A Portrait of the Artist as a Newly Employed Man

Two months ago I learned at the end of an interview that I had just gotten my first "real" job, and in a new city at that. The following is what I wrote later that night, it is brief primarily because it was too painful for me to dwell on at the time, but I felt so passionately about it that for a few minutes I didn't know how else to deal with it but to jot down my thoughts:

"This day will significantly change the course of my life. It's been something I've been anticipating since childhood, and with ever greater eagerness over the past year. It should be a cause of celebration, joyousness, merriment, and yet, instead almost the only thing I can feel is fear. Nagging, persistent, not quite overwhelming fear.

Am I ready? Sure there are a lot of perks, but being a bum was so nice, so stress-free (barring the fact that everyday I had to check the job postings and feel my self-esteem shrink just a little bit more).

I can't win. There are good things about home, the cities, and madtown, but major negatives about each of them too."

Thankfully these feelings didn't last forever. For the first few days afterward my main goal was to just try as hard as possible not to think about it in any depth. Obviously I had to address it frequently, my mom made me call my grandma and tell her the next morning, and it felt strange because I can guarantee during that conversation she was much happier than I was, quite frankly she was overjoyed, but of course, I acted the part of the excited kid accordingly so it wouldn't seem weird. And it made me feel good knowing how happy I made her, so that helped.

I also knew I had to tell my friends, because if I didn't keep them updated on one of the largest events in my life, what kind of friend would that make me? That was the biggest silver lining in those first few days actually, it gave me an excuse to call many of you, and to be honest I mainly just wanted to talk, not to talk about the job. Okay, I did want to talk about it a little bit, but only because I was looking for encouragement.

Still, during this time I was able to block out thinking about it too in-depth, burying myself by indulging my last few days of freedom as best I could--reading, hanging out with friends, going to movies, talking to my mom, playing ping-pong with my dad, going out to eat, and by the time I resurfaced it wasn't as scary anymore. Was I nervous still? Yeah, definitely, any rational person would have been I think, but not nearly on the same level, and I really don't understand why. I'm incredibly grateful, but I just don't get it. If anything, as my start date came closer, I should have been even more frightened, and historically for me that's been the case, but for some reason I was not.

Maybe my body was just tired of the nearly unendurable stress, tired of sweating it out each time I was about to embark on one of life's milestones; maybe my two-decade long fever of nerves had finally broken.

You see, I've always been a worrier.

One of my earliest memories is being taken to the first Sunday School class of the year for three-year-olds. After my mom dropped me off I could barely handle it, I sat in the corner and began nervously rocking (literally, I remember a rocking-horse), waiting for it to be over. I vaguely recall the teacher trying to console me with various toys which I shrugged off. During the middle of class my mom poked her head in the window of the door, I spotted her and began crying.

On the first day of kindergarten I did NOT want to leave home. I kept making excuses and begging my mom to let me go downstairs and just play with my Z-Bots for a little bit longer. She indulged me until we absolutely had to leave before we would be late (thankfully the school was half a block away). As we stood in line along the brick wall outside the school, waiting to be let in, I began bawling, and my mom tried to calm me first by comforting me, then by whispering that other parents were filming this moment and that if I didn't stop I would be forever remembered as the crying kid in the video. That made me feel slightly embarrassed, but was not enough to soothe me. My mom even had to come into class for the first few minutes before finally leaving.

The first time my parents left me and my brother alone at home with no babysitter or relative to watch over us played out similarly. I threw a tantrum begging them, pleading them not to go. Wisely anticipating this, they had rented two movies (Little Big League and The Land Before Time 2) and bought a ton of snacks to keep me pacified. Once they actually did leave for dinner, their plan worked well, and they returned home before we had finished watching the movies and devouring the food, both fantastic distractions.

The day I began middle school went more smoothly, but I believe that is almost entirely due to the fact that I attended the summer prep-school there two months prior. It made me feel a lot more comfortable getting around the school, and so I was at least confident I knew where I was going when I walked in the building the first morning. Having friends in my class helped too, but still I was very very uneasy. I kept having to take deep breaths and think that to cry here, in front of tons of new students, at the age of 11, would probably be an uncleansable stain on my social reputation. Midway through first hour, an awkward looking boy in a worn-out t-shirt entered the room escorted by his mom. This was Robert M. His face was buried in her stomach to stifle his sobs. As he took his seat near me and struggled to fight back his tears it made me feel relieved. And I remember thinking, "Man, Robert, I know exactly what you mean." I was also thinking, "Thank goodness I didn't cry."

As high school neared the same feelings began to take hold. I remember talking with my brother and cousin the summer before and they couldn't believe I wasn't excited to start, as they had allegedly been before 9th grade. In retrospect I understand their point, as high school was awesome, but then I knew nothing but trepidation. I still recall it took all I had to walk through the front doors of the school on the first day. I was literally shaking. I was on the verge of hyper-ventilating as I turned left, walking past the cafeteria down the hall toward the forum. I was worried this was all visible, and that I was just making myself a target for some upperclassmen to pick on me, just like they do in every movie and TV-show. All my focus was on trying not to fall over, I briefly felt like I might actually pass out. Finally, I saw a friend as I entered the forum, I think it was Owen, and from there, it was actually pretty smooth sailing. While short-lived, those thirty seconds are ingrained in my memory as some of the worst of my life, and I'm not just saying that for the sake of drama.

And finally, there was college. This was the big daddy of milestones. Leaving home, barely a handful of familiar faces, gigantic school, gigantic city, all this weighed heavily on my mind for months beforehand. The first drive up to the dorm was terrifying. I hoped it would never end, so of course it felt like it took five minutes. I was glad my mom didn't cry, as she had when my brother first left for college, because while I don't think I would have done the same, it certainly wouldn't have made things any easier.

Then I was shipped off for a few days to a campground for a new student program. I was undoubtedly the least social one in my group, making me the special focus of the upperclassmen counselors, which just made things worse as I HATE being forced into social situations, I need time to collect myself before plunging into the fire, otherwise I feel exposed and naked. It's not that I'm inherently shy around new people, I'm passable in that regard, but when coupled with an uncomfortable foreign environment, it becomes overwhelming. This too, made me feel like an idiot, as I had planned the summer before to prepare and reinvent myself before college so it wouldn't play out like this again, as it always had in these situations. Somewhere that scheme was forgotten during that busy summer of saying goodbyes. I wanted to yell to my fellow campers, "I'm not normally like this! I'm not a loner, seriously! I had friends in high school, lots of them! Just wait til we become facebook friends, then you'll see!"

I was also worried about home sickness--the two times I went to week-long scout camps, every morning began with me feeling as if it was going to be the worst day of the year, and that was while I was surrounded by friends. Thankfully, that was not one of the problems I faced, and much like my current situation regarding the job, I don't know why it didn't recur, but naturally I was relieved.

There was still one collegiate hurdle left, the first day of class. The morning they started was one of the times I was most glad I decided to room with a high school friend. I needed that familiar face to settle me down as I prepared for the day, much as Owen, or whoever, had done the first day of high school. Jeff went down to breakfast with me, even though he could have slept in, and that meant so much to me because our conversation kept my mind off of the day ahead, and if you've noticed, for me it's usually the time beforehand, the pondering, that's the worst. To quote Jekyll and Hyde, "The only thing I fear is the unknown!" (well not the only thing...) Still, Jeff wasn't going to walk me to class, and that mile-plus, fifteen minute jaunt, left plenty of room for anxiousness (I'm running out of synonyms for nervous!) to surface. It was made slightly easier as there was almost no one around, since it was an 8 AM class, so I at least didn't feel like older students were silently sensing and mocking my feelings of inadequacy. It wasn't as bad as that first trek into high school, but it was still rough. My jaw began quivering as I tried to calm myself. I also had to pull a campus map out to get my bearings, which just made me feel more like an idiot freshman. Finally I found the building, hiked up the stairs, and located the classroom. Through the window, it looked already full, which made me think I was late and even more afraid to enter, but I told myself there was no way the walk took me half an hour (I'd left at 7:30) so I plunged in the door and took the first open seat. From there the spunky Frau Weiss took over and, big surprise, I survived.

So, as you can see, I have a history of this type of behavior. If I ever get married, I'll love to see what I'm like on my wedding day. The fear I was feeling the night I learned I'd been offered the job was by no means unprecedented. What exacerbated it further was the knowledge that I was going to be the only one in my department. The only one. There would be no one to ask for help, no safety net, and I hadn't even touched the software I'd be using since my part time jobs ended in June. I felt like I must be a fraud, how could they offer me the job when I didn't even land interviews for part-time temporary internships in my own state? Had they misread my resume? I spent ten minutes tops on the cover letter! (After applying for over 80 jobs in seven months, you develop a pattern). I'm not really qualified for this am I? Clearly they had more confidence in me then I did in myself. If you're as paranoid as I can be, this, ladies and gentlemen, is what the current economy will do to your self esteem.

Besides that, as I wrote that first night, I had sort of gotten used to living a life of leisure. I hadn't worked or had homework in months now, and job searching and applications took an hour or two out of my day at most, and only ten minutes of searching if no new jobs had been posted. How would my mind react to jumping straight from that, the first time in my life since developing productive consciousness that I'd had extended free time, into my first 9-5 role?

Finally, I also came to the realization that, while I had been applying for jobs everywhere across the country over the past months, deep down I guess I always thought I'd end up in the cities, or at least in my home state, where I'd developed a wide reaching network of friends. By moving I'd have almost no social safety net either. And while in part this is something I wanted, as I've felt for a long while that I needed a fresh start socially, it's still a little bit scary, especially when I'm going to have to be almost totally active if I want to make new friends. In the dorms it just sort of happens passively, and it's not as if there are hordes of young people all starting work together with me, it's a small company. Those long expected Catch-22's were beginning to surface. So far this has proven true, and while I'm extremely thankful my brother lives here too, I can't rely on him to help me grow my whole social network or hang out with him every weekend night, he's got his own life to live.

The worst part of feeling so distressed, was that this is what I wanted. I don't think it's any stretch to say that for almost my entire life, this is what I had been working towards. Schoolwork, character building, extracurricular activities, internships, the list goes on. This is why I killed myself for years in high school, trying my darnedest to get good grades, at the expense of 75% of my recommended sleep. And I'd been working towards it with especially acute vigor and sober knowledge of exactly what I was doing during the last half year or so, as I actually applied for these positions. This moment, the fulfillment of decades of effort from me, my parents, family, friends, teachers, and mentors, had somehow become something so ugly and painful. I knew how backward it was, but I couldn't help it, like most all feelings, it was involuntary.

Worse yet, I secretly hoped I could find a reason not to take it. When they offered it to me I said I was pretty sure I'd accept, but that I wanted to go home and think about it and I'd call them in the morning. I prayed that night for guidance to make the right choice, and, as I feared, upon reflection, for so many reasons it was a no-brainer.

But, jumping forward again (finally), defying logic and personal history, after coming out of my self-made cocoon I didn't feel as afraid anymore. For a few days I was relatively at ease, but I assumed it was only because I wasn't allowing myself to think about the job that much. As my week and a half of freedom moved forward though, rather than grow, that feeling of despair never even returned to its original state. Aside from becoming a master of self distraction, which based on my previous experience can only work for so long before you have to face the music, I don't know what to attribute this to besides boring old maturation. Or maybe instinctual fatigue from my nervous system after years of abuse.


Whatever the cause, the night before I began the job I was also helped significantly by the fact that I was staying with my brother and his roommates. They had some friends over too and we went out to dinner and talked for hours after returning, it was really quite a festival atmosphere and the perfect way to keep my mind off of the job I was about to start. So rather than dwelling for hours upon all the ways I was probably unqualified, I just had a pretty fun time.

The next morning, as with all of life's major events, I finally had to suck it up and head out alone though. Now, now was the time the fear would finally catch up to me right? When, left to my own devices, I would have a nervous breakdown and need to pull over? Nope, not yet, I made it through a traffic jam all the way to the parking lot. Okay, now surely, as I pulled on my backpack, locked the car, and headed into the building? Well, I certainly felt a little uneasy, but I took a few deep breaths, and thinking explicitly about that walk into high school eight years before, I entered the elevator, and during my 8 second ride, marveled at how much more comfortable I felt than I had back then, confused as to why, but happy nonetheless.

And you know what? To a greater or lesser degree, I've been doing alright ever since, replacing nerves with more appropriate, and less daunting, workplace feelings like stress and boredom, and occasionally, fun. What's more, while there has been somewhat of a learning curve, and I've certainly been utilizing google forums and Help documentation my fair share, most of the important skills I needed have come right back to me. Here's to hoping that continues. And of course the people who hired me had more confidence in me than I did myself, they actually knew what the job entailed, as opposed to the vague idea I had, so naturally they were in a better place to make that call, based on seeing my experience, than I was.

I've still got plenty of work left to do in adjusting to this new life and new job, but many of the major hurdles have been overcome. And I don't know how long this ride is going to last, maybe a year, maybe 40, but perhaps the most important lesson I've learned in my extremely brief experience out here in the real world, is that, as of right now, if it did last for 40, I don't think I'd mind.