I have been thinking a lot about What To Do With My Life. Someone should make a game show with that title. (It would end with an !, of course.) A game show on which confused 20-somethings would have to pick one of three doors that have careers behind them and then just do what’s behind the door. Easy-peasy. Probably also a recipe for a nervous breakdown, which is why what I should most definitely not do with my life is program game shows.
Seeing as I don’t really have it in me to be a journalist (not enough training, and it’s too uncertain, and it’s all topsy-turvy as an industry and way too Luddite for me anyway - doth I protest too much?), and my short stories are on hold (whenever I sit down to start one, I think about online content distribution instead of horrible childhood trauma or hipster irony, the latter two being elements necessary for a successful short story in these troubled times), it has become more necessary for me to sharpen my focus on my working life. First on the agenda: get rid of parenthetical statements.
I can list ten things I am really good at, but most of those are oriented around very conceptual thinking. I like that. I like open-ended things that are nebulous. I prefer the big picture because there is more to look at. It is less claustrophobic and allows a person to be more nimble.
Watching the economy crumble the last few weeks has made me very hopeful that such skills are very valuable because nothing at all is for certain. Today a company that was around for 85 years was sold off for $2 a share. Everything changes.
So if you are a critical thinker who is okay with the concept of ever-evolving thesis statements about just about everything, you should be okay, right? So I need to find or create a market for the shifting, self-refreshing thesis statement person, and I am all set.
A call from my long-lost, long-distance best friend today was a nice reminder that none of this is a zero-sum game, and we are both still fortunate to have the luxury of choosing.
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