Career Day

I awoke from a series of strange dreams to find myself thinking about Alan Moore and a new Leauge of Extrodanary Gentlemen. Not the movie, the comics, which were fantastic, though highly disturbing. Much like the dream. Sometimes I get good ideas that would require me to steal concepts from much more talented writers in order to achieve. Maybe I'll just find a way to write him with my idea.

I have no idea what I am going to do with my life. Everyonce in a while it occurs to me that this is my last semester at school and I have no idea what I am doing later. In a way it seems like its a good thing. I compare it here to marrying your high school sweetheart. You may fall in love and then move in together and a few years later you are laying in a bed with a woman you know better than she knows herself and yet you just aren't feeling the attraction there anymore as you realize that the boy that fell in love with her in high school is very different from the man you have become in the years since. And the two of you just aren't right for each other anymore. Thats how I feel about trying to decide what to do with my life. How do I know I am going to want to be doing anything I might want to be doing now in a couple of years? I often think about what type of person I am going to be at 30, I imagine that this 22 year old version of me and the 30 year old version are going to be very different people, as I already feel a lot of disconnect from who I was in high school, and that wasn't even 5 years ago. A constant in all of this is that I still want to write, but unfortunately that just isn't a career I can jump right into. I have to be good, and I have to get a little lucky, and even if I got to be fairly well known I may still not be making enough straight off the writing to only do that. I guess thats what I'm trying to figure out. What do I want my backup career to be while I work on my "real" career?

For a while I thought that I would probably just put on a suit and tie and go in for some interviews and get an office job. There is a level of office work that I don't really mind doing, that sort of mindless pushing of buttons. But then I had to take this Information Systems class and I have to work with all of these Microsoft Office programs and, although some of you may not believe it, I really don't get really angry all that much more anymore. I used to get pissed off at almost everything, but now, now I'm a lot calmer, choosing snide remarks and sarcasm about things I don't like rather than anger. Yet those fucking office programs had me wanting to punch out my monitor and storm out of the house. And I've only spent a couple of hours using them so far. If I had to deal with those things, and phone calls, and other employees, and all that other office related crap, I think I would turn into one of those guys that was always just shaking with anger and everyone in the office was sure I was walking through that front door one day with a machine gun. Do they even still make machine guns? I mean, I call a machine gun anything that shots a lot of bullets rapidly, but I think they only make, like, asault rifles now a days. Machine gun sounds a lot cooler, and scarier, yeah, just walk in there with a tommy gun, now thats a weapon. What was I talking about? Yeah, I don't think I would be actually any threat to my coworkers, but I would think now that I could last maybe a week before I just stood up and walked out and never came back. Not to mention I am developing an affinity for quitting. I almost want to take a job just so that I can quit.

So I have no idea what I am going to do. I was thinking about that Comic Book shop but I have a problem with commiting myself to one store, one town, for at least ten years right out of college. I think I might want to move around a little, find a town or a city somewhere that I really like being in and then set up shop there. Reno and I have had a good long run, its time for me to be hittin' that dusty trail.

I wouldn't mind working on movies. But I don't want to live in LA. Thats problamatic. I mean, I wouldn't mind being a peon in the movie business for a while and trying to work my way up, but I don't think that I could handle doing it in LA. Just not worth it to me. Or I could be an astronaut. No, actually I couldn't. It kind of sucks wanting to have a career in the creative fields because you have to be realistic and know that you aren't going to just get right in on it. It takes some time, you need those other jobs. I'm restating this for some reason I havn't thought out. You know, there are really only three types of jobs that I would probably be qualified for, White Collar (low-level), Blue Collar (low-level), and Retail (low-level). Maybe I'll get a job as a waiter in a fancy resturant. You have less tables to worry about and since the food is more expensive the tips even out to really busy resturants, and sometimes could be a lot better. I'd have to be really nice to people, that could be a problem. I think I could pull it off, I'm usually nice to people, even people I don't like, not really because I think I should treat everyone the way I want to be treated or some crap like that but rather because I discovered that it is a hell of a lot easier to be nice to annoying, strange people and then polietly excuse yourself from their company. If you try to get rid of them by being a dick it just makes them angry and the whole situation gets out of control. So I just exchange a few words, ask them a question or two, and then pretend to get a phone call or something. So, point being, I could probably get a job as a waiter, I think I've got the attitude down. But that isn't something that I would want to do for more than a year or maybe two at the most anyway, so that is problamatic. I don't know, I just don't know. It seems like there should be some sort of field that I wouldn't mind working in and that I would be willing to go into for a while after college, but I really just keep coming up blank. I think I just don't want to work. I need to work out a way to do that. Maybe I'll get an online job, sell adspace or something. Well, thats sort of an office job. Son of a bitch.

I've got nothing. I'm going to go now.