Of course, this is standard fare for the alumni mag--if it's not a bunch of ex-students making wine it's a story about that guy who started Surly Brewing, or a graduate with an organic farm, or some couple who started out as soulless stock brokers but then launched a web company and quickly sold it for tons of money and now they still look very chiseled and Scandinavian.
In other words, I'm tired of hearing about all this stylish and progressive-appropriate success. It's not that I disapprove--I'm actually glad this stuff is going on. Someone should put a green roof on City Hall--yes, that's definitely a good thing. Hats off to the immigration lawyer who works primarily with seasonal farm laborers. I'm totally on board with educational investment programs in low-income countries.
But as a failure-oriented sort of person who is more interested in weird interpersonal situations and gossip, these empowering, occupation-driven stories of "alums on the make" leave me cold. Where is the story about the guy who always meant to leave St. Paul, but ended up dating that local girl for a few years and even though that didn't work out, the job at Medtronic kept paying the bills, and when it comes to Korean food on Snelling Ave. isn't Sole better than Mirror of Korea?
Those are the kinds of stories I want to read about in the alumni magazine. Seriously, what's so bad about mediocrity? Isn't success actually kind of boring?
I suppose this desire for stories of inertia and ordinariness is strongly influenced by my own experience. Because let's admit it--I'm really pretty mediocre, at least when it comes to the work I do. It took several years for me to "warm up" to that realization. I spent plenty of time thinking that I really "should" do something more meaningful with my life than proofreading the fine print in credit card offers or ghostwriting emails for the CEO of a Big Agriculture corporation.
Other people have also emphasized the importance of doing something else--anything else. Well, maybe not anything, but something better.
I recently told an acquaintance about some of the freelance writing work I've been doing. I was actually feeling pretty okay about my work for once, when I realized he was stifling a look of pity. "You're a pretty good writer, Shannon," he said. "Shouldn't you be doing journalism? Wouldn't it be more fun to write articles?"
I had the sudden realization that I was a loser in his eyes. This has happened before, too.
Several years ago I was at play with a friend and she ran into someone she knew in the lobby. "Shannon, you've got to meet Mary--she's a writer, too!"
It turned out that Mary was a 30-year veteran of the Twin Cities journalism scene, currently holding a high post at Minnesota Public Radio. My friend enthusiastically announced that I was a writer.
"Oh, really?" said Mary. "Where do you work?"
I could tell right away this wasn't going to end well. I informed her that I was editing a trade magazine about window treatments.
"Oh, of course--trade magazines," she said, as if I'd initiated a conversation about hemorrhoids--embarrassing, disgusting and definitively indicative of one's low status. "I've never worked in that field."
The message is always the same--why are you wasting your time with that? I suppose it could be taken as a compliment, that these people think I have more to offer the world than a well-worded and persuasive brochure about heat pump upgrades.
No comments:
Post a Comment