The school OF LIFE!
2005-05-19

I have been unemployed for a long period of time now and have been doing some deep soul-searching. There is a time in life when we have to Face Reality and realize that we don�t have the talents or skills to carry out our hopes and dreams. And that time is now.

There is absolutely no chance of getting work in the industry I was last employed in, and let�s be frank, in most of the jobs I am applying for there are about 100 other applicants at least, and at least 50 of those are fresh-eyed Ivy League graduates who will work for pennies (as they have parents who will make up the rest). So why would any employer be like, �Oh, let�s hire somebody with an actual salary history who yet still has no positive work references! That�s a genius idea!�

So, to spare myself and others embarrassment (mostly myself), I really should stop trying. I only have myself to blame for being dull and incompetent, but even incompetents have to make a living. I�ve been making a list of Fallback Jobs (if you see your own profession listed here, don�t get upset, these are just the careers I�ve seen people go into most often when what they really want to do doesn�t work out). Which one should I choose?

1. Teacher
Pros: Three months� vacation a year
Cons: Poverty-level salary, presence of children

2. Lawyer
Pros: Can lead to insanely high salary,
Cons: Does anybody actually like being a lawyer?

3. Government drone
Pros: Bountiful amount of vacation time, hard to get fired no matter how incompetent you are
Cons: Working as cog in increasingly fascist system not especially appealing and possibly even morally wrong

The best bet is the law, although I�d only go if I could get into one of the top schools, because unlike my friend P. who genuinely wants to be a lawyer, I only want an obscene salary and you can�t get that unless you go to one of the good schools. Otherwise you just end up working long hours to pay back your debts, and if I wanted to do that I could waste two years on an M.A. in Media Studies or something like that, writing papers on the deep cultural significance of �Britney and Kevin: Chaotic.�

Unfortunately there are plenty of people who want to write papers on �Britney and Kevin: Chaotic� as well, many of them significantly better-connected and smarter than me� Fuck! Can�t a girl get a break?

I have a strange sick obsession with this book. Mainly because I always wanted to be the kind of girl who would have an M.F.A., editing other people�s writing and eventually doing a book with blurbs on the back praising my wry, bittersweet sense of humor. So it�s interesting to see what actual M.F.A.�s come up with, especially as I was reading the blog the book is based on. But there�s something about it that makes me angry (just like most other things in the world, of course). I think it�s the idea, prevalent in a lot of women�s writing, that being lardy is some sort of giant obstacle worth writing about in the same detail that was previously reserved for shocking memoirs about drug addiction or having sex with your father.

I�m sick and tired of that attitude, �Oh, I have a job that others would kill for and I�m actually very smart and well-connected, but it�s all so sad because I�m fat.� Listen, at least you are competent at something while my main achievement will be sitting in a cubicle doing bullshit work for the rest of my natural life, or at least the part of my natural life where I�m still continent and mobile, so on the balance of Life�s Agonies we pretty much equal out, don�t we?

This is probably the reason why girls get horrible eating disorders that cause them to starve, because everyone needs to have something to be good at � I�ll never have a job as an editor or write a book like I once thought I would, BUT AT LEAST I DON�T BREAK A CHAIR WHEN I SIT DOWN, BITCH. Ooooh, who�s the winner of the game of life now? (don�t answer that)