(Or, Trying To Explain That I Have No Career By Typical Societal Standards)
"So, uh, what do you do?"
The bearded man's eyes narrowed, piercing into my soul, as if he was on the brink of discovering a dark secret and cracking a huge case of criminal fraud. His cute 6-month old daughter rested quietly in his arms, also gazing at me, her head tilted to the side, also waiting for my answer. I started to sweat through my collar. I hadn't expected an interrogation at a summertime country wedding.
"Well, I was a teacher for three years... Mandarin. Oh and also a counselor for depressed kids. But before that I was doing some writing, which was after I moved back from China. I lived there for seven years and..."
He cut me off. "Oh, teaching English?"
"No," I quickly corrected him: in fact, not every white-skinned person in Asia teaches English, you know. I hate this assumption. "I was doing finance... Stock options. But not like stock trading, Wall Street stuff. There was some HR and customer service, too. Super low pay."
One eyebrow raised, his beady eyes looking more baffled by the second, he took pause. "OK, so you're a teacher," he said as he put one finger up to his lip, "but you did finance? What did you study?"
"Chinese history."
If a third hand had sprouted from my forehead and my eyes suddenly turned to pudding, it might have made more sense to him. His baby understood as much of this conversation as he did. Before his brain melted from confusion, I continued for this poor fool's sake.
"Anyway, so now I'm not teaching anymore. I just got a job as an assistant editor for this online music database that provides metadata to big companies. I'll be a writer and stuff."
"Metadata? OK. I guess that's cool. At least it's temporary, until you find something else," he said, flashing me some sympathetic eyebrow furrows. What else could an orthopedic surgeon offer to a low-wage humanities type?
"No way, this is a dream come true. I LOVE music." He cracked a pitiful smile.
Fortunately, his wife came over and exchanged a cold beer for the baby. "Hi honey, this is Neil," he said, quickly catching the eye of an old colleague. He scurried away, leaving his pediatrician wife.
"Nice to meet you," she said, extending her hand for a shake. "So what do you do?"
Ever since I could legally receive compensation for work, I have been employed. Save for a couple instances -- study abroad, volunteering, traveling -- I've been working for about two decades straight.
Growing up, I did not receive an allowance, an unusually cruel, yet fairly common, practice in old school immigrant Chinese families. To his credit, my father was very generous and spoiled me with books, puzzles, and assorted blocks and bricks to stimulate my natural creativity and imagination. But for the fun stuff -- action figures, video games, music -- I had to beg.
As many children of immigrants know, asking your parents for anything is a fearful process. You may take days, even weeks, concocting the best pitch, like an entrepreneur with a VC angel. Every word needed to be perfect (don't be flippant!), the flow had to have the perfect rhythm (start apologetic and pathetic, finish humbled and grateful), and it was imperative that the end result was a decision that shone your parent in a completely, utterly magnanimous light (as if this great gift was their idea in the first place).
"My son, you have proven yourself worthy and honorable. Your progress report had straight A's and you are on the honor roll. Other parents at church shower me with compliments for raising such an upstanding young man. You saved our neighbors from that terrible fire and you're on the verge of curing cancer. You may have one Ninja Turtle."
I knew better than to stray from the cheap and simple. Never get greedy, or you'd risk destroying the entire operation. If it wasn't my birthday or Christmas, one action figure was enough. One pack of Upper Deck basketball cards was the limit ("$5 for paper?!"). While my white friends were getting new bikes for C's on a report card, I was writing grants (in cursive!) for the shot at one G.I. Joe. I was not deprived at all, but my dad did not make it easy.
My final straw came in the late '80s. The original Nintendo was finally on sale for under $150. I had begged for months. "My friends already had Ataris! I've been patient! It's Japanese! We're all Asian!" I cried, pointing at the Sunday flyer. "Look, it's on sale!"
We drove up to Lechmere one evening after dinner and strolled into the store. Back then, there were game sections where kids could be abandoned while parents shopped and pretended there wasn't an arcade in the food court. Hordes of smelly pre-pubescent wannabe geeks and the pimply teens they admired, all congregated around the newest system, clamoring for a turn. I knew exactly where my father was headed. I almost pissed myself with excitement.
As he carried that black, red and grey box to the register, I thought to myself, my dad's alright. We'll have so much fun playing Mario and Duck Hunt at home. I beamed.
Once he paid that whopping amount (something like $300 today), he held that gorgeous box for his son -- lest I hurt my precious hands and be unable to use the controllers -- and we walked back to the car. He stopped a few paces outside the store and looked down at me.
"This is MY Nintendo," he began. Excuse me?
"Whenever you want to play it, you have to ask ME," he continued.
I looked like that foot surgeon from the wedding. "Hunh? What do you mean?" My neck started to get prickly from the fire surging within.
"I mean this is not yours. This is my Nintendo. But you can use it anytime, as long as you finish your homework."
There are certain situations from the pages of life that one might relate to this one. Losing a decisive battle at the last minute. Traveling to a favorite restaurant only to see it has gone out of business. Studying for days only to fail a huge test. Losing a substantial lead during a championship game. All of Alanis Morissette's "Ironic." Blue balls. I had no idea what the fuck was happening.
In hindsight, this was genius. While my chums spiraled into video game addiction that tanked their grades, I had to ask permission. I couldn't just switch on the TV and stomp some goombas. I had to ask first. But to an 8-year old who has just had the rug (and entire floor of the house) pulled out from under him, it was a vulgar display of power. I vowed to myself that very day: as soon as I could, I would get a job and make my own money. I could get my own goddamned Nintendo. And I would never have to ask for anything again.
I've had many jobs over the years and oddly enough -- and purely unintentional -- they've all been different. I've never had the same job twice. Most folks have a career, something they studied for, worked their asses off to build, and sacrificed much to climb the ranks. Of course there are other folks who do less and are content with working in coffee shops at forty. To each his own. I happen to like new things, unexpected challenges, and following my heart to new places. As with everything in my life, I'll try anything once. Work happens to be one of those things.
Over the years, I've been a lowly groundskeeping grunt, an underpaid cog in a larger custodial machine. Child labor, basically. I worked a register, I stocked shelves, I've seen the very worst of humanity: customers who come in a minute before closing and pay with coins and coupons. I held Gandalf's sword and taught children why Shelob is not possible, so stop having nightmares. I've been an IT guy. A tutor. I sorted dongles. DONGLES lol. I've been a drug dealer... by which I mean I worked in a pharmacy. I built libraries in rural China when I wasn't strapped to my desk and a telephone. I was a restaurant critic. I was a teacher, counselor, and professor.
Over three decades in and I'm still not sure what the rest of life holds for me.
So what do I do? I do whatever my gut tells me.
[Editor's note: this will be the first in a series of pieces about the different jobs I've had over the years. After the past few frustrating months -- the longest I've ever spent searching for a job -- I thought it would be fun to go through the memory banks and think about all the silly things I've done while not crafting a responsible adult career. As always, it's for writing exercise, personal posterity and for entertaining a very small, supportive audience. Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed living it.]
"So, uh, what do you do?"
The bearded man's eyes narrowed, piercing into my soul, as if he was on the brink of discovering a dark secret and cracking a huge case of criminal fraud. His cute 6-month old daughter rested quietly in his arms, also gazing at me, her head tilted to the side, also waiting for my answer. I started to sweat through my collar. I hadn't expected an interrogation at a summertime country wedding.
"Well, I was a teacher for three years... Mandarin. Oh and also a counselor for depressed kids. But before that I was doing some writing, which was after I moved back from China. I lived there for seven years and..."
He cut me off. "Oh, teaching English?"
"No," I quickly corrected him: in fact, not every white-skinned person in Asia teaches English, you know. I hate this assumption. "I was doing finance... Stock options. But not like stock trading, Wall Street stuff. There was some HR and customer service, too. Super low pay."
One eyebrow raised, his beady eyes looking more baffled by the second, he took pause. "OK, so you're a teacher," he said as he put one finger up to his lip, "but you did finance? What did you study?"
"Chinese history."
If a third hand had sprouted from my forehead and my eyes suddenly turned to pudding, it might have made more sense to him. His baby understood as much of this conversation as he did. Before his brain melted from confusion, I continued for this poor fool's sake.
"Anyway, so now I'm not teaching anymore. I just got a job as an assistant editor for this online music database that provides metadata to big companies. I'll be a writer and stuff."
"Metadata? OK. I guess that's cool. At least it's temporary, until you find something else," he said, flashing me some sympathetic eyebrow furrows. What else could an orthopedic surgeon offer to a low-wage humanities type?
"No way, this is a dream come true. I LOVE music." He cracked a pitiful smile.
Fortunately, his wife came over and exchanged a cold beer for the baby. "Hi honey, this is Neil," he said, quickly catching the eye of an old colleague. He scurried away, leaving his pediatrician wife.
"Nice to meet you," she said, extending her hand for a shake. "So what do you do?"
Ever since I could legally receive compensation for work, I have been employed. Save for a couple instances -- study abroad, volunteering, traveling -- I've been working for about two decades straight.
Growing up, I did not receive an allowance, an unusually cruel, yet fairly common, practice in old school immigrant Chinese families. To his credit, my father was very generous and spoiled me with books, puzzles, and assorted blocks and bricks to stimulate my natural creativity and imagination. But for the fun stuff -- action figures, video games, music -- I had to beg.
As many children of immigrants know, asking your parents for anything is a fearful process. You may take days, even weeks, concocting the best pitch, like an entrepreneur with a VC angel. Every word needed to be perfect (don't be flippant!), the flow had to have the perfect rhythm (start apologetic and pathetic, finish humbled and grateful), and it was imperative that the end result was a decision that shone your parent in a completely, utterly magnanimous light (as if this great gift was their idea in the first place).
"My son, you have proven yourself worthy and honorable. Your progress report had straight A's and you are on the honor roll. Other parents at church shower me with compliments for raising such an upstanding young man. You saved our neighbors from that terrible fire and you're on the verge of curing cancer. You may have one Ninja Turtle."
I knew better than to stray from the cheap and simple. Never get greedy, or you'd risk destroying the entire operation. If it wasn't my birthday or Christmas, one action figure was enough. One pack of Upper Deck basketball cards was the limit ("$5 for paper?!"). While my white friends were getting new bikes for C's on a report card, I was writing grants (in cursive!) for the shot at one G.I. Joe. I was not deprived at all, but my dad did not make it easy.
My final straw came in the late '80s. The original Nintendo was finally on sale for under $150. I had begged for months. "My friends already had Ataris! I've been patient! It's Japanese! We're all Asian!" I cried, pointing at the Sunday flyer. "Look, it's on sale!"
SALE
The most magical of words in any Asian household
(beside "Harvard" or "doctor")
The most magical of words in any Asian household
(beside "Harvard" or "doctor")
We drove up to Lechmere one evening after dinner and strolled into the store. Back then, there were game sections where kids could be abandoned while parents shopped and pretended there wasn't an arcade in the food court. Hordes of smelly pre-pubescent wannabe geeks and the pimply teens they admired, all congregated around the newest system, clamoring for a turn. I knew exactly where my father was headed. I almost pissed myself with excitement.
As he carried that black, red and grey box to the register, I thought to myself, my dad's alright. We'll have so much fun playing Mario and Duck Hunt at home. I beamed.
Once he paid that whopping amount (something like $300 today), he held that gorgeous box for his son -- lest I hurt my precious hands and be unable to use the controllers -- and we walked back to the car. He stopped a few paces outside the store and looked down at me.
"This is MY Nintendo," he began. Excuse me?
"Whenever you want to play it, you have to ask ME," he continued.
I looked like that foot surgeon from the wedding. "Hunh? What do you mean?" My neck started to get prickly from the fire surging within.
"I mean this is not yours. This is my Nintendo. But you can use it anytime, as long as you finish your homework."
There are certain situations from the pages of life that one might relate to this one. Losing a decisive battle at the last minute. Traveling to a favorite restaurant only to see it has gone out of business. Studying for days only to fail a huge test. Losing a substantial lead during a championship game. All of Alanis Morissette's "Ironic." Blue balls. I had no idea what the fuck was happening.
In hindsight, this was genius. While my chums spiraled into video game addiction that tanked their grades, I had to ask permission. I couldn't just switch on the TV and stomp some goombas. I had to ask first. But to an 8-year old who has just had the rug (and entire floor of the house) pulled out from under him, it was a vulgar display of power. I vowed to myself that very day: as soon as I could, I would get a job and make my own money. I could get my own goddamned Nintendo. And I would never have to ask for anything again.
I've had many jobs over the years and oddly enough -- and purely unintentional -- they've all been different. I've never had the same job twice. Most folks have a career, something they studied for, worked their asses off to build, and sacrificed much to climb the ranks. Of course there are other folks who do less and are content with working in coffee shops at forty. To each his own. I happen to like new things, unexpected challenges, and following my heart to new places. As with everything in my life, I'll try anything once. Work happens to be one of those things.
Over the years, I've been a lowly groundskeeping grunt, an underpaid cog in a larger custodial machine. Child labor, basically. I worked a register, I stocked shelves, I've seen the very worst of humanity: customers who come in a minute before closing and pay with coins and coupons. I held Gandalf's sword and taught children why Shelob is not possible, so stop having nightmares. I've been an IT guy. A tutor. I sorted dongles. DONGLES lol. I've been a drug dealer... by which I mean I worked in a pharmacy. I built libraries in rural China when I wasn't strapped to my desk and a telephone. I was a restaurant critic. I was a teacher, counselor, and professor.
Over three decades in and I'm still not sure what the rest of life holds for me.
So what do I do? I do whatever my gut tells me.
[Editor's note: this will be the first in a series of pieces about the different jobs I've had over the years. After the past few frustrating months -- the longest I've ever spent searching for a job -- I thought it would be fun to go through the memory banks and think about all the silly things I've done while not crafting a responsible adult career. As always, it's for writing exercise, personal posterity and for entertaining a very small, supportive audience. Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed living it.]
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