Tuesday, July 27, 2010

The Future Is Not What It Used To Be

I really, desperately want a job. I think. Mostly I want all the things that having a job represents, the whole glamorous, big girl lifestyle: an apartment, shiny, smiling friends I'd regularly share meals with at classy and interesting ethnic restaurants (sometimes I would even pick up the tab with a laugh!). My fantasy vision of what my post-collegiate life would or should look like seems based, strangely and almost exclusively, on a very '90's state of mind. I seem oddly stuck in a Gen X frame of reference that, in this year of the lord two-thousand and ten, is desperately out of date and likely non-existent. Within the sillier, dreamier corners of my ever-cynical mind, I can't help but cling to these little visions. My brain seems convinced, in spite of itself, that there are essentially two options for the future, I will either A) get a low-paying job at record shop/used book store/small and progressive gallery, have a smallish apartment, decorated with a lot of door beads and Bush posters, retain my artistic credibility and be fairly happy, if still fundamentally existentially confused or I will B) get a better paying job, on the fast track to being a very high-paying job, in the more business oriented sector, working in the record industry/publishing/large and established art museum, have a smallish apartment, with sleek lines and gleaming white cabinets, not have enough time for personal art creation and be fairly happy, if still fundamentally existentially confused. I will be either Ethan Hawke or Ben Stiller. The choice is mine.


Of course, I realize that life never was and never will be quite this simple. Even in more profitable days, I know that the slow and gruesome transition to adulthood was a messy business, that Ethan Hawke in real life cheated on Uma Thurman (one of the most beautiful women in the world!) and Ben Stiller is a big jerk. The truth is that the 90's are just the home of my most comforting memories. I have a brother and a sister who graduated from high school in '93 and '94, respectively, and so the movies and the music that seem most familiar, most calming, and, in some strange way, most real are those that my siblings had around when I was a kid. In my head, those were the days of endless, easy possibility. There is part of me that still sees my sister as an impossibly glamorous creature, burning incense and listening to the Black Crows in her room, sneaking off to smoke joints with my cousins in the woods. And my brother, who mourned the death of Kurt Cobain with conviction, and took me for rides in his car, blasting Alice in Chains, will remain, in some part of my imagination, an edgy, cool character, funny and without a care.

The truth of them both is, of course, much more complex. My sister was pregnant with her son when she was younger than I am now, my brother was living on his own, with a serious girlfriend, by the age of 24. Still, I cling to these images, to the imagined world that died before I could take part in it, because to me there seemed something special about that time, something essentially hopeful, and, despite my play at vicious pessimism, I remain hopelessly hopeful. As I once heard Aimee Mann say in an interview "I consider myself an optimist. That's why I'm constantly disappointed." And, indeed, though Generation X seemed to define itself by moping, perhaps even bitterness, all that angst and ennui was really just disappointment. The culture of Gen X was all about longing for something better, and to long for such a thing indicates an unstoppable belief that there was, in fact, something better to be attained. While the 90's was guilty of navel-gazing, of an excessive and increasingly unfashionable deadly earnestness, my own generation seems, as a whole, well, a hole. A big black hole of nothing, tired of everything. To be cool is to be an ironic portrayal of a vapid culture that may or may not be tongue-in-cheek to begin with, a reflection of a reflection of a reflection until it seems impossible to tell what is genuine feeling and what is not. The joke is that there is no joke.

So I look for jobs, although probably not as hard or with as much zest as I should be looking, and I apply for some, although nothing has yet turned up. I pick through the offerings in D.C.,the nearest city to me, close enough to commute. It's a city I don't particularly like, and the offerings I find don't encourage me much. I don't want any of these jobs. I find myself feeling as if, were I called tomorrow and offered one of them, with benefits and a decent paycheck, I don't even know if I would take it. Of course beggars shouldn't be choosers, and the offer as yet has not happened, though if it did, if it does, I will take it. You see, I have hopes to move somewhere else, and that takes money. More specifically, I have hopes to move to the Pacific Northwest, to Portland or Seattle, places I have never even seen but I view, foolishly and unrealistically, as rainy paradises. I imagine these to be places where the things I like about the 90's still magically hang around. Places where people are shockingly earnest about their music and their art and riding bikes to work. Silly, really, to think that any place is perfect, but I imagine if I can make it out there, I can have the life I imagine, with the beaded curtains and the decent job, the smiling friends in the restaurant.

So, what does it all mean? What does it mean that I, and many others I know, yearn for a bigger life, spend lots of time envisioning existence in some other place, where things will be easy and good? Does my generation feel an unearned world-weariness? Are we confronted by the feel of a world winding down, falling apart, or do we just selfishly fancy ourselves to be more sophisticated, aware and worthy than we actually are? Well, fuck if I know. I figure being young is pretty much all about being stupid and confused and sure that your feelings are more clear, meaningful and deep than anyone who has ever lived before, and that's nothing new. I do know that I'm lucky, though. I'm lucky I have a family willing to let me move back in and slouch around jobless. I'm lucky I have parents I love and who humor me when I say I'm writing a book, just so I can feel like I'm doing something. And, anyway, things will come together somehow, perhaps not in the way I imagine or long for, but they will come. I hope.

1 comment:

  1. kickstarter.com came to mind what are you going to do with it? i don't know.

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