U is for Unemployment
Well It's Spring again and in what's seeming to become a vernal tradition I've gotten my black ass fired. My tenure as the resident scribe in used cars has come to an end. I have been repeatedly warned about my tardiness and yesterday Knuckles said that according to his watch I was 1 min late for work. Thus, here I am once again in the season of Resurrection searching for gainful employment.
The biggest difference is that in contrast to years passed, I have an almost Durdenesque acceptance of my termination. My life has always been peppered with rendevous with authority figures. Not in a 2pac/Menace II Society way, more of a Dennis the Menace/Zac Morris mischevious way. The quintessential non-conformist. A non-conformist to the point where I won't make myself conform. If I'd've left 10 min. earlier I would've gotten to work at 11:50 or 11:51 depending on who's watch you're going by. But, as FCIII so eloquently puts it, "If my aunt had a dick, she'd be my uncle." I was almost done with the chapter and I figured I might as well finish it up. These are the consequences of my actions and I'm at peace with them. These situations are far from unexplored territory.
As a child, I stayed in the principal's office. The running joke was that my parents had their own parking space at the school. While this wasn't totally true they were on a 1st name basis with most of the administration at my selected schools of matriculation. A function of the frequency and length of time spent together. I guess it's kinda like how FBI agents and Mob dons develop a certain friendly working relationship after a while. If you're gonna spend this much time together you might as well get along.
My sister has this story about how when she first started kindergarten her teacher pulled her out of the lunch line and introduced her to another teacher. Her kindergarten teacher, then in a way that you might politely speak about a suicide bomber, said, "This is Allan Smith's little sister." To which the the other teacher replied "Ohhhhh, but she looks so sweet."
Briefly, Between K-5, I was in detention too many times to count and suspended from school once and served a few in school suspensions. Halfway, In 5th grade, my parents pulled me outta public school and sent me to a school for gifted children. I did well there for the most part (I was suspended once, though. Why? I don't remember.)
For 8th grade, I switched to Youngstown Chrisitan Academy which might as well been a public school. After the school for the gifted closed I had to find another school. My parents having little faith in the Sharon Public School System to provide me with an education that I couldn't complete between cartoon commercials looked to find a school that challenged me intellectually. This seems to be a prerequisite for me to behave in any environment I'm in. I tested into 9th grade at 11 years old but my parents feared that I wasn't mature only advanced me to the eight grade.
From an academic standpoint the year was a complete fucking waste. At Boardman (the gifted school), I had done Algebra I, close to 2 years of high school Spanish, had studied the entire history of the Roman Empire from Romulus and Remus to the fall of Rome, I had read Oedipus Rex, the Illiad, The Aeneid, several Shakesspeare plays including Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Ceasar, Hamlet & Othello. So going from Boardman to any normal 8th grade class was ...well they might as well have put me in a 4th grade class for that matter.
As is par for me, boredom + comrades = mischief. Before long I was in trouble at YCA and suspended and eventually asked not to comeback.
High School, I went to Reserve, a boarding school. Freshman year for the most part was incident free but then again I was battling depression for a good deal of the year. The next three years saw me rise from minor nuisance to criminal mastermind/public enemy numero uno. Every form of disciplinarian action short of expulsion I received multiple times. Dean's Club, which is basically detention at 6:30 am and later on Dean's Dinner which was detention after dinner became regularly scheduled parts of my academic day . I had so many of these that I would just go for, like, weeks at a time. One day I'd just stop going; the logic being that, "Well, that oughtta cover it." Which (of course) it usually didn't . I'd find this out the next day at Morning Meeting or lunch when either Dean Closen or Ortman would, after reading announcements, say I need to the following students after morning meeting Cesarik, Burke, Nwankwo, both Mo & Chuma, Allan Smith (FUCK!!!), etc... . This meant I had missed a DC, which meant I owed %500 interest (5 more for the one I missed) plus the original principal.
I had Morning Running for failing room inspection. Dish duty, clean-up duty, Sunday detention, writing "I will not do whatever the fuck I did or said again" ad nauseum on the board a la Bart Simpson in the Simpson's intro, I was suspended twice (once for calling Dean Ortman, an alcoholic to his face and inferring that it was the cause of his wife leaving him and once for arguing with the head of cafeteria about an ice cold chicken sandwhich that she wouldn't heat up and wouldn't let me heat up, to which I told her, "Look, if you're too lazy to heat it up, that's fine, but don't stop me from heating it up myself.) I was kicked off the track team 2 years in a row. I've had to work spring breaks. Short of jail & electroshock therapy I've received just about every punative action one can receive by the end of high school.
You know how on Wheel of Fortune, on the final puzzle, contestants picked the same letters so much that eventually they started with these letters as a given ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_of_fortune#1981-current_.22Bonus_Round.22), well that's kinda how it was after a while at Reserve. I knew my name was a given, I didn't know what I did per se, but , oh, it was gonna be called.
Morehouse was different of course because the only thing that mattered was 1) keep your scholarship and 2) graduate on time. During my 1st year at Morehouse, my mother called me up with this revelation, "Allan, you know the other day I was like something's missing. All of sudden it hit me. I turned to your father and said, 'This is the 1st year in 11 years, we ain't gotta caaaaall from a schooooool asking us to come pick you uuuuuup. Ah said, Laawd, Thaink ya Jeesus!"
Grad School was different, battling more depression I got kicked outta my first research group because "I wasn't a good fit". I almost decided to drop out when until the infamous, I. Boxwell told me, "What, You only 1 class away?!? Nigga, finish yo masta's" And so I did.
After graduating from Tech I got hired by Morehouse and fired a year later. I ran my real estate business into the ground. I've been kicked out of a network marketing company for insubordination/mutiny. I took a job delivering wine for a wholesaler and got fired from that 5 months later and now most recently Team Nissan of Lithia Springs.
I used to beat myself up about this. I used to ask what's wrong with me and why can't I just be disciplined or blah blah, or whatever the fuck. But I have come to the realization that I choose these outcomes.
If it was up to my rational conscious mind, I would've finished the Ph. D. program at Tech. I'd probably be either in a post-doc program, or working in someone's lab making 90k a year, but fucking miserable.
The thing is my conscious rational mind (hence CRM), is a mind that can only process what it sees. It doesn't know how to dream yet. It calculates data and processes data and calculates probabilities and tells me what can't be done. My CRM has to know HOW everything has to be done before it will allow itself to dream or want or envision a better life. My CRM's 1st impulse is to seek safety & security ... to stay in port instead of sailing ... to stay in the nest vs flying. It has been programmed to fear. Prefering the "peace" of certainty to the anxiety of uncertainty, it communicates in the language of "it can't happen/ won't happen/ it's impossible" because by believing these things you can be certain that you'll be right. My CRM is afraid and I've developed it to shield me from the thing I hate to feel the most...dissapointment.
However, I'm prepared to face whatever dissapointment's it takes to find my purpose. One thing you eventually learn after enough mistakes is resilliance.
These beliefs maybe at one time served me but I reealize now that in order to truly be fulfilled that I have to stop trying to control everything and let go(d).
What I once saw as a sub-conscious self sabotaging curse I now realize is just me being honest with myself. It's me being honest with myself about what I want out of life and pushing myself to it. I'm still not sure where I'm headed but I'll know soon and I'll see you when I get there - AS
By the way, I highly recommend you go see V is for Vendetta. Great movie with a lot of great lessons!!!
The biggest difference is that in contrast to years passed, I have an almost Durdenesque acceptance of my termination. My life has always been peppered with rendevous with authority figures. Not in a 2pac/Menace II Society way, more of a Dennis the Menace/Zac Morris mischevious way. The quintessential non-conformist. A non-conformist to the point where I won't make myself conform. If I'd've left 10 min. earlier I would've gotten to work at 11:50 or 11:51 depending on who's watch you're going by. But, as FCIII so eloquently puts it, "If my aunt had a dick, she'd be my uncle." I was almost done with the chapter and I figured I might as well finish it up. These are the consequences of my actions and I'm at peace with them. These situations are far from unexplored territory.
As a child, I stayed in the principal's office. The running joke was that my parents had their own parking space at the school. While this wasn't totally true they were on a 1st name basis with most of the administration at my selected schools of matriculation. A function of the frequency and length of time spent together. I guess it's kinda like how FBI agents and Mob dons develop a certain friendly working relationship after a while. If you're gonna spend this much time together you might as well get along.
My sister has this story about how when she first started kindergarten her teacher pulled her out of the lunch line and introduced her to another teacher. Her kindergarten teacher, then in a way that you might politely speak about a suicide bomber, said, "This is Allan Smith's little sister." To which the the other teacher replied "Ohhhhh, but she looks so sweet."
Briefly, Between K-5, I was in detention too many times to count and suspended from school once and served a few in school suspensions. Halfway, In 5th grade, my parents pulled me outta public school and sent me to a school for gifted children. I did well there for the most part (I was suspended once, though. Why? I don't remember.)
For 8th grade, I switched to Youngstown Chrisitan Academy which might as well been a public school. After the school for the gifted closed I had to find another school. My parents having little faith in the Sharon Public School System to provide me with an education that I couldn't complete between cartoon commercials looked to find a school that challenged me intellectually. This seems to be a prerequisite for me to behave in any environment I'm in. I tested into 9th grade at 11 years old but my parents feared that I wasn't mature only advanced me to the eight grade.
From an academic standpoint the year was a complete fucking waste. At Boardman (the gifted school), I had done Algebra I, close to 2 years of high school Spanish, had studied the entire history of the Roman Empire from Romulus and Remus to the fall of Rome, I had read Oedipus Rex, the Illiad, The Aeneid, several Shakesspeare plays including Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Ceasar, Hamlet & Othello. So going from Boardman to any normal 8th grade class was ...well they might as well have put me in a 4th grade class for that matter.
As is par for me, boredom + comrades = mischief. Before long I was in trouble at YCA and suspended and eventually asked not to comeback.
High School, I went to Reserve, a boarding school. Freshman year for the most part was incident free but then again I was battling depression for a good deal of the year. The next three years saw me rise from minor nuisance to criminal mastermind/public enemy numero uno. Every form of disciplinarian action short of expulsion I received multiple times. Dean's Club, which is basically detention at 6:30 am and later on Dean's Dinner which was detention after dinner became regularly scheduled parts of my academic day . I had so many of these that I would just go for, like, weeks at a time. One day I'd just stop going; the logic being that, "Well, that oughtta cover it." Which (of course) it usually didn't . I'd find this out the next day at Morning Meeting or lunch when either Dean Closen or Ortman would, after reading announcements, say I need to the following students after morning meeting Cesarik, Burke, Nwankwo, both Mo & Chuma, Allan Smith (FUCK!!!), etc... . This meant I had missed a DC, which meant I owed %500 interest (5 more for the one I missed) plus the original principal.
I had Morning Running for failing room inspection. Dish duty, clean-up duty, Sunday detention, writing "I will not do whatever the fuck I did or said again" ad nauseum on the board a la Bart Simpson in the Simpson's intro, I was suspended twice (once for calling Dean Ortman, an alcoholic to his face and inferring that it was the cause of his wife leaving him and once for arguing with the head of cafeteria about an ice cold chicken sandwhich that she wouldn't heat up and wouldn't let me heat up, to which I told her, "Look, if you're too lazy to heat it up, that's fine, but don't stop me from heating it up myself.) I was kicked off the track team 2 years in a row. I've had to work spring breaks. Short of jail & electroshock therapy I've received just about every punative action one can receive by the end of high school.
You know how on Wheel of Fortune, on the final puzzle, contestants picked the same letters so much that eventually they started with these letters as a given ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_of_fortune#1981-current_.22Bonus_Round.22), well that's kinda how it was after a while at Reserve. I knew my name was a given, I didn't know what I did per se, but , oh, it was gonna be called.
Morehouse was different of course because the only thing that mattered was 1) keep your scholarship and 2) graduate on time. During my 1st year at Morehouse, my mother called me up with this revelation, "Allan, you know the other day I was like something's missing. All of sudden it hit me. I turned to your father and said, 'This is the 1st year in 11 years, we ain't gotta caaaaall from a schooooool asking us to come pick you uuuuuup. Ah said, Laawd, Thaink ya Jeesus!"
Grad School was different, battling more depression I got kicked outta my first research group because "I wasn't a good fit". I almost decided to drop out when until the infamous, I. Boxwell told me, "What, You only 1 class away?!? Nigga, finish yo masta's" And so I did.
After graduating from Tech I got hired by Morehouse and fired a year later. I ran my real estate business into the ground. I've been kicked out of a network marketing company for insubordination/mutiny. I took a job delivering wine for a wholesaler and got fired from that 5 months later and now most recently Team Nissan of Lithia Springs.
I used to beat myself up about this. I used to ask what's wrong with me and why can't I just be disciplined or blah blah, or whatever the fuck. But I have come to the realization that I choose these outcomes.
If it was up to my rational conscious mind, I would've finished the Ph. D. program at Tech. I'd probably be either in a post-doc program, or working in someone's lab making 90k a year, but fucking miserable.
or
I'd be working at Morehouse, with more time freedom and making somewhere between 30-40k a year, fulfilled helping young men acheive their dream of going to grad school but feeling like somewhat of a hypocrite promoting higher education as a panacea to life's woes, when I know there's so much more to it than that. Plus the fact I'd be bored outta my mind.
or
I'd be delivering wine for 10-13 bucks/hour, content with exploring and seeing the many derisive effects that capitalism has on the soul of the worker and marvelling at the way that people find joy in what seems to be dead end situations. Enjoying the sense of relief from manual labor, being to be able to at the end of each task exactly what you've accomplished and driving around and seeing the city everyday. But I woulda been broke, with no time to find anything else to do and probably on the verge of doing something I really would've regretted.
or
I'd be up at Team, selling cars which if I'd applied myself could make really good money, maybe move up to management one day and make 8 to 20k a month and never have to worry about money again. But I'd always have the nagging suspicion that I was meant for something more and it'd be at the sacrifice of the time freedom that I so cherish.
The thing is my conscious rational mind (hence CRM), is a mind that can only process what it sees. It doesn't know how to dream yet. It calculates data and processes data and calculates probabilities and tells me what can't be done. My CRM has to know HOW everything has to be done before it will allow itself to dream or want or envision a better life. My CRM's 1st impulse is to seek safety & security ... to stay in port instead of sailing ... to stay in the nest vs flying. It has been programmed to fear. Prefering the "peace" of certainty to the anxiety of uncertainty, it communicates in the language of "it can't happen/ won't happen/ it's impossible" because by believing these things you can be certain that you'll be right. My CRM is afraid and I've developed it to shield me from the thing I hate to feel the most...dissapointment.
However, I'm prepared to face whatever dissapointment's it takes to find my purpose. One thing you eventually learn after enough mistakes is resilliance.
These beliefs maybe at one time served me but I reealize now that in order to truly be fulfilled that I have to stop trying to control everything and let go(d).
What I once saw as a sub-conscious self sabotaging curse I now realize is just me being honest with myself. It's me being honest with myself about what I want out of life and pushing myself to it. I'm still not sure where I'm headed but I'll know soon and I'll see you when I get there - AS
By the way, I highly recommend you go see V is for Vendetta. Great movie with a lot of great lessons!!!
posted by heathen saint at 4:45 AM
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