
My life is an arrangement of potholes placed so strategically, Iāll never be able to drink coffee on my way to work without spilling it all over my ivory blouse. Or at least I would own an ivory blouse or drive to work if I had a job. Iām twenty-four, two years out of college, and living in my childhood bedroom my parents suspiciously kept intact (I think they knew my trajectory in life when I announced my major late in the freshman year of my demure college days.)
Some people consider me a failure. Some days I think I am, too.
Iām not complaining. Itās just how the job market is. Instead, to afford my insurance and car payments, I take on freelance graphic design work, and it gets me by just as well as any minimum wage job (without the greasy fries or cranky customers). Iām thankful I know graphic design well enough. Iām glad I have the experience.
And thereās the kicker. The potholes in my long and illustrious Sunset Drive. I either have too much, or not enough. I have useless knowledge in this, when I should know more about that.
It seems like a silly reason to be unemployedābut anyone who has heard, āYou have too much experience,ā or vice-versa will vouch otherwise.
In college, while some people collected beer bottle caps and sorority ribbons, I collected experience like a punch card. Intern here! Work there! Temp over yonder! While my peers were out chugging from keggers and going to black-light lingerie parties, I wrote my fingers off trying to make some dent in the world (and it was a sacrifice that finally paid off). I was a go-getter. My social life was a sacrificial lamb to the work gods.
I think I mightāve prayed to the wrong gods.
I am unemployed, but I am not lazy. Itās hard to differentiate from the two, to peel back the stigma of not having a job from the idea that āyouāre not trying hard enough.ā
Iāve tried hard.
Iām still trying plenty hard. Iāve been a barista, an ice-cream scooper, a senior graphic designer at a printing company (a place that smelled terribly), an assistant to a screenwriter, a social-media coordinator, and an intern at a publishing house. Iām also a published author.
Iāve rubbed elbows. Iāve greased hands. Iāve even gone to one of those fancy cocktail parties where cute little waiters in bowties come around and offer you cold shrimp and a refreshing glass of bubbly.
But sometimes it just isnāt enough. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you still feel like youāve failed yourself. You start thinking, I should be elsewhere at 24. I should be better. And you look back at your life and you wonder what you did wrong. Iāve looked back so often, I can draw a map of my road, I can tell you all the bridges I didnāt cross and all the ones I burned.
But I donāt know what I would do differently.
In a society where your status in life depends upon the level of your job and the digits in your bank, I am certifiably a failure. But if experienced counted in any of that, if you could weigh it like gold bars, then I would be makinā it rain.
I have to remember this the next time a would-be employer calls and tells me, āIām sorry, we picked someone elseā because eventually someone will pick meā¦right?
Even the last person picked in dodge ball is sorted into a jobāand usually the first one tagged out.