Evasive Maneuvers

I start my new job on Monday, and I have to admit that I am a little bit nervous.

The biggest reason is because I’ve never had an office job before – I’m twenty-seven, but I’ve never gone in at eight to crunch numbers, never had to file reports and never had to work through lunch. In fact, I have avoided those types of jobs like the plague.

Many of my friends have worked at clothing stores, banks, pharmaceutical labs and corporate offices, but I have always sought out jobs that required a lot of interaction with other people—preferably children. Children are generally much more entertaining than adults, and far less capable of deceiving you. (Not that they don’t try, but they don’t understand that your intellect is far more developed then their own.) Give me a group of sticky, screaming children over adults or the company of a data entry system any day. I'd rather be out on a playground than behind a desk.

But although I’ve always dreaded the idea of being stuck in a nine to five, it wasn’t the isolation itself that I found terrifying. It was the tedium. I have a friend who used to sit at a desk all day, ordering nuts, bolts and tiny mechanical parts. Of course, I don’t actually understand exactly how my friend spent her time, but I am imagining that there were lots of forms involved: first sifting through order forms from different plant managers requesting more of this kind of nut and more of that kind of bolt. Then filling out more forms to actually order the nuts and bolts from manufacturing companies, once she had added up how many each plant manager had requested. I don’t know how someone could stand to do that job full-time, and my friend freely admits that she was miserable. Of course, that’s just the nuts and bolts job. Another friend of mine worked for Coca Cola – maybe it was slightly less tedious to be ordering big vats of that acidic syrup that they use to make Coke.

Let me be clear—it’s not that I consider the nuts and bolts kind of job to be of no value. I know that if I buy a machine of one kind or another, whether it is a car, a dishwasher or an air conditioner, I want all of its nuts and bolts to be in place and working properly. I rely on the people who have these kinds of jobs – to make sure that the parts on my vehicle remain correctly assembled, my apartment stays a cool seventy degrees, and there is plenty of diet Coke when I go to dinner at Applebee’s. I appreciate these peoples’ ability to put up with the tedium of their jobs so that my life is more convenient and comfortable. But if I’m honest, I don’t want to deal with a job like that myself unless I have to.

I worked very hard to steer clear of a desk job, in fact—and I don’t mean by simply avoiding employment in the business world. I actively took extensive evasive maneuvers: I nearly killed myself in graduate school so that I could spend my the rest of my days in the front of a classroom, pontificating on books that I like to read, making fun of the kids who fall asleep during my lectures, and occasionally prying an intelligent thought from some of my students. I love the exchange of ideas, the back and forth in a well-run classroom.

But even though I enjoy all this interaction with children and young adults, I am actually very content to be on my own when I am doing something that I find interesting and valuable. I can happily hole up in my apartment for days, reading and writing, whether it is studying literature or developing a marketing strategy and producing copy for events and services that have a positive impact on other peoples’ lives. That is why I wanted this particular job so badly – I have no problem being tucked away behind my own computer, working “nose to the grindstone” to write up articles, proposals and websites, especially when I know that it is part of a larger humanitarian goal. I think it will be really rewarding to put my skills to use like this—and I will be good at it.

So if I don’t think this job will be tedious, if I think that I will find it rewarding, why am I nervous about starting on Monday?

Because I’m used to wearing pajamas or sweats all day, and you can’t wear monkeys into the office. Because I get sleepy at 4:30 in the afternoon, even though I didn’t get up until 8. Because I like to work whenever my brain is in gear, whether that’s 2 p.m. or 2 a.m. – not necessarily between the hours of nine and five. If you give me a job and then leave me to my own devices for a few hours, a day or a week, I’ll get the job done and it will be shiny. But I’m used to working at my own pace and in my own ways. I know I can do this job and do it well – I’m not having self-esteem issues. But I know that I lack experience in the workplace environment because of all my elaborate, determined evasive maneuvers, and so there will be a period of adjustment.

Now I will have to quickly learn to live up to someone else’s standards—not just their standards for the product itself, but their standards for the daily, maybe even hourly rate of progress as well. I will no longer be able to go to the mall in the middle of the afternoon when I’m antsy, then pick up my work again late at night. (I’m not complaining, mind you – just coming to terms with that fact.) I’ll have to sit at my computer and attempt to be productive for approximately eight straight hours, and in order to do that, I’ll have to change the way that I think about myself. I’ll have to consider myself less of an independent artist and be more of a “team player.” Of course, that’s just the real world, and I suppose that I’ve been sheltered from that for far too long.

Basically, my concern is whether I will be able to adjust quickly enough to please my boss and co-workers. I am joining a small department that is made up of the director and two others; they tell me that we will be working closely together on various projects, depending on each other a lot. It’s been a long time since I’ve been a part of a team, and for the most part, I’m really looking forward to it. My new co-workers tell me that they spend a lot of time in each others’ offices, and when I went in for my second interview, they smiled and joked with each other as though they are pretty good friends. I have missed that kind of interaction in the workplace, and so I am looking forward to getting to know them. I just hope that I don’t come across as inexperienced and incompetent in my first days and weeks at my new job, before I get a change to adjust to my new life.

The Wonder Years

Fun fact about Lauren: I love yellow roses.

I love yellow roses because when I was a kid, I used to spend every Sunday night watching Lois and Clark: the New Adventures of Superman with my parents and my younger brother. Lois and Clark was my favorite TV show – Dean Cain was oh-so-attractive and Teri Hatcher was an awesome feminist role model. (And if you haven’t noticed from my tendency to occasionally mention Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I have a thing for superheroes.) I wanted to be Lois Lane and have that muscled-but-sensitive Clark Kent fall in love with me; he was always doing sweet things that went underappreciated or even unnoticed by the brash and aggressive Lois. In one episode, he bought yellow roses for her, which he explained were a representation of friendship.

From that point on, I was in love with the symbolic meaning of yellow roses just as much as the thoughtfulness of Clark’s gesture. I looked into the meaning a little bit more and found that not only are they associated with friendship, but also with the warmth of the sun, with shared joy and delight. In many Eastern cultures, the color yellow represents not only joy, but wisdom and power. The idea that they were emblematic of friendship remained the most significant to me, though, and when I got married, I decided that I wanted yellow roses in my bouquet because my husband and I had first been best friends before we began dating. As I discussed this with my wedding florist and my mother, I found out that my mom had also carried yellow roses at her wedding, which added even more significance to my choice of flowers. Yellow roses call to mind all kinds of memories and associations for me, then – time spent with family, deep friendship leading to love, the excitement and fun of my wedding.

All of these layers of meaning came back to me on Monday, when my husband brought home a bouquet of yellow roses to congratulate me that I had been offered the non-profit job. We had both wanted this job for me so much – and I think he was/is as excited about the prospect of my new career as I am. To him, it is symbolic of “arrival” – now that we both finally have full-time jobs, we are adults. We will be financially secure, able to afford vacations and a home. I am already splurging on books and planning a trip to Seattle/Vancouver to visit friends, and his first indulgence was to buy me that bouquet of expensive yellow roses. This would have been a wasteful purchase on our grad school student budget, but now that we have two incomes, he can afford to spoil me a little bit more with things that simply “sit there and look pretty, then shrivel up” (his assessment of flower bouquets).

For the rest of the week, my husband has had a wider-than-usual grin on his face; he is certain that now we are beginning the best years of our lives. We have worked hard, nose to the grindstone (as he would say) as students, and the first five years of our married life have been We very difficult because we have had to focus so much on school. We have been incredibly lucky to have each others’ support while we were in school, but we haven’t been able to have much fun together. Our idea of a good time usually involved reading together, either in our big cushy bed, or perhaps out on our balcony during the warm weather. We had too much work to ever take a break for very long; we became really lame and felt very old – but now we are free of all that.

We were walking around the mall last night, and he started bouncing around a little bit on the balls of his feet.

“Are you dancing?” I asked him. He nodded, a shy look on his face. But he had a little grin, too, as though he were secretly pleased with himself.

“In public??” I said. Another nod.

This is a man who doesn’t even want me to dance in public most of the time (he’s not a big fan of street corner performances) – and if I start to sing to him in public, he’ll actually walk away from me.

(“What would you think if I sang out of tune? / Would you stand up and walk out on me?”)

But suddenly he’s doing a little shimmy on the escalator in front of Macy’s.

“Wow. Would you let me sing to you? Here?”

He gives me a funny little smile, then says: “Maybe.”

(“Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song… and I'll try not to sing out of key.”)

Then I ask him, “Would you go with me to a Broadway musical?” His answer has been a resounding “no” for several years running.

With another little shake of his hips, he replies, “It’s looking more and more likely.”

Wow. He really does feel free. He feels like he doesn’t have to worry any more – not about whether we have health insurance, whether we’ll be able to afford a house, whether we’ll be able to save for retirement. He’s even mentioned buying a boat.

He’s convinced that these next few years will be our Wonder Years. He senses possibility. Even when we were graduate students living off piddly stipends, I was able to dream about taking a cruise to Greece and owning a house by a lake or the ocean, but he never wanted to let himself think about things that he couldn’t afford at that moment. He didn’t let himself daydream.

Now he seems to be daydreaming, though. Daydreaming and dancing in public and looking for presents that he can buy for his baby nephew. He is happy expecting that these next few years will be wonderful, as we finally get to enjoy the fruits of our labor – but I’m already experiencing a little bit of wonder at the new man my husband has become.

I’ll know the transformation is complete, though, when he takes me to a Broadway show and actually manages to sit through the whole thing.

The Pursuit of Happiness: the Liberty to Spend, which is NOT an Unalienable Right

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Graduate school takes all your freedom and your energy; if you aren’t careful, it sucks out your personality. Over the past year and a half since I graduated with my Master’s Degree, I have been rediscovering different personal freedoms:

• the freedom to appreciate my surroundings (take the time to watch the rain or the clouds, listen to the waves…)
• the freedom to be artistic again (jewelry-making, watercolor painting, even Modge-Podging)
• the freedom to waste time (I’m still not comfortable with this, but I’m getting better at it thanks to the internet)
• and the freedom to read whatever the heck I want to read (this being the most important of them all, of course)

But for various reasons, I have not had a full-time job since graduating in Spring 2009. I only found part-time as an adjunct Composition Instructor, and I had to quit my usual summer job as a Summer Camp Supervisor because my husband and I packed up and moved from Washington D.C. to New York. Once I had most of our boxes unpacked, I had to hang around before beginning to teach again – because the semester hadn’t started up yet. That was great because I really got to explore Nyack during the beautiful summer months...

I walked downtown and spent afternoons reading in the beautiful historic Nyack Public Library or by the creek that runs through Memorial Park. (I also got a chance to work on writing a fantasy novel, although that has only produced very dissatisfying thus far.)

Being part-time employed or unemployed for almost two years, I have had a significant amount of freedom and flexibility – but very little cash flow, as you can imagine. This has meant that I have not been able to indulge quite as many of my whims as I would like, although I still managed to dig up cash from various resources when absolutely necessary. Reselling items on eBay in order to fund new purchases, selling hand-made jewelry on Etsy, and asking the family for birthday and Christmas money have all proven to be quite useful tactics. And God bless my Amazon credit card, which earns me points toward – you guessed it – free books.

Much of the time, though, I have still felt guilty when I spent even a little of my own money on things that I didn’t absolutely need. We have been pretty comfortable, though, at least in terms of day-to-day concerns for the past few years, despite the facts that we were both in graduate school at the same time. We haven’t had to live off Ramen and I’ve even been able to buy the occasional wedge of Brie. Sure, we’ve taken our vacations to Ocean City, Maryland, early in the season when the rooms are cheaper – but that means that the boardwalk isn’t as crowded. We haven’t gone to too many fancy restaurants – but that’s fine with me, because I’ve noticed that when you pay thirty dollars or more for an entrée, they actually give you less food (and I like to eat). All in all, we’ve been comfortable.

I have to admit that our lifestyle (luxurious relative to that of other graduate students) is due entirely to my husband’s foresight, fiscal responsibility and hard work. That subject deserves not just a separate blog post, but a full twenty-page essay – I don’t think I can even fully understand how much he has planned and sacrificed in order to make sure that we had health insurance and enough money to cover the bills, even planning for unexpected expenses like a good adult.

I, on the other hand, am not such a good grown-up when it comes to fiscal responsibility – but he’s been teaching me, and I’ve been trying very hard to learn. Book buying is an addiction, though, and the worst part is that when I occasionally fall off the wagon, it screws up all the conscientious effort that I’ve made to save money over the past few weeks and months prior to an unfortunate Amazon slip-up or an incident at Target. Then I agonize over my purchases, sometimes even returning them. I’ve gotten really good at returning things, actually.

When I got the job offer on Monday, though, it occurred to me that I would no longer have to feel guilty about dropping fifty bucks here and there, since my paycheck would be over double of what I had been making as an adjunct (and at no point would it just disappear for a few weeks or months at a time, between semesters). I can pay the grocery bills, save for retirement like my husband has been teaching me to do, and still have a separate “Amazon Budget.” I can actually allot money for the specific purpose of buying books. What beautiful idea… (Yes, these are the kinds of fantasies that I have.)

That fiscally liberated feeling settled onto my shoulders even before I finished talking to my new boss about salary, benefits and start date. As soon as our conversation was over, I exercised my new freedom in a couple of ways:

1. I changed my status and profile information on Facebook.

2. I deactivated my account on CareerBuilder and completely deleted my JobFox account. No more job alert emails!

But more relevant to the subject of this posting:

3. I surfed through my Amazon wishlist, wildly dumping things into my cart. No guilt, no holds barred. I watched the total grow with glee, knowing that I was now free to pursue my own happiness through whatever materialistic means that I desire. And if I haven’t been clear on the subject before, I am woefully, wonderfully materialistic.

4. Then I paused, and realized that it would be more fun to order just a few books at a time, requisitioning a small new stack every week from now on if I wanted. I can be perpetually waiting on a new package, making me feel like it is Christmas all year round!

So, I slowly began sorting through my Amazon cart, choosing a few books to purchase immediately, and some to order five days from now, when I can no longer control my giddy anticipation. (Do you see what I mean? Book buying is an addiction, a sickness.)

Perhaps best of all, though:

5. When my husband and I went out to dinner that night to celebrate my new job, we walked around the mall for a while. We saw a sign at the Disney store: Temporarily Closing for Remodeling. Everything 75% Off. And prominently displayed at the front of the store were these must-have plush items:

My husband and I gleefully purchased a full set for our nephew… and a full set for ourselves. He was as giddy as I was, having already declared that because I would now have a decent-sized paycheck, we could afford to spoil his sister’s son with all kinds of gifts. I find it ironic, adorable and hilarious that although my husband is the spend-thrift, he is already deciding how to spend my paycheck. But you know what? Fair enough. I’ve spent enough of his paychecks over the years that I owe him a little something. And now that I feel at liberty to spend, I could think of worse things to do than go toy shopping. Maybe he'll even let me buy him a few books...

A New Label for Self-Identification Purposes

For those of you who didn’t quite understand my last (wordless) posting, the “Eureka!” = I got the job. I didn’t really have anything to say, other than that, and I figured that a post that repeated the word “YAY” a couple of hundred times really wouldn’t hold anyone’s attention. Besides, I don’t think “YAY” even covers it – I am completely thrilled to say that I am now the Director of Communications and a Grant Writer for a social services organization in the greater New York City Metro area.

And there’s that old habit of labeling myself, identifying myself by my (new) career. “I am a Director of Communications – so you can tell that I’m smart and articulate. I work for a social services organization – and when I tell you this, you will know that I like to do Good Things for other people.” I am this and I am that.

I have to admit that even though I wrote all about trying to “undefine” myself in my post on January 23, I don’t think that I’m really the type of person who can comfortably go very long without a title or designation of some kind to help me give some kind of form to my identity. I like lists and labels, descriptions and those surveys that get passed around on the internet. You know what I’m talking about – “List five places that you’ve been, list your five favorite foods, list your five favorite books…” I have to admit it: I love the idea of recording every little detail about my personality and preferences, as though my love of C.S. Lewis, chocolate covered pretzels and hot glue gun projects is not only incredibly interesting to everyone else, but will help you understand who I really am. Because I’m such an exceptionally special person, you see.

I’m even such a narcissist that I actually bought one of those All About Me books (almost ten years ago now), which is actually just a one hundred page version of those internet surveys. And while we’re on the subject of my narcissism, let’s not forget that I’m a Facebook addict and a blogger… with more than one blog. This means that I believe that what I had for dinner, my insomnia, and my opinion about that latest novel that I read should all be very, very interesting to you, dear reader. I suspect that all my attempts to label myself, list my various preferences, and constantly blog (not just journal privately) about my life might reveal a narcissism rooted in insecurity, since I seem to rely these labels and lists and blog posts and dozens of Facebook status updates to feel like who I am as a person is firmly established.

This all becomes even more obvious, I think, when I consider my reaction to the much-anticipated phone call from my new boss. During the conversation itself, I tried desperately to mask the giddiness in my voice and maintain a professional, grown-up tone. After we had agreed upon start date and salary, we exchanged goodbyes and then I immediately called my husband. He had to be the first one to know, of course. But then, even before I called my mother or my brother, what did I do? What was even more of a priority than telling my family or texting my closest friends (because they were at work, so I couldn’t really call them)?

I had to change my profile information on Facebook, of course.

The great thing is that now, with the new(est) version of Facebook, your job is listed right under your name at the top of your profile page. It’s the first piece of information included on the page, even before your birthday or the fact that your married (both of which last longer than a particular place of employment, at least in theory). So just in case my announcement that I GOT A NEW JOB didn’t pop up in someone’s newsfeed, they’re bound to notice my newly minted career/designation when they pop in to take a peak at my profile: Lauren Schultz is Director of Communications and a Grant Writer at ——.”

Now we can all see just how long I was really able to last without defining myself by my career. I really need to take a cue from my go-to reference gal Buffy: “You can’t define me by my Slayer-ness! That’s… something-ism.” (Who would want to be defined by the fact that she lurks in cemeteries? But how different is that then lurking in a dark little office cubicle? – both can be soul-crushing.)

Although there is another reliable (perhaps one of the most reliable) ways that I can and always have been able to define myself: as the girl who constantly uses TV and movies, especially Joss Whedon’s television shows and always Buffy, to understand her own life.

So perhaps it is inevitable: we have to define ourselves somehow. Maybe there’s something wrong with defining yourself by your career – and I’m sure I’ll continue to obsess over this subject. But maybe it’s better than defining yourself by a television show. Except if that TV show is Buffy, in which case – you’re just as awesome as I am.