Revelation Part 2
Two weeks ago, after I got back from my mom's wedding in Kauaii, I started working on a farm on Sauvie Island (arguably an extreme response to my dislike of my old job). The island is located about 30 minutes outside of Portland, between the Columbia River (before the Willamette river breaks off) and what is called the Multnomah Channel. The farm, where I will be working for the next month, has always been one of my favorite places around Portland to drive to on weekends and it was a pretty amazing coincidence that they needed people for the month of October. Two weekends ago, I made probably 60 carmel apples and sold roasted corn. This past weekend, I sold people kuri, buttercup and butternut, delicato, and acorn squash, corn, shell beans and romano beans, pickling cucumbers, kraut cabbage, gave people maps to a six acre corn maze, weighed pumpkins from a giant pumpkin patch, and watched a zydeco band play at the Saturday night Hoe Down and bonfire. Every day, one of the hispanic employees whistles and sings in Spanish while stocking veggies. I work with a baker, a writer, a librarian, and a girl in nursing school (not, as I am more familiar, just folks who are somewhat entrenched in a law enforcement mentality).
And at sunset after a rainy afternoon, looking out on rows of cosmos and zinnias out the market's warehouse door, I realized I hadn't felt like myself for a very long time.
Leaving my old job was definitely an anxiety producing experience. I was leaving a job where I was getting paid close to 40 grand a year, had great insurance, had respect from judges and other folks in the community, and had the references and experience to create a very strong application to law school. And on top of that, I was leaving it for nothing. At that point I had no other job, no other specific plans, nothing at all. It wasn't that I was running from an anxiety producing experience (because the alternative was an environment with a different form of anxiety). How was I going to pay rent? Was I making the right choice or was I sacrificing too much just because of insecurity with my previous decision?
Yesterday, an Assistant District Attorney who I knew from when I clerked at the Juvenile Court showed up at the farm with his girlfriend. He said he had recently quit his job because it was effecting his personal life in a very negative way. He said he was looking for another job, and while he was looking for another job, he was enjoying his time off. Later, he and his girlfriend say happily on the back of a hayride, sitting in the sun, in sweatshirts and jeans (he'd always looked just a little bit awkward in his dark blue suits and pastel pink and blue ties). He did not seem surprised to see me there.
Maybe none of that was a sign, but it served as a good reminder. I can't really imagine living a life where I'm inside shuffling papers all day, participating in some assembly line where misbehaving people are processed through a system that is so dependent on other parts of the system working effectively that any changes are dependent on changes in the other giant systems (making the likelihood for change within the system fairly unlikely--or at least frustratingly slow).
I don't think it was/is fear of stress that has made me reconsider the law school plan. Or a lack of an acquaintance with my anxiety (although I do not claim that I fully understand it). There's no doubt in mind that my old job (and the environment at my old job) was stressful--and stressful in a way that was unhealthy. But I also know that I am basically anxious all of the time--whether it be because I'm holding together the daily actions of a domestic violence court, or because I have to figure out how to ring up 10 pumpkins as quickly as possible so the next 5 people in line don't get grumpy. The "bull shit cognitive-dissonance-like force" will always move in to replace the bigger stressors I've managed to escape. So the choice is, like Ben said, less about stress/anxiety, and more about figuring out the best way to pursue "bigger and better things".
I think I know that if I did make the choice to go to law school, I would be able to do fine. I am not afraid of my ability to hang in that world. But right now, that choice would be more a way to address the doldrums/lack of direction that comes with being in your mid-twenties than the most effective way for me to accomplish "bigger and better things". It's kinda weird that, for me, law school may in fact be the easy route. But I think I know now that the simplicity of the choice does not mean it's the right one.
So, Goldsmith, law school may be your destiny and I will definitely do what I can to help you along the way. But I'm not ready to call it mine. And you and anxiety ain't going to talk me into it... At least not just yet.
And at sunset after a rainy afternoon, looking out on rows of cosmos and zinnias out the market's warehouse door, I realized I hadn't felt like myself for a very long time.
Leaving my old job was definitely an anxiety producing experience. I was leaving a job where I was getting paid close to 40 grand a year, had great insurance, had respect from judges and other folks in the community, and had the references and experience to create a very strong application to law school. And on top of that, I was leaving it for nothing. At that point I had no other job, no other specific plans, nothing at all. It wasn't that I was running from an anxiety producing experience (because the alternative was an environment with a different form of anxiety). How was I going to pay rent? Was I making the right choice or was I sacrificing too much just because of insecurity with my previous decision?
Yesterday, an Assistant District Attorney who I knew from when I clerked at the Juvenile Court showed up at the farm with his girlfriend. He said he had recently quit his job because it was effecting his personal life in a very negative way. He said he was looking for another job, and while he was looking for another job, he was enjoying his time off. Later, he and his girlfriend say happily on the back of a hayride, sitting in the sun, in sweatshirts and jeans (he'd always looked just a little bit awkward in his dark blue suits and pastel pink and blue ties). He did not seem surprised to see me there.
Maybe none of that was a sign, but it served as a good reminder. I can't really imagine living a life where I'm inside shuffling papers all day, participating in some assembly line where misbehaving people are processed through a system that is so dependent on other parts of the system working effectively that any changes are dependent on changes in the other giant systems (making the likelihood for change within the system fairly unlikely--or at least frustratingly slow).
I don't think it was/is fear of stress that has made me reconsider the law school plan. Or a lack of an acquaintance with my anxiety (although I do not claim that I fully understand it). There's no doubt in mind that my old job (and the environment at my old job) was stressful--and stressful in a way that was unhealthy. But I also know that I am basically anxious all of the time--whether it be because I'm holding together the daily actions of a domestic violence court, or because I have to figure out how to ring up 10 pumpkins as quickly as possible so the next 5 people in line don't get grumpy. The "bull shit cognitive-dissonance-like force" will always move in to replace the bigger stressors I've managed to escape. So the choice is, like Ben said, less about stress/anxiety, and more about figuring out the best way to pursue "bigger and better things".
I think I know that if I did make the choice to go to law school, I would be able to do fine. I am not afraid of my ability to hang in that world. But right now, that choice would be more a way to address the doldrums/lack of direction that comes with being in your mid-twenties than the most effective way for me to accomplish "bigger and better things". It's kinda weird that, for me, law school may in fact be the easy route. But I think I know now that the simplicity of the choice does not mean it's the right one.
So, Goldsmith, law school may be your destiny and I will definitely do what I can to help you along the way. But I'm not ready to call it mine. And you and anxiety ain't going to talk me into it... At least not just yet.
posted by n s tessman at 10/11/2006 12:35:00 PM
2 Comments:
Unchallenged. :)
power to the people
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