La Lubu, guest blogging at Feministe for the week, has two fantastic posts up that have kicked me in the ass and all over the field. In Intersecting Identities she has basically laid out my lack of interest in blogging and political activism over the last couple of years and why it’s so hard to keep the faith when the majority of my time is spent worrying over keeping my home afloat. In What Color Are the Holes In Your Parachute?, a maddening piece on being the mother of a preemie and having to become an expert on health insurance policy just to see that her daughter received proper care, she reminds what it feels like to look out over the edge of the abyss, arms swinging, trying to fall on stable ground.
La Lubu always writes these posts that send me off on crazy tangents, so bear with me. I can’t even think up a segue here.
Since Ethan was born I’ve often felt like I was treading water, financially and emotionally, trying to do my best not to be a burden on my family, trying to keep up appearances so nobody would give him those pitying sidelong looks because he was from a “teen mother” and “broken home.” As time passes, many of the superficial worries have vanished — as I age I become less identifiable by age, and less likely to be mistaken as Ethan’s nanny, and as he grows, he becomes more able to keep his face clean and give adults the respect they are due by local standards.
Yes, these were legitimate worries, are worries. Once people can identify you as lacking in some way, every breach from acceptability will be laid at the feet of your age, marital status, economic class, and value system. I prefer not to give people ammo to assassinate me with. Maybe this is why I was stricter with Ethan than I might have been, insisting on best behavior all the time, emphasizing his education perhaps too emphatically, adhering to a strict schedule, fearful, really, of what might happen if something, one thing, went wrong. Ethan is a good kid, a “dream kid” by his school counselor’s report, but I’ve always been afraid of being a bad mom. It’s hard to even admit to the perfectly normal fear of being an imperfect parent because I’ve had others try to use this fear against me, proclaim it to friends, courts, family, as some kind of proof that I’m unfit, that the fear itself invalidates everything I’ve done for Ethan and want for him. Others have berated me for feeling that fear at all, that I’m fine, everything is fine, it’s all fine, when I feel anything but. It’s been easier to put on the face of capability and pretend I know what I’m doing, jump from the plane with confidence even though my parachute, people tell me, is covered in snags. I won’t look up to check for myself. The last thing I need is one more thing to worry over.
I love the women I work with. My department is almost entirely composed of women, all of us from wildly different backgrounds, many transplants from the harder areas of Chicago and Indianapolis. My friendships with them are easily the best part of my job.
Without fail, whenever the issue of education comes up in conversation with my co-workers, I get The Look. I think I am the only person in my department with a college diploma, supervisors and managers included. Yes, I finished college, I explain. Yes, I do have a degree. What am I doing here? It’s a job. I needed a job. I just needed to earn some money. I was just depressed, I just didn’t know what to do once I graduated, I just didn’t interview well, I just got fired from my first job out of college, I just couldn’t figure out how to write a resume, I just didn’t have any work experience, I just couldn’t cull together the finer points, I just didn’t keep contact with my contacts.
No, they say, you got Stupid. Quit making excuses and get your ass out of here and get a real job, they say. Many of my ladies, I know, would kill to graduate from college, be a professional something that doesn’t have to worry about getting overtime or go without.
I have a good job with good benefits even though I bring in so-so pay. Chef and I, now married, have effectively doubled our income. The flow of money outward only increases. More on insurance, more on my student loans, more rent, a car I can’t afford. Ethan, growing at a rate I can hardly believe, requires a new wardrobe every season. Chef has been a dedicated and dependable worker for close to a decade, while I am fairly new to the working world. Work was supposed to be a break for me, a breather while I picked out grad schools, took the GRE, and moved onto bigger things. But now I settle into the daily routine of work, lunch, work, home, dinner, helping with homework, laundry, an hour of TV, and bed.
It’s not a bad life but for the money. There’s a nagging voice that tells me there’s something more to this, that I can earn more, that I can do more than handle client accounts in five minute increments and sell my ass off for a monthly bonus. I didn’t go to college to get into Sales, says my brain on the bitter days. At night I sit down to write and nothing comes. There are fires raging in California and I had no idea until yesterday. Two years ago, when Katrina hit, I didn’t know anything until the second day of the victims’ Hell. The falcon cannot find the falconer, and the English major can’t find a Real Job, whatever that means. The political met the personal and was nonplussed.
My friend J came into town last weekend with her kids. We sat outside while the kids played and went over and over how jaded we felt about the world. Just a few years ago we were full of high ideals and ready to do something about them. Somewhere along the way, I said, I realized I was just another shlub shlubbing my way through the world. I’m not special, I’m not a unique snowflake, I’m just trying to get through the month. J agreed. Fuck the world and get me a martini, she said, because I’m fresh out of ideas.
Right now that’s what it comes down to — I’m the most settled I’ve ever been, finally making ends meet, able to take an emotional breather. And goddammit, I want to kick back and drink a martini. I need a break.
Mind you, I don’t feel sorry for myself, and in no way am I working out a woe-is-me sob story. I know there have to be thousands of people like me, fresh-faced graduates of college stuck in low-wage, entry-level positions, genuinely surprised that after we were told we could be anything, do anything, and have so much potential, we became regular, unglamorous working folks, counting down our eight hour shifts, wondering if there really is more out there for us.
Tell me I’m not alone here.
UPDATE: 100 Little Dolls’ post on rat racing is sadly familiar.
You are not alone.
As you were typing this, I was in the office of my “AD/HD coach,” intimating that I will probably end up quitting school, because the last 5 years or so have just taken a toll on my financial stability and sanity in general. Discovering I have AD/HD after desperately trying to graduate college for years was somewhat of a relief. Unfortunately, I can’t unlearn 30 years of poor coping strategies in one semester.
I just want someone to recognize that my brain does not work the way 96% of the world does, and I want them to think that that’s ok. My IQ is considered very high, my scores on aptitude tests say I’m very capable and intelligent. Why can’t I do well and finish school? Why can’t I keep track of my bills? Why can’t I make this work?
I’d kill for a decent job, insurance, and to come home from work, have a martini, and watch pretentious independent film with my girlfriend. Apparently that is too much to ask.
I just want someone to recognize that my brain does not work the way 96% of the world does, and I want them to think that that’s ok. My IQ is considered very high, my scores on aptitude tests say I’m very capable and intelligent. Why can’t I do well and finish school? Why can’t I keep track of my bills? Why can’t I make this work?
Word. You know why I finished college? I had my math TA sexually harass me and give me a C in return for not reporting his ass, and a series of foreign language requirements that I think was handed to me out of pity. I got the AD/HD diagnosis when I was 17 or so and again when I was about 24. I took meds for a little while until I started grinding my teeth in my sleep, which would have added up to more medical bills in the end.
I don’t know. I’m shitty about it all, I admit. Like, what the fuck does it take to get ahead? Can somebody throw me a bone? And can I not be skewered for putting my head in the hole and pretending that everything is fine for ten minutes while the world falls apart and I drink my goddamned martini and enjoy an independent movie on my 36 hours off work?
I got The Job Conversation at work again tonight (I started writing this post a couple of days ago) in which a coworker told me that I need to get back out there and look for a teaching job, and in some ways it feels like my ladies are rooting for me, like I mentioned above, how they all want the degree, the professional something title, the salary position. It’s the Golden Ticket thing again and I’m not sure I even believe in it anymore. Sometimes a job is a job, and sometimes that’s good enough. Know what I mean?
You are definitely not alone.
And the AD/HD thing (ha!), I forgot that I was going to mention that it’s become something of a joke at work, like how I can be so smart and well-respected but can’t even count worth a shit. Maybe it gives me character or something. I’ll roll with that.
No, not alone. I couldn’t get job for a long time after graduating and then got stuck in the temp world, only to end up at a hedge fund company for seven months. I was so close to a great paying job, amazing benefits. They ended up not hiring me. The only reason I can think of why is because I wasn’t of the same blue blood line as everyone else I was working with. (They decided to hire someone completely new, untrained. Same age as me, except he was a stand up young man from a well trained family.)
I recently did get a job and it does have benefits and it actually aligns with my beliefs, but the pay is really terrible. I can’t save anything and can barely afford the payments on my loans. I keep on thinking if only, if only.
We should trade stories about all the crazy things I do to try to combat my AD/HD.
I think there are a lot of us that could trade stories about adult AD/HD.
I’ve been in a five-month funk since graduating from undergraduate. The last year and a half took an amazing amount out of me, from completing an undergrad thesis to the last semester of my senior year with 21 fucking credit hours of gender studies courses (i.e., paper-heavy). Going in, I knew what I wanted to do: complete my undergrad and head on to graduate school for at least one master’s, then on to doctorate. Coming out, I had lost sight, lost interest… I still don’t know.
These past couple weeks, I at times think I have it figured out again, that I know I desperately want to get back into the academy, bust my ass for two-three years and get out and get an entry position and then go from there. Other times, the only thing entering my mind is What Is The Point?
No, you’re not alone and actually, there are (and have been) folks studying us.
There are so many issues, some of which you’ve touched upon such as our parents not being wealthy enough and us having to figure out how to live, pay the bills, get health care, pay back loans, etc.
Other I think are more fundamental. There Is Something Wrong, not necessarily with us but the collective us. Every day, minute, second, we are inundated with information good and bad about the world in which we live and fuck, how do we handle it, how do we change it, what does it mean for me and what I’m trying to accomplish? I just want a martini but fuck, who died so I could drive my car to the bar?
I don’t want to be another cog in this machine, but I already am.
I was lost and drifting for years after college, and it was getting a job as a university bureaucrat that got me back on track. I don’t know what they do in Purdue, but with your skill set in Austin, you could get a job at the university’s IT department being a programmer. A thought.
College is an important piece of the puzzle, but there’s still a lot of weird prejudice out there about what you have to “look like” to get into the professions. Until now you’ve looked like a single mom, and there’s a lot of discrimination. Maybe getting married will help give you a sufficient normy disguise?
I can relate to this story and those of the other commenters so very well.
I was “diagnosed” (they didn’t say “you have ADHD”, they said “you have symptoms consistent with ADHD”) with ADHD about three years ago. I’ve long thought there was some kind of problem with the way I do things, but didn’t know what it was. For a long time, I just thought I was easily bored and once I found what I liked, I would no longer have the problems of constant distraction, restlessness, reading the same page over and over for 15 minutes at a time because I can’t focus on it, and living in an environment of chaos because I can’t seem to get a grip on how to organize myself.
I don’t know how I got as far as I did, but my “luck” is going to run out, I think. I’ve been floundering on my dissertation for years now, and it’s looking more and more like I’ll have to leave my program ABD. I decided against an academic career a long time ago, but the Ph.D. could be useful for other things. Should I leave without one, I’m back to square one: not only will I need to find something just to survive, but I’ll be wanting something (eventually) that will be satisfying and give me some sense of being useful. I don’t even know what I do well anymore.
That aside, I don’t agree with your workers when they say “you got stupid”. You did what you had to do at the time, and there’s no shame in that. While a college degree is beneficial in so many ways, it is most definitely not the Golden Ticket it may have once been. Your co-workers would probably be surprised at the number of people with your level of education who do jobs like yours. More degrees don’t necessarily help; that’s a lesson graduate school has taught me well.
Jeez, Lauren, you’re barely a year out of college. It’s not too late.
Mind you, I just got laid off from my latest temp job, I’ve got no savings, my resume is less and less attractive to permanent employers as time goes on, and the only way out I see right now is packing up, moving elsewhere, and maybe going back to school.
Also: ADD here, too. Finding that out explained a lot, even though I don’t have the insurance to actually do anything about it.
Well, I think part of what got me past the depression part and into the ennui part of this thing is realizing that this isn’t a personal failure. I *know* that there are a lot of others out there like me, but sometimes (especially when meeting with my financially soaring friends) I wonder if there was some misstep along the way that I ought to be avoiding in the future. I guess the overwhelming feeling I get in sum is bewilderment.
Who am I and how did I get here again? But mostly martinis.
Zuzu, I’m actually about two years out of college.
Lauren, I think Amanda is onto something in both her trains of thought.
First, PUCC, or whatever they call it these days, would probably love to have your skill set.
Second, any major change in your above-board life, such as marriage, is a great opportunity to change the public perception of yourself in general. Your new husband becoming your husband can be used as cover for why you are where you are now as you try to “trade up” to a position of higher standing, or at least one that truly works better for you in somesuch way. (In the sense of “Well, now that I’m not raising a child alone, I can take on more challenging path with my career.” Yes, I know, very blahblahblah, but…) I know that this all sounds neo-Victorian, but hey, sometimes this is just how it works.
I’m always somewhere between irritated and fascinated in how people reflect their selves back at me as they interpret who I am as a result of being a single parent. The interpretations aren’t always fair and rarely accurate, but they are still perceptions that you can work to your advantage if and as necessary. (I don’t like to play that game myself, but having in seen far too often how single female parents are slotted into a far more demanding set of requirements than male single parents (though I sometimes also get very, very tired of being treated like a puppy that’s finally master paper training), you use what you have at your disposal.)
My two bits…
Thanks so much for writing this post. ADD as well, and I very stupidly pushed my luck by staying on for the PhD programme after going back to college for a master’s degree. There’s only so far that the ability to hyperfocus under extreme pressure can take you. I just keep looking back at my life choices, college choices, everything, and thinking… I had so much potential. I still have potential, and get various mentors going nuts about me, but I’m 30 and potential is nothing you can hang your hat on. Anyway. Not alone. I’m going to be starting from the bottom of a new field now that I’ve decided to look for work again.
(i don’t like to suggest posts for someone else’s blog, but if you felt like making a post for people to share ADD coping strategies, I think that might be enlightening.)
And you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?”
Word. I’m a little older than you and I’m feeling very much the same way. Great Things were supposed to be in store for me ten years ago, when I thought I’d found my way out of the dead end I was in at the time. But it hasn’t worked out that way, for a lot of reasons, but mostly due to my own choices.
Zuzu, I’m actually about two years out of college.
OK, so you got 39 years until retirement instead of 40.
Meaning, you’ll be in harness for a long goddamn time. Don’t think that you’re locked in to what you’re doing right now for the next 40 years.
When I graduated from college I moved to Chicago and got an affordable apartment that I shared with my guy and I worked 2-3 jobs to just be able to pay the minimums. And then I found out that someone I was training, who didn’t have a degree, was making 25% more than me because he had child support to pay and besides I had a man so what did I need money for. This 1997, not1957. And I was depressed and when my boss started throwing things at me (like scissors), I got a new job. This new job ended up paying me as much in 50 hours as my 70 hours of other jobs paid me. And for a year and a half I kicked back and drank martinis. And then I got bored and the blogging world sucked me in, and now I have far more activities than I have time. And even though the stress makes me miss the days of martinis, I’m happier and more proud of myself than I’ve ever been. It’s been 10 years since Igraduated and the past 4 have been great.
And I have dyslexia and adult onset ADHD, probably due to the multi-tasking nature of my job and my internet addiction.
This is all to say that you are not alone. And there isn’t anything wrong with wanting a break, and a martini, and brainless work. And as soon as this isn’t enough, you’ll find something that fulfills you more. And when you’re ready, people will come out of the woodwork to pass on contacts and resume advice. Until then, one olive? or two?