Someday soon, I’ll have to grow up. Someday soon, I’ll have to get a real job.
Fuck.
See, I’m not really one to think ahead. By the time this paper prints, I still won’t have bought my Andy Samberg tickets. I haven’t looked up my finals schedule yet. I only remembered to pick next semester’s classes when freshmen were already scheduling.
Just a few recent examples, but yeah. I view life through an approximately three-day window. Yesterday, today and tomorrow are the breadth of my practical memory and foresight.
So, thinking about the big picture is tough for me — and by tough, I mean determined, clinically, to be impossible. But for this column and my own freaking sake, I’m trying.
I’m told that I should start considering what I want to be when I grow up. I’m told that my old answer to that oft-asked question is now unacceptable.
So, if I can’t be an Indian or a lion, what else is there?
I know I still have time to think about it. I know. But for a mind that is constantly running in the present-tense, consideration of a career is earth-shattering.
Your job is how you make a living. It’s your livelihood. It’s your life’s work. Your job is your life, plain and simple. It’s who you are.
And even if your career isn’t who you really are, philosophically or metaphysically, it’s the first and foremost factor in how the world measures you. Your job is as much your name as the letters on your birth certificate. It’s your title.
Nate Fleming, the beekeeper, is a different person from Nate Fleming, the attorney. Nate, the chimney sweep, isn’t the same as Nate, the cardiologist.
So how do I choose who I am?
Maybe that’s a bit too deep for this little column of mine. Maybe I should try to view this more practically, and decide not who I should be, but what I should do.
But I’m good at so few things. And, on top of that, I enjoy even less than what I’m capable of.
Most of my distinctive strengths have no place on a rÃ.èsumÃ.è, and my most glaring weaknesses are exactly the things that do.
For instance, I could never call myself a motivated self-starter with a straight face.
I don’t even have any real goals. Never have, really. Making a decent salary would be nice, sure, but I’ve never felt satisfied with simply earning money. Do I want to be an outright success or do I want to enjoy myself? I don’t know, but those two options seem mutually exclusive.
And how many jobs will just be replaced by robots of the future, or outsourcing for that matter? I’m going to be around for another 50 years, give or take, and the job market will look significantly different then than it does now.
Maybe I should look into becoming a mortician or pursing a career with the IRS.
But until I absolutely have to choose a career, I’d like to keep my options open. And I’ll even scratch off lion and Indian from the list. I’ll be realistic.
I’ve tried to narrow my ‘‘maybes’’ list down to three. I could see myself as the Prince of Thieves, a Gentleman of Fortune or an International Man of Mystery.
Someday soon, I’ll have to grow up. But not yet.