posted
I'm not like Good Will Hunting and going to see about a girl. But a life, yeah. Or something.
When I last left, I had graduated from college, Mom had left Dad and I had gone on this trip called Carpetbagger . But then I came back, process stuff, wrote a little, and tackled life. Life meaning I found myself my first fulltime job, my first apartment. I got to live in my first apartment with no furniture for a couple weeks. After about a year, I changed jobs to something in my own state, better paying, only 20 minutes away vs. 45 minutes away. I worked. Hiked a lot, kept working out.
My job got stressfull after eight or so months. My moods betrayed me, I couldn't handle it, and I ended up getting fired. That fall, school foundered. It wasn't that I didn't have the intellect or drive to do the work, instead, that fall I was medically incapable of carrying out my internship.
Now, with an internship for a Master of Social Work, you have to do direct service with folks. When I'm ill, I'm unreliable. It isn't fair to those people who rely on me as their professional when I myself am sick for those extended periods of time. It took me awhile to come to grips with this. When I had come back in the summer of 2002, I had everything planned out. I was going to get my MSW and be a clinical social worker. Any other career options fell by the wayside, because that is what I wanted. At some point during the MSW education, I ended up taking a neuropsych class. Suddenly, in doing an independent study in researching and proposing an experimental study, I wanted to go into that field. Wanted to get my PhD and become a neuropsychologist.
Then reality became harsh in terms of my schooling. Because I had missed the fall semester half of my first internship, I was told I would have to transfer to the program's main campus 45 minutes away and stay in the program for an additional year. I wouldn't be graduating with my classmates.
I was mad as hell. Not with them, with myself. As in, why wasn't I capable of holding down a job? Why wasn't I capable of making it through an internship? The answer is my illness, but I kept throwing that out as a crap excuse. I had the intellectual ability and the drive to do the work. But my emotional ability had seriously interfered.
Where did that leave me? Faced with a semester that was meaningless, my drive disappeared. Classes became terminally boring, especially coupled with the 45 minute drive and the subsequence 30 minute struggle to find parking on the main campus. The MSW would be pointless when I finally got it in two years--why was I trying? I can't do direct care, which would be the point of it. And in order to get the MSW, I would have to do two direct care year long internships. How would I do that? Certainly, with some hard work, it could be done. But what would be the point?
And if I did do all that, what would happen to me in a job? I'm not a bad worker. In fact, I work my ass off. I am loyal. But I seem to be inherently incapable of taking bull from anyone. I talked it over with my shrink--how was it that I'd left two jobs in two years under bad circumstances? That in each job, supervisors were after my head but still saying that I was a good employee? That I was good at what I did?
He said he thinks it's my personality--that my inability to take crap and ability to learn and get things done can be a threat to the insecure, who then go after me, because they are threatened. And because I don't take crap, it blows up.
Then I either leave or get fired, whichever comes first.
So...even if I graduated, what would I have to do to hold down a typical social work job? Could I succeed even in the face of the mundane?
The answer is probably not. Things would go ducky for about a year, then I would get bored or would have made someone in the organization feel threatened. I'd either leave before the axe fell or allow myself to be axed.
You reach a point when you turn around and look, really look at your life and try and figure out "Where do I go from here?" And you see that you had started out on that path earlier and gotten distracted by shinier things, things that were more typical of typical careers, things that everyone else did to become normal functioning members of society. That mission to become part of the 9-5 fulltime job with benefits crew so that your life had a semblance of stability and reliability.
Apparently, I'm not meant for that. Maybe I needed these two and a half years to figure that out, to show myself. When I planned my trip just before graduation, I may have been planning out what I'm supposed to do for my work in my life. Capture things. Capture life. Either in the silver gelatin of photography or the graphite filaments of writing. Who the hell writes two novels during college, then leaves them? Then stops writing entirely, leaving it alone for a normal career?
I did.
Who drops a hobby that illustrated a gift that was only beginning to manifest itself?
I did.
How stupid can a person be? I can capture life.
Perhaps my life had to get itself under control first. My mother had left my father just after I graduated. She hasn't spoken to me in the last two and a half years. Despite her not being a real "mother" to me in childhood, it's still quite disconcerting to have someone who was a part of your life for 22 years be entirely gone. My sister recently told me that she heard from someone in town that Mom is moving to North Carolina. She also heard that Mom was pissed that she wasn't invited to the wedding.
You know, it's awfully hard to invite someone to a wedding when you don't have a phone number, address, or relationship at all.
Meanwhile, my Dad had come a long way. He had admitted to me that "He effed up" with me. He's taken his younger brother aside and given him a talk. See, my uncle has two little daughters and works all the time. My father said to him, "You have to take time off. This is the time to spend with your kids. Once it's gone, it's gone. I'd give anything to get it back and do everything over again, the right way. But I can't. You still have time."
Dad's gone through a lot. My mother fought him tooth and nail over who would get the house (mind, she left him for another man). Dad managed to finally win the case and get the house, get a mortgage to buy the house, and pay the bills. He's able to be a part of my life now. I mean, he isnt' a real father, the ones that you go to for advice or support. But, he's there now.
The whole family got rocked in the beginning of January. No, not because I got married. At the end of December, my grandfather had a stroke (he was 68). Then he continued to have a ton of mini-strokes and deteriorated quickly. He was delirious. He couldn't identify people or where he was or anything. It wasn't dementia--the onset was too fast. He was in pain, he was miserable.
My grandmother called me in the first week of January to tell me that I was still to get married, that my grandfather had wanted me to know that. And if he died before the wedding, he would be there watching.
My father, his sister, and his brothers all made it down to see my grandfather before he died. He had a moment of lucidity that afternoon, with all five of his children there.
He died that night.
My father and aunt and uncles took it hard. Very hard. I think becauase we all saw Grampa as this invincible guy, a guy you'd never think of as weak or able to die. We saw him as this strong, dry humored, very intelligent man. We're all a lot like him, sharing at the very least, his sense of humor. This caused my grandmother much trouble, as she does NOT have a dry sense of humor. She's whipsmart, but doesn't get the dry funny.
She called me, after Grampa died. We talked. We wer both troubled that Grampa had died, but at the same time, we were both relieved and at peace with it. Because Grampa is like us, we wouldn't want to live like that, trapped in a painful haze of not knowing who you are, where you are, or who any of the people around you are, of not being able to get up and move and do things. Not wanting to live when you weren't who you are. So, when Grampa died, we were relieved, because he finally had peace.
Where do I go from here? A path is staring me in the face, my own life. Other people's lives in the over three thousand pictures I've taken and posted in my online gallery since mid-2002. A path staring at me every time I pick up a camera, or pick up a pencil. Whenever I look through photographs I've just taken or read stories I've just written, it's right there. Life captured in its very moment of being.
I saw that, illustrated in just one picture I took during Bob and Dana's wedding gala. This is life.
And I gotta go see about it.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
Could you possibly be any more inspiring? It sounds like you just locked in another piece of the lifelong figuring-out-who-you-are puzzle. Go you. I know you'll keep us posted along the way.
Posts: 226 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Go...go...go...go forth and be fruitful.... Don't forget to bring us back t-shirts, preferably ones with an iron-on photo of yours. (I am seeing purple material with black and white photos.)
You've got to do what makes you happy. Sounds like you found your "thing". That is pretty rare, in my opinion. I still haven't found mine, but I keep searching. Thank you for giving me some inspiration to keep going.
Posts: 822 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
If you figure out what you want to do with your life while you're still in your 20's dear, I think you're doing okay.
I'm 33 in my second shot at college and still not completely sure.
You know I've always encouraged you to keep writing, I've no doubt that you could be successful at it, and the photography too. Or a combination of the two.
You can do it. Don't doubt that. Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
That was very well written, Jamie. Ihope it works out for you. Keep in mind that you can combign the free form photography you now do with some more forman shots, and make a good living with it.
Writing on the side is probably the way to go, because it doesn't have teh immedate payoff that being a professional photographer does, so the two things you love can mesh quite well, IMO.
Part of life's continuing journey is learning who you are and where to go. Some people used to jokingly ask me what I wanted to do when I grew up knowing full well I already had grown up.
But that's the beauty of it all--I got older in years, but my deisre and pursuit of magic, of inspiration and of taking that first step down a new path of excitement is no different today than when I was 14. And truthfully, I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up.
Now, you wrote a lot about your childhood and family. Your Dad told his brother (in reference to his children) that once it's gone it's gone.
How true. But that wasn't intended to be the end. The memories of my child are all I have now. I long to make new memories to hear and express the depth and breadth of my love and to know, in some, small, token, that it is reciprocated. But that's been taken from me not of my choice, but by life.
And that is why my heart and soul are confined to wander the soup kitchens of the world with those who hope for hope and cling to memories that are wonderful and painful.
To paraphrase and old saying---keep you friends close, and your family closer.
Good luck with your journey.
Posts: 65 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
You have a great way with describing life - in word as well as in picture.
I know what it's like, trying to find your life. I still don't know where I'm going with mine. The few plans that I had for my life from 3 or 5 years ago have kind of all gone awry. Life rarely happens how I want it to, which makes it hard for me to try to plan anything long-term. So, I end up making decisions more based on "right now" than on some nebulous future dream and I don't know if I'm getting anywhere. I admire your efforts to fit your "right now" and your "future" together. I hope you find what you're looking for.
I seem to remember, at some point in time, going through lots of your photos to find ones I thought would be great for a calendar. I still think they'd be great for a calendar....
Pictures of yours that represent your life (not pictures of your life, but pictures that represent it, taken by you, for you). Pictures of its ups and downs, its illnesses and its underlieing health.
In your words.
It would be remarkable.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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A calendar would be awesome. That would be reason for me to actually flip the page for the next month.
Posts: 1056 | Registered: Mar 2002
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I look at you and see the strengths and potentials. I wish I could say that there won't be any pain, but I think the reality is more like that there wont be anything you can't handle.
And the cool thing is that you'll very likely take us all along with you in some way or another.
I'm looking forward to experiencing the adventure in whatever media you choose to share it.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
I can just tell you from my personal experience that being a doormat can also be a liability in organizational behavior doo-dahs. There's always that mysterious balance. It's almost as if anything that makes you significantly unlike other people causes them to need to pick on you (you meaning me).
And, while I don't ever forget the stuff that happened before I learned about the OCD, knowing about it has really changed my outlook. I mean, before that I knew I had issues but I didn't have a very good handle on what the problem actually was. I don't know if you see that same opportunity in your life. More notably, situations that were strongly influenced by my illness were still on my resume.
Like others have mentioned, I would encourage you in continuing your writing and photography (I'm one to talk, ha ha.) But some avenue of self-expression is pretty critical to my sanity, even if it is not high art.
Posts: 2010 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I'd buy that t-shirt. Especially if it had a photo she took on it.
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