Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Art Works

You can read my experiences trying to learn to fly here.

Ouch.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

Ease deadens.

Hear Ms. Seu as she talks about Hawthorne and how he had to quit his safety and security to be great:

I read about your job loss and was put in mind of mine, and how what seemed a frown of fortune turned to our advancement. In 1848 your services are made "redundant," as your English forebears might say. And then bang: 1850, The Scarlet Letter; 1851, The House of the Seven Gables; 1852, The Blithedale Romance. Not bad recompense for forced retirement.

Why do I bemoan my woeful job status?

I'm referring to the Salem Custom House, of course, where you once plied a dubious trade inspecting quantity and value of imported goods, and generally wasting away in the safety therein. I had a job like that. I will not judge as to whether Sandwich maker beats Surveyor—but it was safe! And I would fain have stayed were I not pushed.

I'm already there, pushed out, pretty much. Why do I try to crawl back in?

"They spent a good deal of time, also, asleep in their accustomed corners, with their chairs tilted back against the wall; awaking, however, once or twice in a forenoon, to bore one another with the several thousandth repetition of old sea-stories. . . . The discovery was soon made, I imagine, that the new Surveyor had no great harm in him. So, with lightsome hearts, and the happy consciousness of being usefully employed,—in their own behalf, at least, if not for our beloved country,—these good old gentlemen went through the various formalities of office."

Hawthorne knew it all too well, apparently. Dilbert. Office Space. Rodent on a wheel. Nothing new under the sun.

Of course, this is what we all think we want— reliable pay with minimum exertion. But you made a discovery: "An effect—which I believe to be observable, more or less, in every individual who has occupied the position—is that, while he leans on the mighty arm of the Republic, his own proper strength departs from him. He loses . . . the capability of self-support. . . . He forever afterwards looks wistfully about him in quest of support external to himself."

Ouch. And that is me.

So I amen to what follows: "The real human being . . . brought himself to the comfortable conclusion that everything was for the best: and, making an investment in ink, paper, and steel-pens, had opened his long-disused writing-desk, and was again a literary man. . . . Rusty through long idleness, some little space was requisite before my intellectual machinery could be brought to work upon the tale."

On the other hand, some people feed off of the stress of a job and trying to squeeze in writing. Who's to say? Perhaps it is a question of not which job, but why the job.

Something to think about.