It's Labor Day Monday and I've spent most of the last three days snoring, cat snuggling, or somewhere in the depths of a book. As usual, great plans were made for the weekend and while some things got done, others have not--at least not as yet. I'll be up til wee hours tonight, I always flip back to nocturnal at times like this and there are things I still want to do.
Over the past week I've watched as my professional colleagues have tackled, yet again, the illusion of job availability being promoted in various places, the reality of job cuts, the frustration from lack of clarity of what constitutes professional work, arguments of elitism, and other things that seem to cycle through our discussions on a regular basis. There's a lot of I-didn't-sign-up-for-this and get-over-yourself and polite name calling going on. I've mostly stayed out of the fray, partially to keep from throwing another keg of gasoline on the fire and partially because I'd like to see what other answers come out before I try and formulate something too haphazard.
Ultimately I keep hearing the refrain "If Ur not XYZ, Ur Doin' It Wrong." It's everywhere in my profession. This could be in reference to the fact that I'm not regularly getting recruited from my current position, that I'm not getting 100% return on applications sent out, I'm not getting calls from professional publishers every week, not leading all the top presentations...
It spills over into personal life, crafts and hobbies too. If I'm not dating three men at once or in a long term serious relationship with a man I well believe could be "the one," if I'm not churning out excessive amounts of sweaters and lace weekly, not spinning and crocheting and weaving in addition to my knitting obsession, if I'm not blogging every single event of my week and turning out a best selling memoir on moving from two major cities to a town of 50,000 and what it's like to feel utterly friendless in the depths of winter isolation.
We're so focused on the negative, it's exhausting. So ready to cut each other down, render efforts wrong or perceive lack of rockstardom as laziness. If only, everything seems to suggest, if only we would put ourselves out there a little more, submit three more applications, one more article idea, take on six more tasks. Then! Then we would be worthy of being called excellent, being called a rock star, one of the worthy. I haven't figured out what magic level one hits to reach that, but then, I've never been much of one for video games.
I suppose I'm just suffering from whiplash from the condescension and struggling to keep up. Attempting to put myself out there in the most positive of ways and having just enough success that I seem to be getting regularly smacked with the why-aren't-you-doing-abc stick.
No particular ending to this...just getting the stream of conscious out and wondering if perhaps by writing it down, I'll find a path out. In the interim, I've a to do list to tackle.
Back to the grind.
