Everybody is popular somewhere

How do you tell your boss you hate your job and you are only doing this for the money, that is why you consistently avoid his phone calls?

Well, you don’t.

You tell him how much you love the job and the people.

When performance reviews arrive and your manager asks you if you are doing good, never tell him you are not. He is not interested in your well being, well, maybe he is. But even if he is, he can’t do anything about that because he is not THE boss, and the people who are actually bosses don’t want to hear that you are not doing okay. Unless you are the boss’s  favorite, but if you are , you wouldn’t be not doing great.

The point I’m trying to make is that everything is a popularity game. In order to stay on top, you have to feel chilled under crisis and remain bold and smart under fear. And guess what: this sense of ownership and confidence shouldn’t be forced out of a job, it should come out naturally if you are meant to take up that job. Perhaps you may not be so great at it in the beginning, but trust your intuition.

Everyone is meant to be great at something.  Find that thing and stick with it no matter how tough the times are.  You are meant to do a job and only there could your approval rating skyrocket.

Go find that thing. And if you don’t know, start trying.

Methodical Life-Changing Plan

I have been confused for a long time on what I should do with my life.  It’s an existential crisis.  The past 5 or so posts I have written have all been obsessively about what I should do with myself and who I should be.  I also write about how I am freaking out because I don’t have answers and can’t seem to find them.

This has been extremely uncomfortable and disorienting, and scary.

Here’s what I have come up with on dealing with such gridlock situations in life:

While I can’t figure out what I want to do, I make as much money as I can because:

1. It sucks when I don’t know what to do, but it’ll suck even more if I am also broke. Money does not make things easier (or me happier) – believe me I’m here and I know. But money allows me to take hip hop classes, learn the guitar, buy annual membership to artsy fairs, and plan a trip to South America. They open my eyes and while I would much rather that money be happily earned, at least it’s earned.

2. The money gets me a career coach and a therapist. It is ironic that I make money from a career I don’t like then use that money to talk about not liking my career. But irony is life. My confusion about who I am and what to do with myself comes from emotional/psychological blockage being raised by a hyperventilating mother and an overbearing father, though I am told this is actually kind of normal. The career coach provides me action plans to shake things up, and the therapist explains why I can’t get myself to shake things up. This is all useless, but kind of necessary. It’s part of the process. Part of me think it’s just me being White but I’d like to believe it as a truly modern endeavor.

3. I will pay off my student loans. It’s a legal barrier that needs to be taken care of. I really hate loans (and people with old money).

But soon (maybe by the end of this year, I don’t know) if I still can’t figure out what I want to do I am just going to quit. Quitting totally makes sense because:

1. If I get promoted later with that 50% raise, it’ll make quitting that much harder; then I’m going to be truly stuck in this ever-lasting corporate climb because I’m going to start lying to myself that this is all how it’s suppose to bee (I could afford a house now!), just like that guy from Revolutionary Road.  Promotion is really the only reason why people get stuck and die sad. Quitting now makes sense.

2. I am legally free (of student debts). Knowing the worst that could happen to me is keep hitting zero and not spiraling into the negative is incredibly comforting. It’s sort of like buying options versus just stocks – I don’t buy options.

3. I have had money and have known the feeling of knowing I could have more – and I choose to give it up. This makes the perspective of “what-ifs” simple.

4. I have received advice on finding who I am from every alternative source possible: the parents, friends, shrinks, career advisers, corporate mentors, cab drivers, Jewish people, Chinese people, Black people, and my dear Grandmother. After exhausting every route except my own, I feel less guilty about ruining my “career” and going out there starting at zero – exploring the route on my own because I have listened and they don’t work.

After I quit anything is game, this is the part I have not figured out yet, but isn’t that the point.

Feeling Lost during Emerging Adulthood

The thing about life is that someday we will all be dead.

Birth, no matter how significant, faces an inevitable fate all the same. This preface makes what we do matter. And people in their twenties matter the most.  Look at me: I have no partner to commit to, no child to feed, no parents with broken hips or mortgage to pay off.  I have nothing else aside from feeling incredibly self-indulgent and self-inflicting.  I matter because well, who else is going to matter?

Bloggers write about how it’s okay to be lost in your twenties. But “it’s okay” is hardly the phrase people in their twenties use to describe their state of mind, not the banker who believes he’s invincible, the hipster with an opinion on everything, or the entrepreneur dreaming of taking over the world.

It’s not okay that I’m lost, and I don’t think anyone growing up in today’s competitive education system would feel at all okay for not knowing what to do with their life. Not having an answer to a question, and not knowing where to search for an answer is like watching yourself getting a failing grade and not doing anything about it. It’s unacceptable.

Two years ago I met an incredibly hot Vice President from an investment bank during a recruiting session.  She has remarkably  puffed-over hairdo, gorgeous makeup, fitting Armani suit and the nicest personality. She use to be a competitive figure skater. Her Manhattan presence looked just awe-inspiring under the limelight of my Midwestern college.  I swore to my friend Chuck walking home in 3 inches of snow that one day, I am going to become her.

Two years later our banking industry collapsed in shame. Two years later I stopped talking about white privileges on a daily basis. Two years later we have our first African American President. Two years later Chuck the asshole sidekick of any emotionally unstable female is banging the hottest girl north of 80th street. None of these I would have EVER predicted the day I graduated college. But here we are, and I am the one who is lost.

Emerging adulthood is de-evolution. I feel less sure of myself than I did in college, less optimistic that I am going to change the world, more certain that maybe the world just changes on its own. In this era of hope, I wish I could embrace what I feel about this country on the inside too.

Being lost is not okay, no matter what others write. But there is really nothing I could do about that.