Sunday, October 12, 2008
WAVE
When I started my new job 9 weeks ago, I had this little schtick I would trot out for friends and acquaintances who would ask "Are you excited?" or "Isn't it going to be great?! This is your dream job!"
"Yes, I am excited" I would offer, "but I also feel like a novice surfer, eager to catch her first wave, but wondering if instead I will be smacked silly by an unforgiving ocean."
Imagine...It's twilight. I paddle out into the big blue, amidst a scattered company of expert surfers, full of puppy-dog eagerness to get up on my board and show my stuff. I've never actually done this before (except in those silly land simulations where they have you wiggle around on the sand), but I'm hoping with the right combination of focus, effort, and luck, that I'll stand up on my board at exactly the right moment, catch the crest of the wave, and enjoy a glorious ride to the shore. That's what I'm hoping for. But what I'm expecting is that I'll miss the right moment, be sucked into the wave, and that instead of elevating me, the wave will crush me down to the sea floor, and I'll wind up with a mouthful of sand.
And the joke was - since I knew this was going to happen anyway - I wanted to just drive out to Ocean Beach and fill my own mouth with sand (skipping the ocean part) - just get it over with.
Well, I told this story for a few weeks, and then I forgot about it. But it didn't forget about me. The wave that has been moving toward me for the last 9 weeks finally caught me this week, and just as I expected, even though I am sitting on dry land, metaphorically I am coughing and sputtering, trying to clear my mouth of seawater and silt.
I think a lot these days about human energy - how much it has been able to manifest in the world throughout history - and yet also how none of my friends seem to have enough of it right now. Everyone I know, despite elaborate life architecture and their best truest efforts, seems to be getting crushed down into the earth at least once a season.
I think a lot these days about the phrase "Work/Life Balance" - a odd term that I think comes from the corporate world (and which implies that one is not alive at work), but which seems to have infiltrated nearly every work environment, even the alternative ones.
I think a lot these days about my foremothers - my great-grandmother and her friends - and how they probably would have laughed and scoffed at this phrase. "Life is Work" they might have said. I doubt most of them would have thought to want some "Me Time" at the end of a day of kneading, baking, sweeping, feeding, scrubbing, scouring, carrying, cooking, scraping, hanging, ironing, fetching, serving, mending, and minding. They probably wanted less from their lives than we do. But maybe they weren't so twisted and tormented. So guilty and grasping. Maybe they never thought "of course" as the cold waters closing over their heads or felt as oddly comfortable as I am with the feel of grit between my teeth.
You can't turn back the clock though. In our post-feminist, pre-apocalyptic, 21st century urban environment, inside this global pressure-cooker, there seems to be only bigger/faster/stronger/higher/harder waves coming at us, with no calm in sight. Are they even surfable anymore? Is the only solution to find a little protected cove and cut yourself off from the rest of the ocean? Is the storm ever going to pass?
Photo by wentloog
When I started my new job 9 weeks ago, I had this little schtick I would trot out for friends and acquaintances who would ask "Are you excited?" or "Isn't it going to be great?! This is your dream job!"
"Yes, I am excited" I would offer, "but I also feel like a novice surfer, eager to catch her first wave, but wondering if instead I will be smacked silly by an unforgiving ocean."
Imagine...It's twilight. I paddle out into the big blue, amidst a scattered company of expert surfers, full of puppy-dog eagerness to get up on my board and show my stuff. I've never actually done this before (except in those silly land simulations where they have you wiggle around on the sand), but I'm hoping with the right combination of focus, effort, and luck, that I'll stand up on my board at exactly the right moment, catch the crest of the wave, and enjoy a glorious ride to the shore. That's what I'm hoping for. But what I'm expecting is that I'll miss the right moment, be sucked into the wave, and that instead of elevating me, the wave will crush me down to the sea floor, and I'll wind up with a mouthful of sand.
And the joke was - since I knew this was going to happen anyway - I wanted to just drive out to Ocean Beach and fill my own mouth with sand (skipping the ocean part) - just get it over with.
Well, I told this story for a few weeks, and then I forgot about it. But it didn't forget about me. The wave that has been moving toward me for the last 9 weeks finally caught me this week, and just as I expected, even though I am sitting on dry land, metaphorically I am coughing and sputtering, trying to clear my mouth of seawater and silt.
I think a lot these days about human energy - how much it has been able to manifest in the world throughout history - and yet also how none of my friends seem to have enough of it right now. Everyone I know, despite elaborate life architecture and their best truest efforts, seems to be getting crushed down into the earth at least once a season.
I think a lot these days about the phrase "Work/Life Balance" - a odd term that I think comes from the corporate world (and which implies that one is not alive at work), but which seems to have infiltrated nearly every work environment, even the alternative ones.
I think a lot these days about my foremothers - my great-grandmother and her friends - and how they probably would have laughed and scoffed at this phrase. "Life is Work" they might have said. I doubt most of them would have thought to want some "Me Time" at the end of a day of kneading, baking, sweeping, feeding, scrubbing, scouring, carrying, cooking, scraping, hanging, ironing, fetching, serving, mending, and minding. They probably wanted less from their lives than we do. But maybe they weren't so twisted and tormented. So guilty and grasping. Maybe they never thought "of course" as the cold waters closing over their heads or felt as oddly comfortable as I am with the feel of grit between my teeth.
You can't turn back the clock though. In our post-feminist, pre-apocalyptic, 21st century urban environment, inside this global pressure-cooker, there seems to be only bigger/faster/stronger/higher/harder waves coming at us, with no calm in sight. Are they even surfable anymore? Is the only solution to find a little protected cove and cut yourself off from the rest of the ocean? Is the storm ever going to pass?
Photo by wentloog
Labels: Career Anxiety, Community Muses, time
