Jay Elias | You can take it with you

"I have wasted Time, and now doth
Time waste me"
- Richard II

2002-08-04- 12:24 a.m.

The Life and Times of Ivan Ilych

A man who actually goes by the name of Crusher a few nights ago told me that you can’t look at it in small pieces. “It isn’t a whole bunch of movies,” he said, “it is one long, forty-year movie. If you look at the pieces, you’ll spend all your time missing things. Trust me, we’ll all be seeing each other again soon.” I thought that was pretty deep. Of course, he was also drunk enough that he kissed my cheek when I went home, and earlier he told me that he knew that one day I’d be a big deal in this business. I’d have believed that one more if I hadn’t had to remind him earlier this evening what my name was.
Sooner or later we all say goodbye to everything. Even this journal will one day end (although it hasn’t happened just yet). We’ll say goodbye to our parents, our homes, our friends and sooner or later we’ll shuffle this coil and part with it all. But that doesn’t make even the smallest goodbye any easier.
I suppose it isn’t too unfair to say that I end jobs more often than most people, or that while I’m there, I’m working much more than the average person too. This isn’t a complaint; this is the life that I’ve chosen, and more to the point, I like both the immersion and the freedom it affords me. But it becomes, at a certain point, much more than a project. It offers a closed community, much like high school, with its own hierarchy of grips and wardrobe and actors and extras and production assistants to rival the cliques of any circle.
And the end is filled with the same sort of wistfulness that the end of high school has. Sure, a road has been traveled and to its completion, and accomplishments have been made, and we’re all ready to move on. But I’ll miss it, not only for the quality of the journey but for the sheer regularity that it gave my life.
Unemployment days blend into each other; days become nights with frightening rapidity and nights become dawns far more often than I am comfortable with. Sure, these problems haven’t really occurred yet (I’ve been unemployed for four days, people), but I know from experience that they soon will. I’ll slow down on bill payments, less because I don’t have the money but because I’m not sure how long I have to make it last. I’ll hole up in my apartment scared of going out with people because I might spend. And I’ll worry. I’ll worry about whether I will ever find another job in my field, and whether it is time for me to start calling temp agencies yet, and whether I’m just wasting my whole life trying to make it in a field where my successes have so far not included financial stability or creative fulfillment.
Ok, so most of these aren’t really problems this time around at all. My bills are all up to date (for now), I’m leaving for Cape Cod in one week for my first real vacation for its own sake in three years, and I know that there isn’t a possibility of my being unemployed for too long because even if I fail to find work in the next two months, I’ll be welcomed back to the series when we return from hiatus. And I can make it two months; hell, it might even be good for me. Give me a chance to write. But the nagging questions about wasting my life don’t go away.
Everywhere I turn, people I know are making forward progress in their lives. My best friend from high school, well, he just took the bar exam this week. My best friend in the city, he just got a five thousand dollar raise and is managing seven people. He just fired his first person two weeks ago. The girl I’m seeing just got a ten thousand dollar raise when she changed companies. My friends are all buying their first houses, getting married, worrying about their stocks as the market does its imitation of the Red Sox in September. And I’m living more or less as I have since I came to New York; paycheck to paycheck, with a futon for a bed and nothing in the bank, slowly working on repairing my credit rating so that perhaps one day that Providian company that advertises on TV will give me a credit card.
It wouldn’t be that hard to change all that. It wouldn’t be that hard to finish college, go to grad school or get some other kind of job that I could do well. Be a professional, someone who wears a tie to an office. Or I could do something different, become a police officer or a teacher. Sadly, even public school teachers make a better salary than me.
What I don’t want is to look back at the end of my life and feel I’ve wasted much of it. And that’s the rub. No matter what choice I make, the possibility exists. So I’ll stay on this road, for a while longer, and just keep hoping that the traffic clears up and I can make better time. To wherever it is that I’m going.

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If you want to make me
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jelias@diaryland.com

Older

Doesn't Take Much and That's Messed Up - 2004-03-15
Like Water Under Bridges - 2003-09-08
Jesus On The Dashboard - 2003-08-13
An Administrative Announcement - 2003-08-11
Don't Worry, It's Coming - 2003-08-02

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