The "Real Job"

“The Real Job”: how I’ve grown to loathe this phrase.

Again, I intended to blog about something else today, but these three words have been surfacing a lot recently and I’ve gotta get em’ outta my system. Purge. Purge. Purge.

(I’ll do my best to not bare my fangs.)

I first started noticing it during our tenure with Front Row Productions. Our typical schedule had us flying around the country and working about 10-12 days a month. (This left plenty of time for writing.) However, in the busier stretches, as many of you know, we would be home in Seattle 4-5 days a month if we were lucky.

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A snapshot:

-18 to 20-hour production days in a fast-paced, high-stress environment
- 500 lbs of equipment to haul all over the country: airports, cabs, shuttles, hotel elevators, ballrooms
- consumption largely based around energy bars (it’s not easy being a vegetarian in Las Vegas, Orange County, or any of the other atrocious geographical locations we find ourselves in
-and you wanna talk about project management & multi-tasking….there’s nothing quite like production coordinating in a live environment to show you just how capable you truly are.
- this remains, as of yet, the job that I made the most money at. (I sometimes look back at the money we were making and am utterly amazed. “Even with the miserable conditions, how the hell did we walk away from that?” It was affecting our health, that’s how.)

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Adam and I share a strong work ethic: whatever, wherever we find ourselves, we give it our all. We perform to the best of our ability.

This has crushed me on several occasions in the past: whenever I’ve delivered a product to an employer that was even a fraction askew of perfect, it weighed on me heavily. I couldn’t let go of delivering something that wasn’t 100%.

Working this hard, fighting to get ahead, we marched forward.

And then we’d hear it from family and the occasional friend, “Maybe it’s time for you guys to find real jobs.”

“If only you guys could find real jobs.”

(In their defense, I would slip into the illusion on occasion and utter the very same words.)

Sunday night at a movie, a good friend who I have a lot of respect for, a friend who constantly reflects the “real job paradigm” back at me, ran into an old friend and her new boyfriend.

(This friend of ours is the collage artist who works in corporate advertising (i.e. the “real job”).

“So, are you still at XYZ (restaurant)?” she inquired.

“Ah, hell no. Haven’t been there in a couple years. Doin’ the “real job” thing now. Kinda scary,” he replied.

I cringed.

Then last night, reading a comment on an acquaintance’s personal survey: he said something along the lines of, “life will be good once I can leave XYZ and get a ‘real job’”.

Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I also encounter the “real job” conversation when I tell people that I’m a writer, artist, etc.

“So. What’s your real job?” (i.e. How do you make your money?)

As Americans we sure are obsessed with defining ourselves by how we make our money. (More money = more consumerism = better, newer, slicker gadgets = better self-worth.)

Sorry. I refuse to enroll in that.

Parked dutifully alongside “Real Job” is “Real Education”.

We define ourselves by our degrees, by our jobs: Doctorate trumps Master’s. Master’s trumps Bachelor’s. (“You only have a Bachelor’s? God, what can you even do with a Bachelor’s anymore?”)

And anything less than a Bachelor’s leaves you at the ‘not quite a civilized member of society’ status.

I ask you, how does this fairly equate to the continuously escalating costs of higher education? How do we, as Americans, compare to European nations offer continuing education on a tier-based pricing system (or at no cost whatsoever)?

Are we really so crass as to think that we are better than another person because we have a “Real Education”, or a “Real Job”?

Part of my 2006 meltdown centered around me denying myself: my desires, my ambitions, my core. I was ashamed and full of fear that ‘everybody was passing me by’.

I wanted to relate to others. I wanted my parents to be proud of my choice to pursue a communicative, artistic path. I wanted to feel like I wasn’t disappointing everybody who always thought I could “be so much more”.

A wise and intuitive friend commented during that period that she was sometimes concerned for me/us. She said something along the lines of, “Sometimes I think that you’re afraid of mingling with ‘normal’ people, with ‘average’ people. Like you get comfortable holed up in your adorable little safe apartment and don’t want to enter the real world.”

(Good friends don’t hold back. That comment hit home and hit hard and I continue to examine it to this day.)

“Real Job.”
“Real Education.”
“Real World.”

I tried to conform myself and sought out the “real job”. I even considered going back to school.

And then I almost died.

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We are not our jobs.
We are not our degrees.

We are not our titles.

We are all connected, loving, creative beings of light that are continuously living and growing and participating within our own individual journeys.

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