one of us got clumsy and both of us got wise

[raven]

So I had a bit of a weird realisation about my life today. I have a friend and former colleague whom I like a lot - she's one of those people that make you sorry that "sweet" and "kind" are such anodyne descriptors, and that maybe they ought not to be - and she's... well, "unhappy" is also an anodyne descriptor, but, well. She's been unhappy with her job for basically as long as I've known her - to distill a lot of complicated stuff right down, it's because the job doesn't suit her all that well, and even if it did, it's oddly set up so she's always saying she doesn't know how she can make progress, she doesn't know how to use it to develop her career. All perfectly valid reasons to be unhappy, and now she has to deal with a serious family illness and I know she feels like she should take a lot of the responsibility for supporting her parents, and whether or not that's true it's pretty clear that's taking a lot of toll on her. She called me last night for some practical thing about meeting up soon and once I'd got over being seriously honoured - like me she has phone anxiety - we spoke for twenty minutes just sort of chewing over stuff. It was nice, and I really do miss her.

The thing that occurred to me after we were talking is that, well, she can talk over her work troubles with me, because I don't work with her any more, but obviously she feels constrained talking about it with her friends who are her colleagues, and she doesn't have many other friends close; she's obviously reticent about sharing her problems with her family right now, and she's clearly dealing with anxiety, and she's an only child... and I thought, god, I wish you were really into some stupid TV show about spaceships. You know what I mean? It seems so weird and simplistic to say, but if she were super-into, I don't know, Star Trek or Game of Thrones or Parks & Rec or One Direction, then - well, I guess the ridiculous thing is you don't do it this way round, what you do is realise your friend is super-into whatever-it-is and decide that their life would be enriched by fandom and that fandom would be enriched by them. What you don't do is begin by saying, I wish you were in fandom because I want that sense of community for you. And of course people do find comfort in their interests - and her interests mostly centre on orgasmically good baked goods (and chutney! I am writing this halfway through a cheese sandwich lovingly laced with my friend's ridic good tomato-courgette-apple) - but somehow it's not the same.

In the twenty minutes on the phone of course she asked how I am, and I gave her the honest answer - I'm not sure. I'm not awesome, anyway. Not the best. I'm not so far gone down the rabbit hole that I genuinely believe I will never work again, but what breaks my heart - and, god, it really does - is that I do believe I will never work as a lawyer again. That's not me - it's nothing to do with me, not really, it's a profession catching up with the reality of worldwide recession on property value and litigation risk, it's the fact that a newly-qualified lawyer is absolutely the least-good value, of any lawyer, in terms of usefulness and salary, it's that there are no jobs. I will get another job, maybe someday. Hopefully, it will be something I like doing. I'll do it and hopefully I'll get better at it and maybe progress into another career, and it'll be, not the best, but okay, maybe. The bit that hurts is how arbitrary it all is. My friend was saying, if I'd been in her cohort - two years older - then I would have her job, which would've suited me much better than it does her, and maybe my former workplace would have come up with something much better for her; if I'd been a year younger, then I'd have been in a cohort of two, and been way more likely to get a job simply because two people compete for jobs easier than six. And even in the year I was, doing the job I did, I lost out to one other candidate for a job. A fifty-fifty chance, and I lost. Which happens. It's just mostly about luck, and probably quite a bit about race, too.

I would find all this a lot more painful to deal with if it weren't for Welcome to Night Vale. Glib but true. Community, especially a community that doesn't care about the mess you're making of your life, is something. I can't really explain that to my friend, but I wish it was something I could give her.

She also told me that she's thinking about further study - she ordered prospectuses and discussed part-time working with her famously obstreperous HR department - because even if she never believes me, I know she's tough as anything, and Shim and I have been watching a lot of Parks & Rec recently and I have decided, if I ever do anything worthwhile ever again and maybe write my autobiography when I'm a hundred and five, I will title this chapter in my life "Requiem for a Tuesday".

You're lucky and you're lucky. That's it.

Comments

[sir_guinglain]

Stay where you are in that rabbit hole, or better still crawl out towards the light. There are enough of us feeling we're in the dimmer recesses of the warren in any case.

[raven]

Thanks. <3

[soupytwist]

I hope one day I get to read that autobiography. Because 1, fuck yeah, and 2, I am sure this isn't something you are feeling at all right now, but I have absolutely every faith that it would be the beginning of something awesome and exciting - a stepping stone, not an ending.

*hug*

[raven]

So I am being rubbish at replying to comments and things lately, but you're so kind and reassuring, always. <33

[livrelibre]

Yes community is a wonderful thing:) And I'm glad you're here and moving along and even if lawyering as a lawyer doesn't pan out I'm absolutely sure you will find a way to express your passion for land and law in another way. Doors and windows and all that. <3

[raven]

<3 <3 I am not great at answering comments in a timely fashion recently, but you are the best.

[pearwaldorf]

Fandom has been a part of my life for so long that I honestly don't know how to deal with problems without it. I suppose I'm meant to find that alarming, but I don't.

I totally understand the whole rabbit hole thing. Libraries and librarianship (even though I am not directly employed in the field, I am inextricably linked to it) is going through the same sort of, I suppose, correction. And it is hard to deal with, and I will be cheering you on because you are awesome and talented.

[raven]

So I am not the best at answering comments at the moment, but I do appreciate them. :) I'm sorry to hear your field is going through something similar; it really, really sucks and it sucks more that there's not much we can do about it, on the individual level.

[forthwritten]

Oh honey, I'm sorry you're having such a rubbish time of it. I know what you mean about a profession contracting in size and being unsure if there's room for you in it - academia is brutal. But you're wonderful and talented and I dearly hope something will come through for you.

Hang in there. I want to read your autobiography <3

[spiderwolves]

I'm so sorry - this sounds really hard, and it's really sad that it's so arbitrary. I'm glad that you have community, and that this community is helping.

[alittleacademe.livejournal.com]

MANY HUGS. I am writing a mammoth fic because I don't entirely know why I'm doing what I'm doing, so this makes a lot of sense.

And, yeah, it is arbitrary and appalling and you're better-placed than I am to know about the race element and I tend to agree. I wonder what response you'd get (I AM NOT SUGGESTING THIS, OBVIOUSLY, I am being cynical and having a low opinion of humanity) from a CV with your name down as FirstName HusbandsSurname, because those in combination would not connote anything but whiteness to a white HR person. AGAIN, I am not suggesting this.

PM/email me your address? I want to send you really fucking stupid postcards and greetings cards.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

It is awful, isn't it? I am writing a ridic amount of fic right now - 80k since May - because, aaaargh. Don't apologise for suggesting that, I had thought of it - the problem with that as a scheme is that it wouldn't get me further than the interview stage!

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

Even if you're into something, getting into fandom can feel hard. I've never known quite how to do it - there are things that I love, but I don't know how to join that community without pushing in.

*hugs* I'm sorry the situation is so shit. You are great, and you deserve to do what you love - and are good at! - and I do hope and believe that you can. But I know things are shit and difficult, and it isn't fair. I'm glad Welcome to Night Vale is there.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

(answering comments better late than never!) I get that fandom can be difficult when viewed from the outside - esp now! Tumblr fandom is totally beyond me, I don't know how people start their fannish lives there - but I do think it can be such solid community, when it all comes together. Thanks for your kindness, my dear.

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

(Answering comments is always great.) I do not understand Tumblr at all, much as I enjoy reading it sometimes. But yes, fandom community sounds great! It just can seem impenetrable as an outsider - oh, here are all of these people who love each other and are having loads of fun, I would just get in the way and spoil everything.

(I thought I heard a co-worker talking about Giles yesterday. But I felt completely unable to collar her and ask, because what if she wasn't and I just sounded ridiculous? Anyway, she might not even like Buffy and find my impassioned declaration of love for it offputting.)

[bibliotropic.livejournal.com]

Hugs, you.

You are going to do so many worthwhile things; there's no if there.

Night Vale is wonderful. And so are you.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

<3 <3 you are the best.

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean about its being the wrong way round, but I also think it's really sweet and lovely that you thought of this for your friend. And I agree. For the first time in a looong while I feel like I'm working in a place where maybe people kinda genuinely care about me as a human being--where I get invited when people are going out for drinks after a staff meeting, or where people offer me space to crash when I'm afraid I'm going to be homeless, or whatever. But the community I get from LJ/fandom (the two are still intimately entangled in my mind; I sometimes think that now LJ is my fandom) is still a necessary supplement, and has at other times been my only community and support system. I also don't think it's coincidental that it was during this year, when so much felt like utter chaos, that I fell hard into a fandom not only as a distraction but also creatively and socially (albeit only with a handful of people I already knew) for the first time in years and years.

All of which is to say: you've expressed this so well, here and elsewhere. And I'm glad you have you Night Vale, and people there and elsewhere who don't care if maybe sometimes your life seems like a mess. Maybe lawyering isn't going to play as prominent a role in your lifetime happiness as it would have under other circumstances, but I think there will be other things to fill in the gaps.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I am being pretty terrible at answering comments lately? But I relate to everything you've said here about LJ, fandom and community - I am so, so grateful, beyond the telling of it, that the community we both have here has persisted over all these years. <3 <3