when to say when

It’s about that time again. Something is firing between the synapses in my brain telling me that things have gone awry, and I know just what it is. Well, it also hit me blankly in the face today after two devastating meetings with two oracles of my non-existent future.

Let me explain. Like many aimless contemporary youths, I decided to live abroad for a year after graduation. Employers love that shit, right? Well, sorry to say it kids, but unless you saved a small village from a cholera epidemic, it doesn’t mean much. It does, however, give you something to talk about while avoiding the woeful topic of your lack of experience (always a sore subject). Anywho, I took the first job that was offered to me after I got back. It was at a great company, but doing a job I had no real interest in. Above all, it wasn’t the idealistic nonsense job that squanders the lives of so many female English majors like myself that I REALLY wanted. I longed for the hard, scrappy life of a toiling editorial assistant at a major publishing house, reading manuscripts by dim lamplight until I saw double. Give me your puny wages, your thankless office duties, your coffee orders! I wanted to (eventually) edit books.

Publishing is the soul sucking hellscape of undergraduate dreams gone terribly wrong. But I thought, hey I’ll make it there, oh yes, I will. Over 2 years later I find myself in the same first job that doesn’t lend it's skills to any other profession, and still doesn’t interest me as a long-term gig. I told myself in the beginning that it was just a starting-off point. I would network, make inroads, and SCHMOOZE! But in reality, I never broke out of my sad, windowless office with the random microwave in the corner. In my line of work, I tell a lot of people what they’re not supposed to do on television, so I’ll just say that there's no one waiting in line to be best friends.

So that brings me to today. In the same unimaginably brain-liquefying day, I met with an HR person from a major publisher AND had a talk with my current boss about my (lack of a) future in our department. In my defense, this was not my plan. It was some ill-fated cosmic alignment of existential horror. HR lady confirmed what I already knew; my chances to ever get a job in publishing, doing what I’m really interested in and (presumably) good at, are slim, very slim. And even if I hit that lottery, I’ll be starting at square one, and moving back home for lack of funds paid. A few hours later, my boss squarely, but compassionately, told me if no one leaves, no one (me) gets promoted. It’s sit and wait or get out of dodge. I’m free to walk to plank…back to entry level.

I’ll make it clear right now that I’m well aware how lucky I am to even have a job right now. I’ll be the first to admit I have no one to blame but myself for this haunted house of careerdom I’ve created. I chose this bum ride, and I’m taking it until I tuck-and-roll out the passenger side door. I just have to decide what I’m bailing out for.

Look for a job I don’t want to earn more money, scratch and claw for a job I want that sets me back 2 years, many dollars, and my independence, or suck it up and deal with what I’ve got. What’s a girl to do?

I guess what I’m really asking myself is, how do I know when to say when? I’ve got a lot of things I’m trying to accomplish at once, and at some point my withering New York soul is going to need a reprieve from this tension. My father, an incredibly smart and successful businessman (when I declared my major I heard his heart break), always said that he never knew if he was making the right choices with his career, he just took chances and it happened to pan out. While I’m sure that is supposed to be reassuring, I find it just plain terrifying. It’s times like this when I wonder if everything I thought I’d figured out about what I want to do with my life was just BS to make it through family dinners.

The truth is I have no idea what’s going to happen to me. What I do know is that I’ll have to sacrifice something to make a change in my current situation, and every possibility seems agonizing. It’s real adult decisions like these that make me feel like I need a security blanket and a bottle of grape Dimetapp. Can I push myself to make decisions for my future when said future is so unavoidably uncertain? When there are no guarantees, how can you ever know when? When to give up a vain, idealistic hope in the name of practicality, when to fight for something that may never pay off (literally), and when to shut the hell up and take what you’ve got because it’s better than nothing.

Maybe it’s all not so cut and dry. Perhaps there is a compromise somewhere in here. And of all these paths in the woods, each one seems to be well traveled by those that came before me. I know that I’m not alone on this island. But I haven’t found a compromise yet, and sometimes, it’s hard not to get flustered when I can’t say where I’m going, let alone how I’ll get there.

sometimes there just aren't enough mosques

Let me start by saying, really? I don't know who raised the media's threshold for complete idiocy this week, but dayum. It's exceptionally hard to understand how we got this far into a non-debate that is so overtly intolerant and prejudicial it's embarrassing. So I'll just say it plainly: everyone, it's time to shut the hell up about this "Ground Zero Mosque" business. Seriously. You are making us look terrible.

My state of agitation all started when an old high school classmate of mine posted a glaringly uniformed and hateful comment on Facebook expressing disdain for the decision to "spit in the face" of all the families of those we lost on 9/11 by constructing a mosque two blocks from ground zero [see also, terrible infographic above]. I heard some rumblings of the "controversy" weeks ago and chalked it up to slow news cycles, crazies, and stupid people, assuring myself that this argument had no legitimacy and would simply go away. There was also this moving speech from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, which should have made everyone with any semblance of reason wise up. He nobly defended the right of all people to worship as they choose and urged us to respect the differences of faith that make New York, and the country, an inspiring place to live, saying:

"Muslims are as much a part of our city and our country as the people of any faith. And they are as welcome to worship in lower Manhattan as any other group. In fact, they have been worshipping at the site for better, the better part of a year, as is their right. The local community board in lower Manhattan voted overwhelmingly to support the proposal. And if it moves forward, expect the community center and mosque will add to the life and vitality of the neighborhood and the entire city. Political controversies come and go, but our values and our traditions endure, and there is no neighborhood in this city that is off-limits to God's love and mercy..."


If that's not enough to make you patriotic, I don't know what is. It is also a plain statement of the basic freedoms guaranteed to all citizens of this country. In other words, it's a no-brainer...yes? Well, no. Somehow, somewhere, people were saying no. In some dungeon lair of retarded logic, people were still willing to perpetuate the "argument" that Islam = terrorism, especially within a half-mile radius of ground zero. But as Jon Stewart, beacon of light in the filthy recesses of absurdity, aptly, and sadly, showed us, this hackneyed fear-mongering is neither foreign practice, nor exclusive to New York City.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Municipal Land-Use Hearing Update
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Now that Obama has used his brainy super powers of rhetorical circumlocution to make a (non) comment on the "controversy," no one will shut up about it, and conservatives jumped at the chance to link our president to terrorism and anti-american sentiment, setting ablaze the ignorant fervor of the hateful masses. It's vile, and it's getting far too much attention. Letting people feel OK about having their elected leaders speak out on television, look us in the eye, and equate peaceful, religious Muslim people with hatred and violence is the ultimate insult to our intelligence and our constitution- which doesn't seem to mean much to republicans these days (read: proposed 14th amendment massacre). But, more importantly, it is also an insult to everyone who died on that "hallowed ground" in downtown Manhattan, and no, I'm not talking about where the Burlington Coat Factory used to be. My guess is that they would have wanted us to right the wrongs of ignorance and intolerance that led to such immense and horrifying devastation, not encourage them.

There are too many stones being thrown in this wacky glass house of American media and politics, and no one seems to be saying anything about it. The media is juggling this unfortunate story line as if it had two legitimate sides. We are allowing far too many people to slander American citizens, and an entire religion, because of a terribly incorrect syllogism that blindly fuses 'Muslim' with 'extremism.' It's just plain wrong. And continuing to let the mad-as-hell crowd try to make Islam a dirty word without stopping them in their tracks is the true disgrace here. So to be entirely redundant; really people? This is bad, even for us.