Sinister: what do you want to do when you grow up??

[Jesse Chanin]

I was looking for a job & then I found a job & heaven knows I’m miserable 
now.

Dear Sinister,

I have as of two days ago officially found a summer job – forty hours a week 
putting textbooks into cardboard boxes to be shipped across the country, 
with the possibility of moving up to the sealing-with-cellophane-tape 
department if I work out OK.  It’s hardly my ideal employment but I have 
convinced myself, typically patronizing toward the rest of humanity, that 
there are people who do this sort of work (starting at 7am of course) for 
their entire lives, people for whom packing paperback books isn’t just a way 
to afford more Johnny Cash CDs.  So by doing this for one summer, assuming I 
last the summer (the guy who hired me did say there was a prerequisite of 
being able to lift 40lbs and I’ve no idea how much that is so I just said 
Yes, Of Course I Can!), will allow me to properly empathize with people for 
whom this is a reality.  & I owe them that much, being born into the 
American middle class.

But then who’s to say I’m not one of those people?  All my life people have 
drilled into me that I can do whatever I’d like, fly to the stars, jump the 
moon, conquer galaxies etc etc and I even think some of them said so in 
earnest too!  & to some extent I believe them, despite all evidence to the 
contrary and my own indecision.  I can do whatever I want, but I’m not quite 
sure what that is; I will be 32 and still putting textbooks into boxes 
thinking, “I want to be a writer!  I want to be a radio producer!  I want to 
be an artist!  I want to be a rockstar!”  And I don’t know if I’d hate 
working in a concrete shipping warehouse more than a sterile cubicle.  But I 
don’t really believe that could happen to me.  Other people work in 
cubicles, other people aim for uppermanagement and watch soap operas and buy 
SUVs.  I will do something miraculous.

It just hasn’t happened yet (note the passive tone).  It hasn’t happened to 
me yet.  I know vaguely what I want to do, but instead I spend my days 
surfing around on internet sites & playing frisbee with the hippies over in 
the park across the street, waiting for inspiration and talent and 
motivation to happen to me.  It’s the worst sort of inexcusable idleness, I 
think.  And I am starting college in the fall for which I’ve got to assume 
$2500 in debt each year, not my first choice college, or second or third, 
but my last safety school that at the time of applications I was too 
disdainful of to read up on and realize is strongly Jesuit.  I did a foreign 
exchange year in Spain & had a miserable time.  I lost my job last summer 
after nine days.  I’ve done nothing but dwell on my own wonderful potential 
and now I head off to college to study some indeterminate subject to launch 
some unspecified career that isn’t what I want anyway.  I want to be a 
rockstar, or a writer.

It’s typical isn’t it?  But usually people have fleeting ideas of 
satisfactory back-up plans: photo-journalist, veterinarian, cop – or even 
something specific you can work toward, like this fellow I know named John 
who is going to Astronaut university.  When people ask me where I’m going to 
school I mumble New York and when they ask me what I’m going to study I slur 
englishistoryphilosophyliteraturepoliticalscience YOU know.

For the sake of optimism we’ll call that “flexibility in my future plans” 
which isn’t untrue, per se.  And as far as optimism goes, this e-mail seems 
to be veering in the opposite direction which is in all truth a 
misrepresentation.  I’m not unhappy, just restless, and boxing books should 
be just fine if the friendly pear-shaped man who gave me the job agrees that 
I will be listening to headphones very loudly the entire time.

There’s no fancy moral at the end of this where I realize I will be 
perfectly happy as a CEO as long as I have beautiful children & live in a 
mansion outside of Hartford.  But what do you want to do when you grow up, 
Sinister?  There’s a comedian I recall (it could have been Paula Poundstone 
who, for the record, makes child abuse much funnier than Michael Jackson 
could ever dream of) who said – and I paraphrase – “When adults ask kids 
what they want to do when they grow up it’s ‘cause they’re looking for 
ideas.”  Cue the uproarious 80’s laughter.

But I did just finish a whole e-mail so my task-management has reached an 
all-week high.

Thank you, thank you.
Jesse

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