mischief-making

"But, dear aunt," Isabel broke out, "I have no one, no one to advise me!"

"Then count yourself fortunate," Mrs. Touchett implacably replied, presenting to her niece the blank aspect of a sphinx. "Advice is another term for mischief-making, and anyone who asks for it deserves the consequences. One cannot be told how to live, my girl—and one shouldn't wish to be."

—John Banville, Mrs. Osmond

sincere questions

1. Why is it illegal for me to sell my kidney but totally cool for me to make a small fortune "donating" my eggs? Or renting my uterus? (Of course, now that I am 33 my eggs and uterus are probably not as valuable as they once were, but I'm sure I could get something for them...even with my mediocre SAT scores!)

2. Why don't we eat more venison? I can't find it in any grocery store, despite the fact that it is really delicious and deer appear to be everywhere. Ordering meat online (from New Zealand, no less) seems unnecessary when the actual animal I want to eat is all over my neighborhood.  Maybe it's time to break out the bow and arrow?

3. Why is Andrew Sullivan the only person who seems to make any sense these days?

4. Why do we celebrate birthdays? Mine is tomorrow, and taking joy in my advancing decrepitude seems unnatural. And it always has: I've felt birthday ennui for as long as I can remember. I guess the presents are nice? Meh. 

ch-ch-changes

Three weeks ago, I started a new job. In brief: it's a good job, and I'm happy to have it. I'm also happy to report that finding a second job out of grad school was a lot easier than finding the first one.

As I was going through the process of changing jobs last month, I realized that I've never done it before. I've left jobs, but I've never gone straight from one job to another. The last job I quit because I wanted to travel for three months. And like any insane 24-year-old I did it just as the global economy was collapsing. Suffice it to say: I didn't work for a good long while after that.

Let me be clear: I have no regrets! I feel honored that at the ripe old age of almost-33 I am just now changing jobs like a real adult employed person who has a retirement account and an FSA. I don't know if this job history does me much credit, but I have no desire to trade all that time I spent unemployed or under-employed for any type of cash equivalent. I went a lot of interesting places and read a lot of good books during that period! It was worth whatever it cost me.

Anyway, if the process of changing jobs has taught me anything, it's that I'm not very important. I definitely knew this, intellectually, but the experience of leaving a job with various projects unfinished, and starting a new one where you know nothing, is humbling. You realize that nothing you were working on was that crucial, and that nothing you've been hired to do couldn't be done by someone else. In fact, whatever you've been hired to do could be done a lot more efficiently by anyone who has worked at your organization longer than you, because you can't even find the bathroom key. In other words: I feel like a superfluous idiot.

This feeling is useful, if only because it's accurate. I could very easily have remained at my old job, or I could have taken a different new job, and at the end of the day it doesn't matter all that much to anyone except me. And working on a new project, with new people, at a new organization means that I have very little idea what's happening, and am therefore kind of an idiot. And I am here to tell you that feeling like a superfluous idiot is kind of exciting. It may very well be the antithesis of boredom.