The first step to finding something to do is to do something. In this case, after searching fruitless job boards and nursing a shameover from last night’s decisions, that something is taking the form of a formless screed that I’m considering putting on the website. That thing I pay sixty bucks a year to have, and then never use.
Life is such a precious thing. So precious, I have no idea what to do with it.
A brief history of my professional wandering:
I’ve worked in coffee shops, done some landscaping, spent four years white-knuckling through covid with an emails job at a data company, was gifted a small freelance writing assignment that kept me afloat through summer ’23, and now I work as an admin at a maximum security psychiatric hospital.
I’ve developed very few applicable skills beyond bullshit ones you talk about while applying to bullshit jobs.
I’m a musician. I have a master’s degree in writing from a college that only kind of still exists. I very rarely write these days.
I can make a mean old fashioned and a decent latte, but seemingly, hiring managers see “master’s degree” and think, “he’ll be gone in six months when he finds something better. We’ll pass.” So I struggle even to get interviews at places like Starbucks, jobs I once looked down on as I trudged through grad school, that I am now desperate to have.
I try to be a good friend, and I love my girlfriend. I still live at home because I don’t make good money, and living alone or with roommates in Connecticut requires semi-decent money at worst, and usually leads to hunger. My privilege insulates me from hunger and has given me a kind of golden handcuffs. And I am deeply unhappy.
My job has a lot of downtime, so I usually spend it reading books or doomscrolling twitter with an album bombarding me through my right AirPod. Therefore, I’m exposed to many thoughts about the state of kids these days, otherwise known as Gen Z or Gen Alpha, many of them negative, boiling down to something like “kids these days just don’t want to work.” Which, of course we don’t—who wants to work—but truthfully, my biggest problem these days isn’t a desire for rest or leisure. It’s just simply not knowing where to direct my energy.
I can work hard. I have in the past—especially when I’m motivated or interested in something. Despite slow movement in this direction, colleges don’t actually give out degrees for nothing yet. The three that sneer at me from my bedroom wall are evidence that I’m capable of doing something. Or, they’re evidence that you can get decently far in this life in bourgeois spaces, as a white privileged guy, on pure bullshit. Considering I don’t currently know how to frame a house, install commercial HVAC, or install a toilet, it’s probably the latter. More importantly, I don’t know how I would go about learning how to do any of these things.
Next week I’ll be halfway between 25 and 26. Overall, on a personal level, things are much better today than they were a year ago. I’m more stable, I have a strong and beloved circle of friends, a healthy relationship with a woman I love deeply, flaws and all, my drinking is under control, I’m writing new music, my niece gets bigger and smarter every day, and bouncing ideas off of my sister brings me deep reassurance. And yet, I can’t help but feel that things are worse than they were three years ago. It feels like there’s less opportunity; things are more rigid.
I’m part of a class of people that inarguably have more opportunity and agency than the vast majority of people on this planet, and yet that agency feels like sand in my fingers. I would work, hard even, if I knew where to work.
I hope I’m not alone in feeling like I just need to find something to hold on to. Lately it’s as if the table is stacked with condiments, spices and utensils—but where’s the meat?
And while I feel like the central character in a rich personal drama wholly within myself, bombs fall on Rafah, kids not much younger than me who I feel deep political compatibility with are getting shoved around by fascists in riot gear about it, I have friends that struggle to meet rent, others in crisis for legitimate interpersonal reasons. So while I get high on my own bullshit here, I’m surrounded by people with real, material problems visited upon them largely by forces far outside their control. And with that comes a level of guilt that is entirely counterproductive, and leads to a spiral of complaint and then shame at complaining.
So maybe that’s a sign to stop, at least for now. But before I do, going forward, I would like to maybe do this now and then. Maybe weekly, or monthly. Maybe organizing my thoughts, or, put another way, broadcasting my lamentations from this small corner will lead to something. After all, I just need to do something, and this is a thing that I can do, at least for now.
Local man, unsure what else to do, falls so far as to become the very thing he always dreaded he might: a blogger.
So, if you’re interested, stay tuned. Here’s a shitty picture of last month’s eclipse from Talcott Mountain in Connecticut, as a reward for getting this far.
matt nilsen 