Monday, August 19, 2013
The next step...
There's been a blog post swimming around in my head for months now, and it has only a little to do with Chile, though my trip to South America was a major factor in where I am right now. I'll get to that, but let's go back to November of 1997, when I moved back to Westchester after a 5 years of Miami Beach and the Poconos.
There's a fallacy in drawing a direct line between past events and conditions today. It's tempting to see our lives as a continuous narrative, and humans are a story-based species. We like stories; they give us a useful, though not always accurate, framework with which to manage our lives. As such, I say the following with a small pinch of salt. Prior to my return to the manicured lawns of Westchester, I saw a report called the Pension Bomb, and I believe it was CNN, as that was the biggest news station on the planet back then. (Yes kiddies, there was a time when CNN was relevant.)
I watched with a detached sense of apathy, though it was well done enough to stick in my memory. As I mentioned in my first Chile post, I like to have an obscure but interesting factoid to start intelligent conversations. This may be a Gen-X thing, as we love to out-obscure each other. I blame trivia games in the 80's. Anyway, this gave me a way to present a future that wasn't a rosy as others would have you believe. This doesn't mean I even agreed with it, just that I could take a contrary point of view and support it. The Ancient Greeks called this rhetoric, and I loved the mental exercise.
The person with whom I discussed this the most often was, not surprisingly, Scott. He's my most financially aware friend, and always has been. If there was anyone who could appreciate the topic, it was he. We did enjoy the discussion, though the true focus du jour back then was the tech bubble, which was still 2 years away from bursting.
Though I didn't have the dim view of the future the special implied, I couldn't deny the off chance that there was, deep beneath the surface of America, a crack in our foundation. Our society seemed sturdy enough, but demographically there would be problems, using Japan a model. It turns out we had other, more important data to reconcile, but that's another story. Accuracy aside, it did sharpen my mind, and opened me to possibilities otherwise impolite.
All of these notions to a back seat to building a life here in Westchester that at least resembled an adult existence. Waiting tables at a high-end theme restaurant paid the bills, but gave me no satisfaction beyond the happy dysfunction of working with food, making lots of cash, and hanging out after hours at a gigantic mall with a similarly sized arcade. I must remind myself that job gave me the impetus to return.
9 months after coming back, I was again on the horns of a dilemma. I wasn't unhappy waiting tables, merely unfulfilled. Why did I suffer homelessness, borrow 18,000 dollars, and generally put myself through all that difficulty just to work delivering food? Well, I didn't. So, 14 years ago, I stumbled into Mercy College, got a full-time job that paid less than half what I made at the restaurant, and began grad school. I didn't finish my Master's before leaving, but I got close. My thesis is another story. Fewer than 2 years after I started, I knew I had to leave yet again. That's when I began my present job, with all of it's attendant good and bad.
I was never sure that I would make it to tenure, so I was always hedging my bets by researching this, that, and anything else that would keep my insecurities at bay, though I would have been much better off simply learning to manage my money and food intake. My research took many forms, reading books about the tech bubble, the bond bubble, opening up Internet businesses, radical Libertarian websites, expat sites, travel sites, and eventually peak oil sites and books. All of this research taught me that the suspicions I had back in 1997-1998 were, at least in theory, correct. Now, ask me if I did anything with all this information.
No one of the things I tried, studied, read, wrote, or discussed could have really helped me. There was something missing in my life, and while I knew this on some level, I couldn't tell you (or myself) what that was until very recently. I got sober, went into intense therapy, fixed a few serious health problems, even dated a little. So what was wrong?
Again, I didn't know. Until nearly two years ago, I was demoralized. My weight was an ongoing medical emergency, and I felt there was no way out. The TESOL program ended with a colossal thud, and I felt worse than ever. Eventually, the food situation was sorted out, though it will always be a work in progress. Being free of the food obsession gave me the room to explore other things, and I took trips to Aqaba, where I redeemed my fat ass in Petra, Pennsic for war week, where I had a terrific time, and finally Santiago, Chile, where my mind was thoroughly blown.
I had actually stepped outside my comfort zone, and was feeling pretty good. I had done more in 18 months than I'd done in the prior 8 years, but I was beginning to understand this was just the start. Also, there was one small puzzle piece missing. I would find it in a small book recommended by one of my coworkers.
There's a fallacy in drawing a direct line between past events and conditions today. It's tempting to see our lives as a continuous narrative, and humans are a story-based species. We like stories; they give us a useful, though not always accurate, framework with which to manage our lives. As such, I say the following with a small pinch of salt. Prior to my return to the manicured lawns of Westchester, I saw a report called the Pension Bomb, and I believe it was CNN, as that was the biggest news station on the planet back then. (Yes kiddies, there was a time when CNN was relevant.)
I watched with a detached sense of apathy, though it was well done enough to stick in my memory. As I mentioned in my first Chile post, I like to have an obscure but interesting factoid to start intelligent conversations. This may be a Gen-X thing, as we love to out-obscure each other. I blame trivia games in the 80's. Anyway, this gave me a way to present a future that wasn't a rosy as others would have you believe. This doesn't mean I even agreed with it, just that I could take a contrary point of view and support it. The Ancient Greeks called this rhetoric, and I loved the mental exercise.
The person with whom I discussed this the most often was, not surprisingly, Scott. He's my most financially aware friend, and always has been. If there was anyone who could appreciate the topic, it was he. We did enjoy the discussion, though the true focus du jour back then was the tech bubble, which was still 2 years away from bursting.
Though I didn't have the dim view of the future the special implied, I couldn't deny the off chance that there was, deep beneath the surface of America, a crack in our foundation. Our society seemed sturdy enough, but demographically there would be problems, using Japan a model. It turns out we had other, more important data to reconcile, but that's another story. Accuracy aside, it did sharpen my mind, and opened me to possibilities otherwise impolite.
All of these notions to a back seat to building a life here in Westchester that at least resembled an adult existence. Waiting tables at a high-end theme restaurant paid the bills, but gave me no satisfaction beyond the happy dysfunction of working with food, making lots of cash, and hanging out after hours at a gigantic mall with a similarly sized arcade. I must remind myself that job gave me the impetus to return.
9 months after coming back, I was again on the horns of a dilemma. I wasn't unhappy waiting tables, merely unfulfilled. Why did I suffer homelessness, borrow 18,000 dollars, and generally put myself through all that difficulty just to work delivering food? Well, I didn't. So, 14 years ago, I stumbled into Mercy College, got a full-time job that paid less than half what I made at the restaurant, and began grad school. I didn't finish my Master's before leaving, but I got close. My thesis is another story. Fewer than 2 years after I started, I knew I had to leave yet again. That's when I began my present job, with all of it's attendant good and bad.
I was never sure that I would make it to tenure, so I was always hedging my bets by researching this, that, and anything else that would keep my insecurities at bay, though I would have been much better off simply learning to manage my money and food intake. My research took many forms, reading books about the tech bubble, the bond bubble, opening up Internet businesses, radical Libertarian websites, expat sites, travel sites, and eventually peak oil sites and books. All of this research taught me that the suspicions I had back in 1997-1998 were, at least in theory, correct. Now, ask me if I did anything with all this information.
No one of the things I tried, studied, read, wrote, or discussed could have really helped me. There was something missing in my life, and while I knew this on some level, I couldn't tell you (or myself) what that was until very recently. I got sober, went into intense therapy, fixed a few serious health problems, even dated a little. So what was wrong?
Again, I didn't know. Until nearly two years ago, I was demoralized. My weight was an ongoing medical emergency, and I felt there was no way out. The TESOL program ended with a colossal thud, and I felt worse than ever. Eventually, the food situation was sorted out, though it will always be a work in progress. Being free of the food obsession gave me the room to explore other things, and I took trips to Aqaba, where I redeemed my fat ass in Petra, Pennsic for war week, where I had a terrific time, and finally Santiago, Chile, where my mind was thoroughly blown.
I had actually stepped outside my comfort zone, and was feeling pretty good. I had done more in 18 months than I'd done in the prior 8 years, but I was beginning to understand this was just the start. Also, there was one small puzzle piece missing. I would find it in a small book recommended by one of my coworkers.
What would you do if you weren't afraid?
I didn't quite know. To find out, I needed to read "Who Moved my Cheese" by Spencer Johnson, MD. A small, often maligned book gave me the final push to conquer my fear. So what did I do? I asked simple question. I was walking around my building, and I wanted to ask the payroll department if it was possible to teach a class, but still work overtime in financial aid.
This may not seem like a big deal, but for me it was like asking out a supermodel. The small tome listed above kept having its main character what he would do if he weren't afraid, and I took the lesson to heart. So, after hearing yes, I knew I had one place left to go.
This was around May 10th, and I knew where I was headed next. I went straight to the school's English Language Institute, and asked the director of the TESOL program if I could have one last shot. The gentleman sitting across from me was the same person who accepted me into the program, and taught two of the classes that made up the program. He said yes, but the Dean would need to approve. I guessed as much, as this program is exspensive, and I'd already tried it once.
Eventually, and only after a great deal of effort on the teacher's part, I was re-accepted into the program. I was prepared to hear no the college's answer, and I would not have argued. There wsa a small part of me that would have prefered to hear no, as I knew how hard the program was. I didn't complete I didn't want to fail again, and I was just as afraid to talk to my boss about the situation.
In the end I needn't have worried. Just as in 2011, my director resigned in the merry merry month of May, and taking the program and chaging the schedule was suddenly no problem. I had a collegue cover my late Thursday nights, and I was off and running.
This may not seem like a big deal, but for me it was like asking out a supermodel. The small tome listed above kept having its main character what he would do if he weren't afraid, and I took the lesson to heart. So, after hearing yes, I knew I had one place left to go.
This was around May 10th, and I knew where I was headed next. I went straight to the school's English Language Institute, and asked the director of the TESOL program if I could have one last shot. The gentleman sitting across from me was the same person who accepted me into the program, and taught two of the classes that made up the program. He said yes, but the Dean would need to approve. I guessed as much, as this program is exspensive, and I'd already tried it once.
Eventually, and only after a great deal of effort on the teacher's part, I was re-accepted into the program. I was prepared to hear no the college's answer, and I would not have argued. There wsa a small part of me that would have prefered to hear no, as I knew how hard the program was. I didn't complete I didn't want to fail again, and I was just as afraid to talk to my boss about the situation.
In the end I needn't have worried. Just as in 2011, my director resigned in the merry merry month of May, and taking the program and chaging the schedule was suddenly no problem. I had a collegue cover my late Thursday nights, and I was off and running.
