff face without looking down at how far he's already come. Still, there are ways of seeing things that are pretty ingrained in my skull regardless of conclusions I've come to proving the contrary.

There are things I am supposed to do now. Go to grad school, get a good job, make money, start a family, buy a house. It's a shame I won't live forever. I want to do all of those things. But not right now. I have too much to do first.

When I finally do get to settle down, I'll probably be approaching eighty.

Things I need to do before I start a family and find a place I want to live for a while:

• Start the bookstore
• Start the accompanying programs
• Go back to school
• Publish some short stories
• Live somewhere else for a while
• Explore
• Publish some scholarly works
• Figure out what I think is important enough to do for the rest of my life, and find an equivalent career
• Find the right person/people to work/live with

Things I can do after I start a family:

• Work at the bookstore/accompanying programs
• Help start a school
• Write a book/more short stories/more scholarly works

I guess the difference seems to be mobility. I like being able to, at the drop of a hat, leave. Despite its strains, I think that I like living at three different places at the same time on some level. I can't get comfortable like I could in college, but part of me really does not want to get comfortable right now.

I want to move. I want my own space. Are those two desires incompatible? Whenever I travel I am sure to rent or share space, never to own or settle. When I stay still long enough, the space I stay in becomes my own. Can I shrink down what I consider to be my "own space" enough to travel with it? A few possessions (a few books and a towel)?

I don't think that would work. Possessions are not the same as space. I think it is familiarity that composes the kind of comfort I am seeking.

I do not want to stay where I am for too long. It is a nice area, but I have the itch to keep moving. And to form lasting attachments.

I am unclear.