Out, Out Damn Nostalgia!

"For every job, so many men
So many men no one needs."
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So, I've been here in the, let's just say, VIP University Officials Office (From now on referred to as VIPO) for a few days. As usual, since I moved to this city, my feelings are mixed. Decent job in important office that can show me a lot and as I've been told like 10 times, set me up to get to know the whole campus as a whole and get an even better job. I guess that's how things work here. People kept telling me how difficult it was to get hired by the university, but once you were in, you were in. Now I guess the deal is to float around until you find a nice job to land on. I find the whole thing unsettling. Yeah, me, Ms. Move-Around-The-Universe-Every-1-2-Years.

And with the way things have been going, I've tried to be really positive about getting ANY work at all, even if it doesn't fit me. Let me say that again, trying. It's interesting how I can overdramatize my life sometimes (don't laugh, Beau). When you're looking for work, and you keep lowering and lowering your standards ('til you end up working at Shop-n-Smile and start saying to your mate, "Hey, look, we could deliver newspapers at 3 in the morning!"), I start imagining strange scenarios. I love history, particularly individuals in history and how they react. And I have been imagining the long, depressing lines for work during the Depression. Those grey photos of men with vacant, hopeless stares hoping that today they'll be picked to do some shit labor job. And for a split second I'll feel like that, temping at some lumber yard for 1/3 my NYC salary and having to defer my student loans AGAIN, and eating oatmeal for breakfast AGAIN lets me feel a fraternity with those men. How I have been doing all these jobs I hate, that are boring and tedious, and that the pay is crap.

And then in the very next moment I feel like a giant asshole. I'm not an idiot; I know there is no comparison of me now to what people then went through. When I'm picking up the 12 rugs that someone has left strewn all over the floor at Shop-n-Smile, I remind myself that a) this job is easy, b) this job is an a climate-controlled environment, c) I don't get that dirty, and d) I don't have a bunch of starving kids to feed.

I still want to quit Shop-n-Smile every single night though.

It's funny, when you're in a situation where your current job situation sucks, you start looking back to your old jobs with a great deal of romantic nostalgia and wondering why you ever left, despite the fact that at the time you were DYING to get out of there, for whatever reason.

Remembering how happy I was at UW-Madison and how it was the only time I really felt a part of a tight-knit, warm community, but forgetting that the job I was in had no growth potential, EVER; and that I was surrounded by either 50-something's or 20 year olds, but never anyone my own age; and how I was in a relationship that needed to end, but wouldn't as long as were in the same city; and that after I got my Master's I thought it might be time to move to Southeast Asia, since, what's the point of spending all that time and money studying it and not ever experiencing it in any meaningful way?

Remembering my great jobs in NYC that did have growth potential and lots of interesting and caring people to work with, but forgetting that it was still low-paying; that at times I felt as if I was treated like a glorified secretary and not an equal; that I lived in a tiny, cockroach-infested apartment that would make the guy on Fear Factor wince; or that my second job (teaching) really fulfilled me, but also forced me to travel way out to Queens, only to return to my home on the subway at around 11pm at night every night; or that the love of my life was living in a totally different state; or that as much as I loved NYC, that I wasn't really a NY'er and didn't really fit in anywhere; and that I couldn't afford the damn place!

Or even remembering my brief job in Missouri with four beautiful, funny, and unbelievably kind and caring women (I used to call them the Missouri version of Sex & the City, the waaaaaaay toned down version), but forgetting that the pay was less than half what I made in NYC, that the job was often slow and boring, that most of the time I was itching and burning to leave for New Zealand and join Beau, and that I had to commute (something I really really hate).

Yeah, nostalgia's a real treat.

And I'm a nutjob. You ever wonder if it's even possible that you could ever just be happy? Ever? Not deliriously happy, but a long-lasting, unending, flowing stream of contentment? Peace? I have periods where I am, but.... ugh. Normally, I don't consider myself unhappy, but I also don't usually consider myself truly happy. Or that I have happy days. Usually I feel restless, like I haven't really reached my potential and there's so much more to be accomplished, worked on, figured out, paid for, learned. I could attribute this constant restlessness to my ADD, how when doing my work at Shop-n-Smile, my mind, which is usually going going going, feels like letting out a bloodcurdling scream from the boredom. But more and more I feel like that's just a cop-out, even if it is true. I've been somewhat fascinated by those at Shop-n-Smile for whom this is their "job," (most are younger than me and have children), and who have a kind of contentment with that. They are making single-digit, per hour wages, they do the same thing night after night, and there's a sense of okayness with that. That fascinates me, because every time I think about working at Shop-n-Smile, as a full-time provide-for-my-family job, FOREVER, I want to stab myself. I envy that kind of peace.

I used to poke fun at Beau, because he'd make these comments like, "When this happens, I'll be happy." Then it would happen. And he'd go, "Okay, when THIS happens, I'll be happy." And then THAT would happen. Rinse. Repeat. Is there just something in us that is so spoiled and screwed up that happiness is completely unsustainable? I sometimes think of people years and years ago who basically worked their asses off every single day, simply to survive, and I don't think they had long periods of self-musing over their own personal happiness. They just did. Or, so I think. Sheesh, right now I'm thinking so much I'm all turned around.

Blah.