Welcome to Adulthood

Guest Blog: Graduating into Fred Mertz’s Pants

The new year is upon us and the world of Welcome to Adulthood 2009 just wouldn’t be complete without a guest blog visit from Lukus Williams. When I first read Luke’s piece I literally laughed out loud in my super quiet office. (Hopefully my colleagues didn’t catch on that I was spending a little down time reading and chuckling about Luke’s metaphor for adulthood — a pair of extremely high waisted dress slacks.) Luke’s piece is as funny and entertaining as it is insightful. I could brag about how talented of a writer he is, his impressive list of writing gigs, his graphic design-cred (photo credit below goes to him also), and all that good stuff, but I will let his piece speak for itself.

I am thrilled and honored to have Luke as a guest blogger (yes, his comments are the ones that usually generate lots of great discussion, and we are happy to finally hear more of him) and I hope you will “LOL” just as much as I did when reading his work. As always, let’s show him some love in the comments!

It was long, it was messy, but I did it. I’ve graduated from college (well, as soon as ‘State gets back from vacation and mails out diplomas). Now I may have been living on my own, holding various jobs, and being more or less self-sufficient for some time now… but I’ve always been in school. From Little Bo Peep Daycare in Lansing, Michigan to San Diego State University.

I’ve heard many pro-suit arguments, from the whole “look the part” set all the way to “women dig it,” but what I’m really looking for now are coping mechanisms. Is the paycheck motivation enough, or will I need to bring an SDSU shirt and some boardshorts with me to work so I can change the moment the clock strikes 5? Someone have a list of the top ultra casual businesses in San Diego hiring writers/editors/graphic designers/manual laborers? Does David Tennant’s Dr. Who “geek-chic” count as professional attire? Do slacks always have to look like Fred Mertz’s pants? What are the things that you attach from the bottom of your shirt to your socks to make the shirt stay in place called, and do people actually wear them? Why must dress-shirt manufacturers assume that my arms are impossibly long simply because I’m over six feet tall?

This adulthood thing, it’s going to be like my stint as a four-year-old ring barer all over again, isn’t it?

Guest Blog: All I Need to Know, I Learned in Preschool

I am thrilled to introduce our next guest blogger, Nicole (picture above), who also happens to be one of my very best friends. She gave me permission to use a piece she had written last year, which is actually an excerpt from a book she is compiling of the same title.

This piece is all about transition, and was written shortly before Nicole relocated from California to Arizona. (Her transition, I must note, was a success. She met her future husband and is getting married in less than a month. More to come on that, I am sure.) I hope you enjoy this little vignette as much as I do. As you are reading it, think of transitions you have made in your life. How did you learn from each transition? How hard was it to adjust? What about the transition really helped evolve you into who you are today? Also, consider what lessons you may have learned in preschool that you have carried with you in your life. Let’s discuss in the comments. And stay tuned at welcometoadulthood.com for more from Nicole and her book.

Looks like me and little Matthew have a lot in common…minus the beautiful mullet, of course. When life feels a little unsettling and scary…LET GO. Life is a journey, an experience that we should hold open arms to.

[photo courtesy of N.O.]

On Loving Your Job: An Exploration of Utility, Passion, and Genocide

I have thinking about the topic of “what I want to be when I grow up” a bit more thanks to your great comments.

I think I left a very important point unaccounted for in my previous post. That is: should we pursue something we love as our career? And, if we happen to not be working in a field we love, is loving our job the most important thing?

It would be nice if what I loved was law, or medicine, or math, or business — something marketable. But, what if the thing that you really love is not marketable? Then what? Do you settle for something you don’t love to pay the bills and do what you love as a hobby? If that is the case, still 80% of your waking life is doing something you don’t love. Depressing.

So if you are not doing something you love, then you probably settle for something you are at least pretty good at. I read an article recently called “Work Rules” by William Grieder (a prominent American journalist and economist) and he said something that punctuated this point for me. He wrote, “The inner narrative of one’s life often is embedded in one’s work, in the satisfying routines and sense of fulfillment, in the sheer pleasure of doing things well.” I think that is pretty true.

Taking Grieder’s quote as being something pretty true, let’s examine a few interesting scenarios:

* What if you are not that good at your job? You don’t love it and you’re not that good at it. You do it because you are stuck in a niche, and/or you need to work in order to live. Depressing, really.

* Would it be worse to love something, but not be very good at what you love? The thing you loved most you would not be able to derive satisfaction from in the way Grieder suggests. That would be pretty depressing also.

* Do you always love what you are good at? Maybe you are good at math, so you pursued it as a career, but you hate it. You would realize your talent was marketable, you were successful, you derived satisfaction in the workplace because you were successful, but you hated the work. I envision this being the case with some S.S. soldiers during World War II (or even some American soldiers now), or the person that flew the Enola Gay. Let’s take the case of the Enola Gay pilot. Here the guy is, an esteemed and accomplished young military pilot, good at the job of flying, and thus being tasked to drop a bomb that decimated over 80,000 innocent people.[*]

[*]In these cases, it is easy to think that the person dropping the bomb on Hiroshima, or the S.S. soldiers, might have had some humanity. Maybe they thought, “I am good at being a soldier, but I HATE what I have to do.” Sadly, many of these executioners were very willing and proud. Colonel Paul Tibbits, the American pilot of the Enola Gay, waved and smiled for cameras right before he took off to bomb Hiroshima. He had no regrets about what he did. In fact, he was quoted in 1975 as saying, “I’m proud that I was able to start with nothing, plan it, and have it work as perfectly as it did… I sleep clearly every night.” In March 2005, he stated in an in interview, “If you give me the same circumstances, I’d do it again.”…Add this asterisk section([*])to the list of depressing things.

So, again, I am at a loss. Any thoughts on these things, my dear readers? Are you all working in fields you love? If you are not, do you care that you are not? Or are you okay with just makin’ the buck? Comments on these, or other issues are very welcome and helpful in our exploration of adulthood.

On Becoming Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Carl Jung, or a Dolphin Trainer: An Exploration of "What I Want to be When I Grow Up"

When I was a little girl I used to want to be a veterinarian. But not just any veterinarian, a veterinarian for big horses (inspired from my James Harriet books.) Then, I got over horses and decided I really wanted to be a dolphin trainer. Then, I wanted to work with tide pools and my mom suggested to me that I might want to be an “oceanographer.” So, I was on the oceanographer kick for a while. Then, I decidedly pronounced that my passion was to be a journalist, and that is pretty much what I thought when I was 18 years old and entered college at the University of Maryland.

At some point along the way, after dropping out of UMD and being “existential” for a while, I took an Art and Feminism class at community college and decided I had to be a museum curator. I graduated with a degree in Arts Management, and went to work at an art auction house. I was on the track…I could almost taste my curatorial glory.

Now I am grant writer. A grant writer. Not a dolphin trainer, not a museum curator –but a grant writer.

Not that there is anything wrong with grant writers (especially because I get to use my writing skills to help a whole lot of people that need it.) But, if you had asked me 5 years ago if I could picture myself as a grant writer I would have said no way.

Interesting the way the fates lead you.

Is my experience normal? I mean, my friend Janelle, for example, always said she wanted to be a Supreme Court Justice, and low and behold she is a recent UCLA law grad, and is on the path that she had always envisioned for herself. I will not be surprised years down the line when she becomes a Justice.

My friend Michael always knew he wanted to pursue something science-oriented, and then at one point decided unequivocally that psychiatry was his calling. Low and behold now he is a psychiatrist working at Stanford. Not surprising at all. He is one smart and motivated kid.

Is it that some people just know? And how is the knowing that is associated with Janelle and her Supreme-Court-Justice-track any different from the knowing of my dolphin-trainer-track? I mean, I reallllllly wanted to be a dolphin trainer. Is it a matter of follow-through? Is it a matter of personality type? Perhaps Janelle just has the personality type that when she says she is going to do something, she means it, and she does it. Or is it a deeper passion? I mean, obviously, I can’t even swim, so I couldn’t have been all that passionate about being a dolphin trainer. But I did feel I was pretty passionate about being a journalist (I was a journalist at the age of 11, after all), and about being a museum curator. Maybe Janelle and Michael’s passions are of a passion-level I can’t even comprehend, because I have never felt?

Some of my friends might say that I have always wanted to be a writer. Now I am a writer — kinda. A technical writer of grants, which really isn’t the same creative fun as just being a “writer” in general. So, maybe I did kind of follow a dream, but it certainly wasn’t intentional. I chalk my grant writing job up more to luck and fate than to passion or talent. (Though now that I have been working in it for a while, I am very passionate about the population I help. Maybe that is how passions arise? You experience something — just like my experience with James Harriet books gave me a passion for animals — and then you become invested.)

Now, I am in graduate school for writing. Is this sealing my fate? Am I now a “writer”? I am not convinced my path won’t change again. It seems to change so frequently anyway.

How is it that people can be so sure of their path? And does this assurance result in a more content life? I mean, I feel anxious most days because I never know what I am going to do with my life exactly. Maybe Janelle and Michael have a kind of bliss because they know they have made it to the path they have always wanted.

I also often wonder how my path would have changed had I made some different decisions. What if my parents had not gotten divorced and I had not dropped out of UMD? I may actually have become a journalist. I definitely would not have moved back to California and gone to community college, and then I would not have moved to San Francisco, not have found a passion in art history, not have worked in the arts, not have met Brian, not have moved to San Diego, not have become a grant writer.

But all of those experiences evolved me in a really profound way. And ultimately, what I want from this life is to learn all the lessons I can and to evolve from every experience. So, while my professional[*] path may be a bit more twisty than Janelle or Michael’s for example, I am happy that it has taken me to where I am. I just wonder when I will find my niche, and I really do yearn for that niche…

[*]I say ‘professional’ because I want to differentiate this from an ‘emotional’ path. I think that regardless of if you are a lawyer or a dolphin trainer, everyone has their own equally twisty and bumpy roads to contend with on their emotional paths.

Oh yeah, and I am still open to becoming a dolphin trainer.

[photo by familymagazinegroup.com]