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.
