Ground
Los Angeles is full of the most interesting, hard-working unemployed people anywhere. I don’t understand how they are so unfazed by constant uncertainty over jobs and their career paths. It’s intimidating to see just how well they deal with it, refusing to leave Los Angeles despite struggling for years, and yet I lose my mind and turn into this listless drag after two weeks of waiting to start an internship that I should at least be secure in knowing I have. Instead, it’s the unanswered emails I let wear at me, and the botched interviews, and other chaff.
But that’s just because I miss a certain feeling of safety that I rightly turned my back on in order to be here in the first place. My refusal to settle for anything less than I value myself at has pointed me towards a business where it’s unwise to get too comfortable or “settled” with one’s present employment. I don’t feel prepared, however, to fight upstream for years and years. I get discouraged far too easily, and when I do I become too susceptible to the lure of easy comforts that ultimately falter and leave me even further from where I really want to be.
I think it will prove impossible for me to rely on my career as a grounding mechanism in my life, and I think it’s unfair for me to try to hold it to that task. But I can’t say for sure that I know how to gain a foothold and maintain my confidence in such a dicey environment, and I wonder if continuing to fight the cynical urge to say “fuck it” will lead to promising growth or just go to prove that it wasn’t worth it to begin with.
