Today Jonathon quoted a bit from Mark Pilgrim that I’d seen before. Enlightenment struck (in the scattershot way it strikes where I’m concerned) and I knew I had to comment.
“Do what you can’t not do,” says Mark, the assumption being that there is some transcendent occupation that fits you like a glove, that will suffice to keep you in the style to which you are accustomed (and preferably a bit better), and that will lead you ever upwards and outwards to new glories, successes, and joys.
All right, I may be overstating things a wee bit. Still. That’s the general idea, isn’t it?
Which makes things a little tough for us non-transcendent types. Just pointless drudges, that’s us, no direction and no grand schemes. No flow.
What got me riding this train of thought was an email from a friend about David’s unclaimed property, expressing a certain amount of wry astonishment that anyone could lose track of a significant amount of money. Well, look, that’s how David is; I’ve known that for twelve years. He has other things to think about, and if he doesn’t, he’ll find them. Transcendent things. Lifework things. Things he can’t not do.
Mundane details of everyday life are just not his thing. He’s the original innocent; once he gets his Ph.D (knock wood) he will be the perfect absentminded professor.
So the thing I can’t not do is take care of him, keep him fed and sheltered and his tuition paid. That’s my—well, not my job exactly, more like my permanent task, my lifelong occupation.
Not terribly transcendent, is it? Nor is what I do in service of that goal. A low-paid data-entry drudge job. Taxes and other financial-management work, including planning, oversight, and worry-warting. Shopping (all types) and cooking. Nagging. Computer maintenance. The odd bit of mending, the occasional gasp of horror and whisking away of a no-longer-viable article of clothing into the rag bag. (He doesn’t notice holes large enough for a cat paw, I swear.) Guiding him through mundane encounters he’s never experienced before and doesn’t have the Goffman scripts to handle.
Which is not to say I resent this work; much of it carries intrinsic reward. (Aside from tax returns, which are horrible, personal finance is intriguing. Yes, even now.) There is also a great deal to be said for possessing the complete trust of one’s spouse. And I am just stupid proud of what David has accomplished, and what’s coming down the pike for him (no, sorry, can’t tell just yet).
It does irk me now and then, though, patience not being an especial virtue of mine. I’ve lost my temper with David a few times, usually because a particular decision feels too big or too worrisome for me but he won’t or can’t participate. Or because he pokes his head up and makes a fuss over a decision I’ve made. Or because he doesn’t seem to understand or value what I do for him (usually a misapprehension on my part, but there it is).
It’s also not to say that I couldn’t give up particular facets of my life that on reflection exist only to serve this thing I can’t not do. Job—I’ve thrown away two in the last three years, and the one I’m on will end sometime next year (because the project will be done, not because I’m going to stomp out in a huff or anything like that).
Finances—I talk a lot about paying off the mortgage, probably more than I should, but that’s because it is a weight, a big one. I want it gone. With the extra principal payments, it has sucked up a good one-third to one-half our post-tax income the last three years, windfalls aside. Burning the mortgage will buy me freedom I can hardly imagine right now.
Not just financial freedom, since that is usually defined as “freedom to spend lots of money on useless stuff;” I don’t have lifestyle ambitions much beyond the way I live now. What I’m after is mental freedom, a return of the brainspace currently occupied with “how do I find $x to put into the house? do I put $x I currently have into the house, save it for David’s tuition (or, heaven forfend, my own) or what? oh, crud, have I even fed the IRAs this year?” In other words, I’m trying to put myself out of (part of) this job.
Even then, though, I doubt I’ll do much that Mark or Jonathon would recognize as life-work. It’s just not the way I function. I am part worker bee, (large) part drone. I genuinely enjoy music performance, but I’ve lived without it for several years now. Theater—even longer, just about long enough to grow into the mother-in-law roles that fit me best. Writing—Burningbird is a writer, not me. I do not have whatever drive it is that impels some people into relentless pursuit of a particular metier.
It’s lovely when I have work to do that I can genuinely get into, and I’m pushing myself toward library school (and accepting the additional mental burden of figuring out how to pay for it—the words “home equity line of credit” have actually crossed my mind, much to my dismay) in hopes of finding such work; but I don’t need that in the same way I need to watch out for my husband.
Every time I’ve sought the One True Lifework, in fact, I’ve fallen flat on my face, tripped over my own inflated expectations. Graduate school. Ebooks and markup. Better I should do what I can’t not do, and let the One True Lifework go.
I read Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class recently. It didn’t especially convince me—I can accept his data but not all his conclusions—but I had a true fire-book-across-room moment while perusing his final chapter. (No, I didn’t fire book across room. I don’t do that to library books. I just snarled and wanted to.)
See, Florida points out that a Creative Class–based economy leaves non-Creative-Classers in the dust, in service jobs that pay a wretched benefits-less pittance. He’s right. His solution? Not revaluing service jobs as vital parts of tolerable living. Not valuing human time and energy enough to pay a decent minimum wage, to ensure a minimum standard of health care. Oh, no. The answer is to move everyone into the Creative Class!
Moron. Clueless, elitist moron—I really wanted to fire that book into a wall, hard. Maybe I am a drudge; maybe I do deserve no more than the pittance I’m paid. Move me out of my drudgery into the lighthearted, self-absorbed Creative Class, though, and David’s in immediate trouble. I may be a drudge, but I am a necessary drudge.
And we necessary drudges deserve better than second-class status. Better than to be told that whatever we’re doing is less than what we should be because it is a means to an end and not an end in itself.
