MODERN-DAY SISYPHUS OR PLAYA FOR LIFE?

I turned 30 this year. I suppose that it’s not a big shocker that I’m at a crisis point. Doesn’t that happen to everyone when they turn 30? And no, I’m not trying to get pregnant. Instead, I'm faced with the fact that I still have no career to speak of. How can this be?

I look back at my vast array of menial jobs and it's hard to keep track. The list of my jobs is longer than most 30-year-old urbanites’ list of sexual partners, and we’re a skanky bunch. I’ve taken these jobs with one goal: to become a professional artist. The jobs just pay the rent in the meantime. They allow flexibility to audition, to write, and to get time off to shoot a film. So in that respect, they’re ideal. But when you go through a drought of auditions, or bites on your writing, or films to shoot, etc. the tedium of these menial jobs gets overwhelming. And after over a decade of laboring for the dream, and not quite getting there, the pursuit starts to seem futile. I wonder if I should just sell-out, take my college degree and put it to use for once. Get a real job; a job with benefits. I might be miserable, but at least I’ll be miserable with some more money, and without that damn tantalizing hope of something better.

And then Nelly’s voice creeps into my head, “Fuck the game, don’t let the game fuck you,” and I realize that I’m not at that point where I’m willing to trade in my audition clothes and writing samples for button-downs and insurance. (Please know though that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this option; it just ain’t for me, yet.)

So here I am, trapped in this limbo-land. I’m so lost. I no longer really know what the hell I’m supposed to be doing anymore and my agitated brain pinballs in my head until it lands on the Myth of Sisyphus. You know, that dude in Greek mythology who was condemned to forever repeat the same meaningless task of pushing a rock up a mountain, only to have it roll back down again. You know, that guy. The key to Sisyphus’s punishment was the sense of futility…hmm, that sounds familiar.

Am I becoming a modern-day Sisyphus?! I work a ton of humdrum jobs (the rocks) to get to the mountaintop (my dream), but once I’m about to get to that peak, something gets in the way. Bad timing, bad luck, whatever it is, I don’t quite get there and that damn rock feels crushingly heavy. It’s difficult to even see around it. My vision gets blurred; all I can see is the rock. My disappointment makes my steps slippery and I start sliding down that mountain, second-guessing my purpose. And everything starts to feel meaningless.

I’m not alone. I’m not unique in pursuing a big, ol’ fat dream that feels so far away. In fact, all of my friends have aspirations and are working mundane jobs trying to get There (with a capital T). Whether that aspiration is to retire early or be an entrepreneur or mother or dentist or any kind of professional artist, we’re all working towards a glorious dream, while our day-to-day job is our own adorable version of hell. And so I wonder, if most of my friends are bogged down by their jobs, I have to imagine I don’t just have miserable friends (though, that could be true; we do live in Los Angeles). But maybe a good percentage of the population is at least a little bit miserable with their job? And I have to imagine that at some point in everyone’s life, he/she thought that her life was going to be a grand, sparkling story and when we look at our current situation there is a resounding, “What the fuck happened here?” We had a dream, something we wanted to do in the world, someone we wanted to be. But, now our relationship to our dream feels something like that peak, hidden by a dense cloud layer, and it’s just too exhausting to climb much more.

Oh it’s a bitch being at the bottom of that peak. But I know that in the big scheme of things, the situation could definitely be worse. In fact, there’s a never-ending list of how much worse it could be. I could be a 5-year-old making Nikes for a penny a day. I get it. Hating your job is all relative, especially when so many people these days are unemployed. So I apologize if this is sounding whiney and obnoxious. But just thinking about how much worse it could be for me, yet how horrible and unfulfilled I feel, adds a tangy layer of guilt to the self-pity pie. And then I spend a few hours (or two or three minutes) trying to be grateful for each and every mojito I have to make for each and every tourist. Or thanking my boss for the expense account receipts he tosses at my desk with a grunt. Oh yes, I’M SO FUCKING GRATEFUL! And then I consider bludgeoning myself with the muddler, or stapling my eyelids shut so I don’t have to see my day-to-day tedium, or feel that specific ache only caused by asking the questions: “Is this really my life? Is it time to downsize my dream? Did my dream eat any realistic potential for my own happiness? In a city of great expectations, how do we learn how to be content?”

It’s not that I don’t believe in a little suffering. I’m a proponent of suffering actually. If you haven’t suffered, you haven’t lived, and more importantly, you’re probably an asshole. I really can’t respect you if you haven’t served 756,000 Arnold Palmers on a Sunday brunch, or stomached an office “team” meeting, or cleaned someone else’s toilet, or enter-here-your-unfulfilling-job-of-choice. You have to endure a percentage of torture so that you’re not a douche-bag. But, there comes a time when enough’s enough. There’s a turning point when some well-rounded suffering becomes agony. This agony and boredom distorts your innate gifts, so now you’re only exercising your creativity to figure out how to get out of work early, steal as many Post-It notes as possible (not because you need them, but because stealing them is the most exciting part of your day), and convincing yourself that if you drink, you’re nicer to people, so you should probably just go ahead and have that second vodka soda at work. And with every passing minute, that dream seems to evaporate off the mountaintop.

There’s a limit to the suffering we should endure. I don’t know how to get us all fulfilling jobs; I don’t even know how to get myself one. And I’m not proposing that I’m going to write daily inspirational tid-bits. Hell no. I’m probably the last person qualified for that duty. But I do think if we have a forum where we can laugh about all the bullshit everyday, we might feel just a tiny bit better. Not senseless complaining, but good old fashioned bitching and laughing about the boredom, the tedium, the bosses, the coworkers, how it makes our backs hurt, our feet hurt, our souls hurt. We can share not only our broad journeys, but also those little hilarious things that happen to us everyday. We can take a moment to stop and laugh, to lighten the fuck up. Maybe then we’ll get that glorious feeling of, “Okay, I’m not in this shit-hole suffering alone. Everything’s okay. I’m O.K. I still have my vision. My dream hasn’t evaporated and this damn rock hasn’t crushed me.”

That’s why I created this site. So we can take heart in the experience together, and not get rolled over by the rocks. I know I need an outlet for all the crazy shit that goes on in my head everyday. I want to share stories of my pursuit and my life, and hear your stories. I want to laugh about it. I want to find that perspective again so that we can help each other push our rocks up the mountain together, with a little more ease, and a little more laughter. And one day, maybe we can feel content pushing that damn rock, so even if it rolls back down again, we can laugh and start over, together.