Making the Best of Things =/= Giving Up

Man working at a crappy restaurant wearing a dinky cowboy hat?
Man working at a crappy restaurant wearing a dinky cowboy hat.

I don’t know how I know

But I’m gonna find my purpose

I don’t know where I’m gonna look

But I’m gonna find my purpose

Gotta find out, don’t wanna wait

Got to make sure that my life will be great

Gotta find my purpose before it’s too late

-Bob Dylan

...okay fine, Princeton from "Avenue Q." Bite me

Yesterday, I interviewed for a new position at my current company, Big Super Colossal Conglomo Corp, for a job in letter writing and design. It’s a far cry from my current role of Phone Customer Service Representative/Analyst/Whipping Boy, and something that, at the outset, seemed much more in line with my education and skill set (aka my ability write in 300 words what could actually be said in about 15, as the lion’s share of this blog’s posts serve to prove)

The interview went something like this:

THEM: So, what do you know about this position?

ME: Well, my understanding is, we write and review letters we send out to make sure they comply with the law and…

THEM: Actually, our compliance team does all that for us. They make sure the letter wouldn’t break any laws and tells us to make the changes.

ME: Okay. Anyway, we would still take their suggestions, compose the letter in our own voice…

THEM: No, all the wording pretty much comes verbatim from legal. We basically take what they want us to read and make sure all the margins are aligned and the text is formatted properly.

ME: So basically, you want me to be Clippy.

THEM: Could you spot us some ones? We ordered pizza for the department but we’re kind of short on the tip.

It looks like you're trying to find your purpose in life.

Would you like help?

• Review listings for jobs you don't have a chance at?
• See how great your friends are doing compared to you?
• Go to Carl's Jr. for the fifth time this week?
• No thanks, just drink myself to oblivion without help.

The interview team said they would let me know within a week whether I’d been offered the job, but I doubt they will considering I managed to answer every question with something they didn’t want to hear (“You’re an independent worker? We want people who ask a lot of questions.” “You used to be a sports editor? Keep all your creative ideas to yourself.” “You’re a human being with a heartbeat and ten working fingers? We’re looking to hire a ham sandwich.”)

Even if they did offer it to me, though, would I even accept? Unless “Spell Checker Clicker Guy” is a six-figure job these days, why move from a mind numbing job talking to customers to a mind numbing job talking to myself all day as I lapse further into madness?

Needless to say, this isn’t the spot I imagined myself in when I walked across the podium at Duquesne two and a half years ago, proudly touting my diploma invitation to the alumni association and buckets full of confidence. Sure, I didn’t expect to be hosting a morning drive radio show or writing a daily sports column already, but surely I’d be a couple steps down that path by now.

The job market has had other ideas so far, as has my wallet.

We all know the average college student changes their major anywhere between two and eleventy kajillion times before they graduate, but more surprising is the majority of college graduates who can’t find a job in their preferred field. A poor economy (empirical evidence) mixed with more college students choosing fields of study many businesses deem unmarketable (observational evidence) forms a cocktail I like to call the Drink of Disillusionment…a drink that goes down rough. *self-important sniff*

It’s even worse when half of your friends from high school or college are already doing something they love right off the bat. I’m perfectly okay with sending most of them to their own island where they can revel in satisfaction away from the rest of us losers. (At this point, I’m mostly talking to my fellow liberal arts majors – I haven’t run into many neuroscientists reciting the list of house dressings at DiGiorgio’s to make ends meet lately)

For the “millennials” like myself who feel like they’ve lost their way, is there a time to cut bait on your dreams and go for the moderate payday? Where’s the cutoff point? If you’re not ready to buy a house by 30, have you already blown it? If you’re not making more than $40K a year by 25, are you doing something wrong?

Setting an arbitrary time to make a career change seems ridiculous. After all, for every five philosophy majors working in tech support to pay their student loans or aspiring musicians who work more paid lessons than paid gigs, there’s a Mike Mayock, who made a living in real estate for 18 years before trying to break into broadcasting again - and succeeding.

You could always return to school to get a Masters or another degree, if you want to ensure the sun will burn out before you escape the tangled web of student loans you’ve woven yourself (thanks Obama). Or you could take some time off to backpack across Europe if you’re a huge asshole.

I wish I could come to some satisfying conclusion, tie everything together in a pretty little bow and leave you with words of wisdom from someone years my elder, but if the preceding dozen graphs didn’t paint a vivid enough picture for you, I barely know what I’m doing here myself. Hell, I just spent 45 minutes trying to cook dinner tonight and I’m still biting into uncooked white beans in a half-baked attempt to reintroduce a foreign substance known as “potassium” into my life. Do you think I have a clue what the secret to finding a job you’re passionate about is?

Here’s what I do know: you’re never going to get there by standing pat. “Patience” is not a synonym for “complacency.” (Trust me, I looked) Do what you love in some other capacity. Use whatever spare time you have to practice your craft, and don’t convince yourself you don’t have any. For Christ’s sake, right now you're burning time reading a blog written by someone who’s watched this video 80 times in the past week and laughed just as hard each time. If you can’t put your “passion” high enough on your list of priorities to grant it 15 minutes a day, it’s probably not your passion. 

Apply to a million jobs. Send your resume anywhere with a mailbox, an e-mail address, or an under-appreciated intern tasked with sorting through them all. It’s like the New Deal: even if it doesn’t ultimately do anything, it will at least make you feel like something’s happening until you catch a break (or a world war).

Most of all, if you’re in a relatively stable situation despite working a job you can’t stand, don’t get too comfortable. Comfort will sap you of ambition. I’ve gone weeks, months without applying to new jobs at times because, all things considered, my living situation is pretty decent. When I’m not at work, things are great. The temptation is to relax and enjoy the out-of-office perks of a job like mine because the actual work is so grating. In reality, your work begins once you clock out for the day. Sharpen the saw with a relaxing night every so often, but don’t make it the norm.

With that, I must go. Now that I’ve gotten my writing done for the day, it’s time to learn to dole out word processing advice like an anthropomorphic paper clip. It's so I can find my dream job, you see.

tl:dr - Beans take forever to boil and should not be made by anyone unless you derive pleasure from periodically stirring a pot for 13 hours

My Salsa Makes All the Pretty Girls Want to Dance

There. I did it. I used a D12 lyric as the title of this blog, but more importantly, that means I’ve done something more degrading than what I did last night. Last night, I danced the salsa.

I don’t mean this to demean the entire salsa-dancing population of the world. I only mean to highlight how comically poor I am at ballroom dancing. I have all the coordination and elegance of a giraffe hopped up on speed and bound by Saran wrap. (I have it on good scientific authority that giraffes are not good at salsa dancing, let alone those trapped by cling wrap and using hard drugs)

Thus, when a coworker I’ve been meaning to catch up with invited me to go salsa dancing with her and a friend yesterday, I was absolutely sure she was joking. I was wrong.

Some background: I am a 6’3”, 250-pound white dude. I played basketball in high school, but I’ve only recently started trying to get myself back into shape after encountering a few personal fitness speed bumps at college. My best dancing performance was beating this on medium difficulty my junior year of high school.

Yet about nine hours after her original invitation, there I was, in a car headed towards Philly, about to go salsa dancing. God help us all.

----------------

Brasil, a club in Old City, Philadelphia right near the Delaware River, has two levels. The ground floor has a traditional nightclub feel with a raised dance floor, bar, lounge chairs and all the flashing neon lights you could ask for. The upper level is, for all intents and purposes, a small dance studio with your grandfather’s mini bar attached to it. They offer $3 Coronas and margaritas at the bar on Wednesday lesson nights; because when you’re about to learn to do something you’ve had virtually no experience doing, why not try it after hitting the sauce?

$5 got us in for the lesson. After a round of drinks, Sonja, our dance instructor, called the 36 or so dancers in to begin, as another half dozen folks remained at Grandpa’s bar and preemptively began to chuckle at our impending misfortune.

The first aspect of dancing I remembered I hated were the mirrors. The mirrors in a dance studio obviously serve to show you how you’re moving in relation to the instructor and pinpoint where you’re going wrong. It also reminds me what I look like while trying to do anything gracefully. I could hear my own notoriously malicious subconscious ridiculing me: “Nice moves, milky! You learn that move playing with your Skip It last week? Hey, remember when your waist could fit into one of those legholes on your jeans? I think I saw a shop selling secondhand Spanx on the way over here. You should scope it out! I had sex with your wife last night!” (My subconscious doesn’t know I’m not married)

We started with “basic step.” Sonja did the step three times before moving on to the next step. The problem was, it usually took me until the third time to figure out what she was doing anyway. By the time I finally got around to trying it myself, she would shout, “Okay, now Suzy Q’s!” and I’d be left stumbling into the next move.

After going through eight or nine steps at what seemed to me like warp speed (naturally, everyone in my immediate area seemed to know exactly what they were doing), Sonja called out to her assistant Jamie to hit the music. Salsa music blared out the speakers of the studio as Sonja began shouting out the names of the next step to do, like I had a snowball’s chance in hell of remembering the actual steps, let alone their goddamn NAMES.

The fact that even Sonja’s bright voice couldn’t rise above the music made it nigh impossible for me to put forth anything greater than Garfield tap dancing on his fence as I tried to figure out what was going on. The only two sounds I could hear above the music were Sonja occasionally shouting “Wooooo!” to remind us she was having fun and God’s laughter as he watched me struggle. “Wow, I’ve created some crappy dancers in My day, but I must have let one of the interns work on you, buddy! If I’d known people could be this bad at dancing, I'd have banned it for good centuries ago! I had sex with your wife last night!" (God doesn't pay close attention either, I guess)

After our warmups, we got in a circle and began learning our actual dance for the night. Men lined up on the inside of the circle, women on the outside rotating every minute or so to change up our dance partners. I started with my friend from work, then her friend, then a long line of strangers. It was fun dancing with people of all sizes and experience levels – the more seasoned dancers would politely point out how I should stop taking steps as if I’m doing lunges and just make short, barely-noticeable steps.

About 10 minutes in, a blonde woman in her early to mid 30s rotated to me and we began setting up to dance when she shot a glance to someone to her right and hissed “What?” I ignored this until it happened three more times and I couldn’t help but peek over. A similarly aged man in a dress shirt and slacks is looking at her with an expression that could be best described as half appalled and half “Moooooom, when’s it gonna be myyyytuuuurrrrn?” Either this man was emotionally shattered at the mere prospect of his wife/girlfriend dancing with anyone other than him, or he was simply having the most miserable time I’ve ever seen anyone have doing anything ever.

At last, after about a minute of these grade school-level shenanigans, the woman took my hand, led me over to where her man was, and asked the woman he was currently paired with if they could swap. Sonja, sensing trouble, asked if there was a problem.

“He only wants to dance with me,” the blonde woman answered. “I know, I know,” she added, seeing Sonja’s puzzled look. For the rest of the night, the rest of the group rotated while Insecure Man and Humiliated Woman awkwardly shuffled along in the corner. The only possible scenario I could imagine where the man would get that visibly upset would be if:

a. He hated dancing/socializing, AND

b. His wife loved dancing, AND

c. His wife convinced him to go by promising she’d only dance with him

If that’s the case, however, it would have been far better for the gentleman to simply leave and engage in an activity better suited to his personality, like kicking the s*** out of a homeless guy.

As the night went on, I began getting the hang of things, relatively speaking. I even learned to “lead” my partner into our planned moves, which was good because Sonja specifically instructed the woman not to go along with the planned move unless her male partner “firmly” led them into it. There’s nothing worse than moving on to what you believe is the next step, only to see your partner stop moving because they’ve determined you’re not being forceful enough. (Or that you’re dead wrong about what the next step is and have no clue)

“Ba-sic step, ba-sic step, ba-sic LIFT, turn the girl…back and turn, one two three, ba-sic step, ba-sic shake…” Midway through, there are three sets where the man simply rocks back and forth while the woman alternates between “flashy” moves such as hip-shaking, body rolls or lunges.

The last move was the trickiest for the men, though, particularly enormous dudes like me. The move required holding my partner’s hands while I spun underneath our arms, holding on to her hands the whole time. Afterwards, we’d smoothly release our grips while doing the basic step and return to form. If I’m describing this terribly, it’s because I was also terrible at doing it.

Eventually, the music started and the rotations began again. With each new partner, I grew more relaxed and more comfortable with each new move (giggity). Finally, Sonja called “Last rotation!” This was my last chance to put everything together, including that tough new spin.

Problem was, no one rotated to me. The men to my left and right had a new partner; I didn’t. Somewhere along the line, the rotation chain got jumbled up.

“Five, six…” Sonja counted off to begin the dance. At “six,” a small middle-aged woman rushed up to me from the left and snatched my hand, glaring as if her showing up two seconds before we were supposed to start was my fault.

A more experienced dancer might have been able to go with the flow and make that work. I didn’t. I muffed up my steps six ways to Sunday. Thbbbbbbt.

My assumption is that all dance lessons eventually lead to this 

After the lesson came open dancing. I grabbed a beer and watched the rest of the group, my two friends included, dance with the other regulars for fun. Almost out of a high school movie, men swept by woman standing alone, asking for a dance and leading them to the floor, improvising the duration of their dance, the women following nearly to perfection. I’m not in that boat yet. It’s not for lack of confidence; I’m just not going to ruin a woman’s night by wooing her into a dance, then spending five minutes mangling her toes and sending her crashing into other dancers.

Did I learn anything from trying something out of my comfort zone? Sure. Vans are terrible shoes to dance in, and some nightclub bouncers are more eager to pat you down than others. (I think I saw the guard outside Brasil do a small fist-pump when he saw me, the first dude in about 3 minutes, walk up to the door).

I’ve always been a talker, though. My preferred method of communication with the fairer sex, or just my friends, is verbal, not physical. Dance halls or clubs pumping in heavy bass beats or even classic ballroom music don’t cater to my strengths. I’m out of my element. I need a bar or a café or a house with a little background music. That’s my Rafael Nadal on clay.

It wouldn’t hurt to improve my dancing, though. As a way of letting loose and getting a little workout in, it could be great once I learn what the hell I’m doing. And after all, I’m still not too old to pursue my NFL career yet. Anything could help.