Warning: the following post is probably not going to be very funny. It will, however, be soggy with tears, stinking of desperation and mired in a deeply morbid self-pity only nominally covered by sarcasm and failed attempts at humor.
I am a big movie fan, so I was looking forward to seeing "Up in the Air." But somehow, in all the stuff I'd read about it, I either didn't hear or blocked out one teensy, weensy pertinent detail: Clooney's character fires people for a living.
We're not just told what he does. No. Neither do we get just one scene to get the point across. No. There's scene after scene of ordinary people being terminated. Let go. Downsized. Devastated.
Someone in movie marketing actually promoted this movie as a "high-flying comedy." Sure, it has a few chuckles here and there. So did Sophie's Choice, but i wouldn't characterize it as a light-hearted romance.
It was a stroke of genius on the part of the director not to have these terminated people played by stars or even recognizable character actors. He chose instead people who look like someone you might have passed on the way to the copy machine. We don't even get the safety buffer of long shots or medium shots (to use camera angle jargon) but head-on in the terrible intimacy of the close-up. Face full frame, talking directly to us, the audience, as if we are the bastard laying their world to waste.
Face after face, crumpling in tears, anger, terror, disbelief, shock. Whimpering, screaming, shouting, threatening suicide. People agonizing about their kids, their mortgages, their heating bills.
I squirmed in my seat, felt my stomach twisting into an origami crane, and even contemplated turning the damned movie off, because who the f*ck needs to see even fictional lives shattered when you know so intimately how it feels, when you've been that person not once or even twice but four times now...
Clooney's character has a line he likes to use on these pitiful wrecks of human beings: "Anybody who ever built an empire, or changed the world, sat where you are now. And it's *because* they sat there that they were able to do it."
The first time he said it, I smirked and said aloud, "Screw you." The second time, I would have thrown something heavy at the screen except that I knew I couldn't afford to replace either a television or an ashtray.
But when the guy in Detroit responded to that line with: "I'm 57 years old! Who's gonna hire me?" -- well, that's when I finally lost it.
I wrote a blog after my third termination about the stages of being fired, most of which included hysterical sobbing. I was actually rather pleased, in a strange sick way, that I skipped some of those stages on this, my fourth trip around the dead end of my brilliant career.
I only watered up at the moment of first realization, and quickly choked those tears down a painfully constricted throat because my supervisor was still saying things he expected me to reply to. True, I was leaking a bit as I packed up my desk, but held it together until I was alone in my car.
But as soon as I had the privacy to cry, I didn't. I thought maybe it was because I was just too numb, or because I really loathed that job anyway, or because I was just making progress in the fine art of not giving a shit. Maybe, I thought, I'm just toughening up and realizing that tears are a waste of time, body fluids, Kleenex and decongestants. Tears never change anything. (Except that ticket for not wearing my seat belt; hysterical sobbing did get me out of that one, but that was a total fluke.)
But tonight the flood gates opened. The dam broke. Hysterical sobbing, wailing, a whole box of Kleenex sacrificed on the altar of self-pity, despair and abject terror.
Before anyone rushes to tell me to buck up, that it will be okay, that I'm too smart and too talented to stay down for long, that this is all for the best, that i'll find another job that better suits me... yada yada yada -- understand that I appreciate your kindness, but I don't write this to elicit sympathy. I just need to belch these toxic fumes into the safety of an internet that cannot see the snot hanging from my nose. And frankly, I'm too despondent and terrified right now for anything anyone says to matter.
What frightens me the most is my inability to come up with any serious plan of action. I look at job postings in my chosen field of graphic arts, and more and more I see that I'm just falling more and more behind in the required technology. I look at all the classes offered online and on campuses, financial aid information, yada yada yada, and feel more and more like a possum in the headlights. All I can do is curl into a ball and play dead. Seriously, I was reading on how to apply for a Pell Grant and I had a minor panic attack, the words on the screen didn't seem to be a recognizable language anymore....
I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO.
Many of you have so kindly offered suggestions and I know, i really do, that you're trying to show your support, and I do appreciate it. I do.
But the truth is:
Yes, I am a very talented writer. But I have spent the last ten years writing and writing and trying to get my work out into the world and so far, no one wants it enough to pay me money for it. I am trying to find the energy to go looking for a new agent, on the chance that it's not my own lack of talent but my agent's.... But publishing is dying. I fear that the only way I'll ever get people to read the four unpublished novels in my computer will be to turn them into three-minute blurbs on YouTube.
I do all the freelance graphics I can get my hands on, but those jobs are hard to come by, and even harder to get paid for. I know more unemployed graphic artists (i.e. "freelancers") than you can shake a stick at.
Even if I wanted to teach, I would have to continue my education. I am terrified that I will make the sacrifices necessary to get that education -- going back into the debt that I finally got myself out of -- only to find out that what I suspect is true: I will hate teaching. I will get sued for striking a student. That I lack the patience and dedication to deal with the average ignorant, willfully stupid student without resorting to violence or foul language or alcohol addiction.
I'm terrified that I'm too old to do it. How old will I be by the time I could get my Masters? Could I manage a doctorate before senile dementia renders me incapable of remembering even my last name, let alone the fundamentals of pedagogy? Can I even learn anything anymore?
I already make as much art and crafts as I can physically make, but have yet to find a way to live on what little money I earn that way. Yes, there are still people who will spend money on the most mediocre of stuff, but I've not had much luck finding them. (And I won't go into my other parallel crisis of faith brought on by watching "Amadeus" again. I realized that I am Salieri, and that i will never be Mozart. Not even Chopin or Barry Manilow. I am so discouraged about my art right now, my inability to translate what I see in my head onto the canvas, it all just comes out as trite mediocrity.... i want to burn it all. I know it's not terrible, it's just not very good. And that's almost worse. Hello, my name is Mediocrity.)
I am terrified of trying to open a business of any kind in this economy. I'm lousy with money anyway, and I don't want to run a business. Payrolls, taxes, zoning, bookkeeping, oh dear god just shoot me.
If I were to chose a completely different "in-demand" career path, I don't know what in the hell to choose. Court reporting? Medical coding? Paralegal? I'm an artist in my heart and soul. There is nothing else I want to do, nothing else I can even begin to imagine that wouldn't suck me dry of my will to live.
Today, I talked to a woman at a company called Lee Hecht Harrison, one of my termination benefits provided by Hewlett Packard. This is the crap they actually sent me about their program:
Lee Hecht Harrison, we believe that when it comes to career transition, individuals benefit from a proven process. That’s where AIM comes in - AIM (Assess opportunity, Implement search, Manage transition) is our business process that combines personal support and productivity tools to help you identify and achieve your goals.
Oh, dear God. Let me guess. I'll get a Briggs-Meyer personality test which will tell me I am best suited for a career in art and design. Someone with an associate's degree from a community college will help me proof my resume for grammar and punctuation. I'll get tips on how to interview successfully, which will probably be about as helpful as the ones I've already read on Yahoo, Linked-In, CareerBuilder, Monster and Oprah's magazine.
I know, I know. I'm so fucking cheerful and positive about this. But this totally pointless exercise will require me to put on a dress, hose and heels to sit in a conference room for two hours next Tuesday. Then they want to send me to a two-day seminar. Do they really think I haven't been trying? I'm not a moron.
Did I mention that their offices are located in the same building as the second job that fired me?
Clooney's character may actually be right. "Anybody who ever built an empire, or changed the world, sat where you are now. And it's *because* they sat there that they were able to do it."
But I'm afraid. I am so deep-down to my bones afraid. All i can see are all the obstacles. I'm walled in on all sides by fear of failure and a paralyzing lack of faith. I know I need to move beyond this, I just don't have any idea how in the hell to do it.
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