Alright, I'm working on two Gibsons and one whiskey and soda, so we'll see how coherent this blog post turns out. Coldplay's "Paradise" isn't helping, either (and yet, somehow, it's helping oh so much).
And sure enough, it inevitably takes a calamity (a buddy's death, a close encounter with the bad guys, a near-death experience, or some-such) to wake them up, bring them down to earth, and make them realize the truth: they are not invincible, and never were. They're just as human as the next man. They're privy to all the ills which flesh is heir to: pain, suffering, displacement, impotence, deprivation, loss, failure, death, injury, disability. And whenever a cocky young buck gets his comeuppance, there's a painful interlude in which they reappraise their outlook and readjust it—allowing for failure. It's a heartrending thing to watch, but it's a necessary growing experience. Ultimately the brash youth will be more mature the next time a catastrophe comes around.
Never have I identified more with this trope than I do now.
I have received my wake-up call.
For many years, I thought I was immune to life's downturns. Pukey economy? Ha! Job slump? Not even on my mind. Housing crash? Fuhgeddaboutit!
As Emperor Palpatine would say, my overconfidence was my weakness.
Keyword: "was."
Everything has finally caught up with me.
A niggling fear has been dogging me for the last few months, a fear I had never acknowledged or suspected before. I never dreamed that I would suffer at its hands, not in a million years.
The fear of mediocrity.
It feels, lately, that everything I ever planned, hoped for, strove for, dreamed, daydreamed, or wanted is slipping slowly away from me. All chance of worth, accomplishment, notoriety, fame, or happiness turns increasingly dim. These days it seems like the best I can manage is shadows and dust: a half-life, a skulking, underdone fugue of broken dreams, wants unanswered, hope turned hollow. Insecurity and doubt plague my every step. In the face of adversity, crippling economic disadvantage, the humiliation of dependency, and the general pervading listlessness, it seems as though all my personal demons have crawled out of the woodwork to torment me. Suddenly, my novel's prospects fall miserably short of expectation; at best it will manifest as a paperback on the bottom shelf of the science fiction/fantasy section in Barnes & Noble. Suddenly, my lofty pilot's ambitions fall to rubble before my eyes; I feel I will live out my days as a peon copilot for some regional airline in the Midwest, ferrying disagreeable passengers between Springfield and Chicago or Des Moines and Minneapolis. Suddenly, I realize that I will never work as a drink-slinging bartender in a high-class establishment in Las Vegas or Edinburgh or Santiago; the best I will manage will be half-assed Manhattans in my basement.
A painful process this has indeed been.
Yet hope springs eternal. I've got quite a few more novel ideas floating around my skull, and I think I know how to fix my current manuscript. I'm working on the perfect Gibson; pretty soon I'll turn my hand to Manhattans and polish them until they're perfect. And as for flying...well, I don't want to say anything too committal here, but I believe I have a deal worked out. I'm placing an important call tomorrow, the outcome of which will determine my fate. Further bulletins as events warrant.
In the meantime, I'll dream of Paradise.
Well, blast it all.
I used to look at pictures of people waiting in bread lines during the Great Depression and think "Wow, I'm glad that's not me."
I'm still far from living on the streets or Dumpster-diving for dinner, but nonetheless, I'm beginning to feel less and less exempt from the general economic crunch.
Especially now, since I have no job.
Let me explain.
Remember how I said I was going back to Korea?
There are certain pieces of paper one requires if one desires to work overseas. The Republic of South Korea demands that all American immigrants obtain a background check from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and send it to the State Department to be notarized. This notarization consists of an apostille—a big fancy stamp, basically—which legitimizes the document for use by a foreign government.
When I checked the State Department's website in August, it clearly stated that the processing time for an apostille was four weeks.
Perfect, I thought. The job we've been accepted for in Korea starts September 12th. I'll send these forms off on August 5th, and we'll have them back by September 5th or earlier.
Ha-ha. What point did John Steinbeck make about "the best-laid plans of mice and men"...?
I sent the documents off on August 5th. A week later, I logged onto the State Department's website again, just to check up on the status of our apostille.
The Department's electronic literature now said that the processing time for an apostille was EIGHT weeks.
ARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!
It was all up with September. We missed out on the position. We had to call our recruiter, explain what happened, apologize profusely, and decline the position. The marvelous, marvelous position in Bucheon, Seoul, which would've netted us 4.6 million won (about $4600) per month, and left us with $50,000 U.S. to take home afterward.
Well, darn.
Our apostilles came in on October 5th. By that time, the jobs in Korea had all dried up. The hiring season was over. Our recruiter mournfully informed us that Miss H and I would be high and dry until January, when the next wave of hiring began.
Shazbot!
After a great deal of soul-searching and some late-night discussions, Miss H and I decided to wait it out. We'd obtain temporary employment here in the High Desert, work some dead-end jobs for a few months to keep afloat, and ship out for Korea in January.
It was shortly after this that we discovered that San Bernardino County has the second-worst unemployment rate in the entire country after Las Vegas, Nevada.
Mother&%@#er!
So here we are: applying for jobs all over the tri-city area, without so much as a callback or an interview. Both of us are going mad, being 23 and 25 years old (respectively) and still living in our parents' houses. It was cold comfort that Rush Limbaugh said on the radio this morning that 30% of all unwed males in the U.S. between the ages of 25 and 34 are still living with their parents. I don't wanna be one of 'em. I want to be out on my own, dammit. Self-sufficient. Independent. Striding forward to my destiny. I really feel like I'm stuck here in the desert. It was just an inkling before, a terrible dream, a half-imagined dread. Now it's real. And it's constricting my chest. I perpetually feel, living here in the Victor Valley, as though I can't get enough air. Some days I just want to walk off into the desert and see how far I get. Just to maintain the illusion that I'm my own man, and my fate is still in my hands, you know.
This would've been easier to take if I was still chasing Predators. But I'm not. After I'd read that the State Department would take only a month to process my apostille, I gave my one-month notice at work. I retracted it as quickly as possible after I learned of the State Department's true colors, but the damage was done: my superiors had already begun searching for a replacement. And they found one, and he'd quit his job to work with us, and he needed to work full-time to support himself and his wife. So there it was: I was out. There was no getting around it. No plea bargain, no parole board, no second chance. October 28 was officially my last day. It's my first week off and already I'm going crazy.
So I made a decision this evening. I decided that I would polish off that bottle of über-peaty Ardbeg 10-year-old Scotch that's been sitting on the pantry shelf for eons.
More importantly, I decided that I would swallow my pride. I went out to the living room and asked my parents (who had just forked over $500 to replace the leaf springs on my Jeep) for a loan of $4500 to complete my commercial pilot's license. It was hard, but I felt it was the right thing to do. They had extended the offer previously, and I had refused it. But now I feel like I have no other choice. I've got to start making money somehow, and my journalism résumé is far too anemic to do me any good in this economical climate. I'd wanted to get my instrument rating first (only one checkride that way), but that's another 45 hours with an instructor. I only need 38 more hours of PIC (pilot-in-command) time to get my commercial license, excluding checkride prep with an instructor and the actual test. If I go down to the airport every day and fly an airplane around for an hour or two, making landings at towered airports and doing a few long cross-countries and night flights, then I'll be up to speed in no time. Then, hopefully, I'll pass my tests on the first try and be able to saunter forth into the world of commercial aviation.
And I'll use my first paycheck to reimburse my parents' loan. I promise.
Hold me to that, will you?
