A Dream Deferred

It is Day 214 of unemployment. That is nearly equivalent to three Kim Kardashian marriages. Instead of months, can we now rate time by Kim Kardashian marriages? So when a friend asks how long you have dated a girl you can answer- "For about 4 Kim Kardashian marriages" The person then will know that you have been dating for 2 years. The time, actually, seems to go by faster that way. The things you have time to figure out when you don't have a job to go to.

Now on to the post...

You ever get to that point... when you have to stop living up here, and start living down here?

                                                                                                                     ~ B-Rabbit, 8 Mile

I once worked for six years as a file clerk. For two and a half of those years, I went to college to get my degree. Being a file clerk is like watching the guy on the corner spin the sign for a local store nearby. It doesn't take a lot of effort or brains to do the job. Hence, one reason I went to college- to challenge myself. I needed to grow as a person and I had hit a ceiling in my life. Other jobs would not hire me because I was not a college graduate. I didn't want to copy files, stuff papers into folders, and pretend to be thrilled to look for missing documents. I was just below the cappuccino machine in importance at the office.

Fast Forward two years: I get a degree and I am ready to move up in the world. I am ready to kick down doors and blast through ceilings. This is my time. Only it isn't my time. Its not really anyone's time as the market crumbles, people are out of house and home, and a feeding frenzy occurs for jobs. Any job.

Now me, and thousands just like me, are vying for the same jobs. Looking for a job started I to feel more like a kid walking down a dark street on Halloween; some houses wouldn't open the door and the one's that did said they just ran out of candy, but they would remember me for next year. And when I got back to meet all of my friends I saw they all scored big with their halloween sacks. I just had to look on and be glad for what I had.

It's frustrating to always look on the bright side or be happy for what you have when you see other's with more. When you see your friends buying houses and moving on with their lives, all the while you sit on the sidelines watching the big game. Waiting. Hoping. Itching to have a chance to play. You would show them everything you could do. Hopefully, you get to show them before the fire inside extinguishes. Or as Langston Hughe's said of a dream, "Does it explode?"

Recently, I was offered a position for a job- as a file clerk. Now, I have never acted before in my life, but this must be the frustration an actor would feel of being typecast. But, I am at a time and a place in my life where I can't really turn down an offer. A lot of people would jump at this chance to work, further creating my own feeling of being selfishness and obtuse to my surroundings. I constantly wonder to myself if  I will forever be the dog that runs in circles in a futile attempt to catch my tail? Or will I be something more? The something I envisioned when I went back to college to earn my degree. Jack London once wrote, " I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet... The function of man is to live, not to exist."

Never lose sight of who you are or what you want to become.