Everyone wants to outsource, I explain.
We think about how nice it would be to crawl into bed, unplug the clock, turn off the phone and just sleep and sleep and sleep until we’ve made up for every wide awake night of the last decade.
We wonder if there are people out there we could pay to take the heaving lifting off our hands. People with impeccable judgment and soothing voices and cool hands as they pat our hair and tell us that things will be just fine now.
We are tempted to just start blurting the truth and not stop or to park at a crazy angle and leave all of the car doors wide open or to eat spaghetti with our bare hands for no other reason than to see what might happen, what dominoes we might knock over.
We contemplate running away. Maybe for a few weeks, maybe forever. A little timeout or slip away in the night and not look back. Just lose. Ourselves, each other, the plot.
And we feel guilty. Because who considers abdicating like that? Who has the gall to imagine themselves so burdened that outsourcing the big decisions and the nitty gritty details doesn’t seem like such a bad idea, merited even?
We do.
If someone had told you about this moment, would you have believed them?
This time, I am standing by the railroad tracks, staring at the cranes, scenery broken up by a man in coveralls riding past on a bicycle from WW II. My hard hat pinches because I wear it too tight, like a vise. It’s windy and wet and the hem of my pants drags in the mud. In the movies, something would happen now. Something more than just a light rain.
Could you ever have imagined this?
I ask myself that a lot. Once, I remember asking someone else. The answer was that they never imagined anything about the future, so the present moment was as predictable as everything else that they had never predicted. I couldn’t decide whether that was the best way to be or the very worst.
I still can’t.
Psst…and everyone else is scared of them, too.
- That you’re unlovable
- That you’ll never be happy or don’t even have the capacity to be so
- That people are nice to you out of pity or duty, but not genuine affection
- That if you really shared what you thought and how you felt, you’d be shunned
- That you’ll die before accomplishing something to be proud of
- That you’re so much more broken than everyone else you know
- That you’ll never figure out what you want, or not figure it out in time to do something about it
- That you’re a bad person
- That everyone else gets “it” and you don’t and you never will and no one will ever get you, either
- That your best effort isn’t enough
- That you don’t deserve any of this
- That you deserve all of this and worse
- That it’s too late
*Even if you’ll never admit it
“We’re different kinds of writers.”
This followed shortly after,” I know you like writing and all that journalism stuff.” No, I like pad thai and Christopher Guest movies. I am a writer. And you are unable to distinguish between common homophones. Journalism is how I put myself through school. People actually pay me for my words. Please don’t compare that to the corporate newsletter or make it sound like I spend my evenings writing Twilight fan fiction unless you want me to murder you to pieces. Of course, I say none of this, just turn away, doing that thing where I have to bite the inside of my lip so you can’t tell how truly angry I am. Maybe I make that face, but I pretty much always make that face.
We all have a thing. It’s our thing. Our identity thing. And we’re very protective of it, even if we can’t explain it. And maybe you can see right away what that thing is, or maybe it’s carefully hidden. But never carefully enough. You can always tell when you’re getting close to someone else’s here be monsters spot and then you have to decide whether to dart your eyes away at the last second, to bail out or to go ahead and throw yourself off the edge of this flat ol’ world. There’s that certain feeling you get when you’re on the verge of saying it, just saying it. You know it’s going to hurt, it’s supposed to hurt and the hot little creeping burn in the very bottom of your stomach tells you should just do it, not in spite of what will happen, but because of it.
Just don’t.
I’ve learned that it’s important to respect people’s identity things. Sometimes, they’re accurate. Sometimes, they’re hyperbolic. Sometimes, they’re wrong in the worst ways and it’s utterly heart-smashing and breath-stealing to realize that you can’t make someone recognize that and let go of the wrongness. And sometimes, they’re simply what we need to tell ourselves so that everything holds together and we can play nice with others for one more day.
As I announced on Twitter and Facebook, I’m more than a little chuffed to report that I’ll now be blogging for Forbes. The process by which this came about is pretty similar to my pal Susannah’s story. But now the time is right (long-distance move, dumping all my worldly possessions, landing the job I wrote about here have all been taken care of) and the fine folks at Forbes seem to think so, too.
Lest you think I’m going back on my word about being through with Gen Y (and I can guess who will be emailing me to inquire about this very back-tracking), I’m still over the Millennial beat. The Ground Floor will focus on higher ed and early career issues and will be less cultural anthropology and more factual forensics. This amateur Margaret Mead is tired, y’all.
I’m solidly back into the writing groove (this series for Thought Catalog definitely helped) and actively pursuing opportunities to do more of it. If you know of something that fits the bill, please shoot me a note.
