On Being a Productive Member of Society

It's important to have useful talents and practical skills. At least I've heard that it is. I myself am not particularly good at much of anything, although I do mix an excellent gin and tonic.

I have vague recollections of writing books in kindergarten. These “books” were written and illustrated in crayon, and the binding process consisted of folding sheets of construction paper in half and then stapling the stack together down the middle. I seem to remember a teacher reading one of these masterpieces out loud to the class. The main character was flying magically through the air when an earthquake caused him to plummet to the ground. Even by the loose standards of kindergarten logic, that makes no sense at all, and I don’t remember anything else about the plot, but I don’t think it had a happy ending. I imagine it was too morally ambivalent for American readers in the pants-wetting demographic.

At some point in my life, however, I must have realized that making a living as a writer was not a realistic strategy. I never pursued it as my primary plan. I'm not sure if this was because I thought I had a better plan, or if it was more because I had no particular plan at all. Knowing me, the latter is more likely. I was envious of the kids who had a career track laid out. They took all the advanced-placement classes, had high GPAs, and knew exactly which university pre-med program they hoped to get accepted into. They looked to the future with such clarity. I had no such path before me; I was bored with today, traumatized by yesterday and depressed about tomorrow.

When parents, teachers, counselors etc. would try to get me to commit to any long-term course of action, I was most unhelpful (as teenagers tend to be in all cases). “What do you want to do,” they would ask. “I want to wander the world in search of knowledge and adventure,” I would reply in the grandiose and disaffected exuberance of youth, or some words to that effect. I wanted to learn to fly, to skydive, to sail, to scuba dive and anything else that would open doors to stimulating experiences. I wanted to backpack the full length of the Appalachian Trail. I wanted to ride a motorcycle from Alaska to Patagonia. You know, that kind of thing. “Yes, yes, fine,” they would say in frustration, “but what do you want to do as a JOB? You know, to make a LIVING?” And then I would blink at them uncomprehendingly and go off and sulk. Aren’t kids great?

I could never monetize my interests. I briefly flirted with getting a degree in geology, because the idea of being out in the field appealed to me — hiking alone in some remote desert canyon with a hammer and a pick, collecting rock specimens and gazing upon them in a thoughtful, knowledgeable way, having profound insights about Earth’s ancient and violent origins as an eagle circled silently in a thermal high above. But the reality, of course, is that I would have had to spend my time in a small room with fluorescent lighting, analyzing data and drafting maps for oil companies.

It’s interesting how when people ask you what you do, they always tend to want a short, simple, familiar answer. They don’t like it when you’re equivocal or nebulous. What they really want to do is figure out where you rank in the social hierarchy. If you say, “United States Supreme Court justice,” they will treat you differently than if you say, “Janitor.” (This is true even though many janitors are smarter than some Supreme Court justices, especially Scalia.) For many years, when I got the “so-what-do-you-do?” question, I responded, “commercial pilot.” That satisfied most people, and then they would always ask me a standard follow-up question like, “ever been in a really scary situation up there?” Then I would nod solemnly and in a grave tone of voice tell them, “Yes. Once I flew directly into a thunderstorm, crashed, and died.”

Part of it, I’m sure, stems from a simple desire to feel superior. But there is another, even more sinister aspect to this game: some people seem to believe, somewhere deep down in the dark abyss of their souls, that there is only a finite amount of success and happiness out there in the universe. They don’t just want to be happy and successful, they want to be happier and more successful than other people. A self-actualized individual makes these types of people very uncomfortable. They take great pleasure in the misery and failure of others, and they’ll keep on excavating until they find evidence of it. Because if someone else shows signs of being happier and more successful than they are, it means, somehow, that they lose. The best way to deal with people like this is to crouch down behind something and hide until they go away. If that doesn’t work, fake a seizure or pretend to be part of a foreign tour group.

Meanwhile, however, the question remains: what to DO? Everyone seems to agree that the “secret” is to vividly visualize what you want, and then then work diligently to achieve it. This method works great if what you want is to be is a software engineer or a database analyst. It's less effective if you want to be a wizard, or Batman.

The reality of employment can be depressing. George Carlin pointed out that most people work just hard enough to avoid getting fired, and get paid just enough not to quit. It's funny to hear kids talk about what they want to be, as if you can just pick and choose your lifetime career trajectory like a hat from a rack.

Perhaps the best course of action is to focus on short-term goals, such as wrapping up this blog post with a wise and insightful closing, which I will probably get around to just as soon as I finish this gin and tonic.