Is This Thing On? by annie newman

Good--Now You Know How We Felt

"Pride, in short, begets perseverance. All of which may explain why, when the repo man is at the door, people so often remind themselves that they still have their (pride), and that it’s worth something. Because they do, and because it is.

However much pride may go before a fall, it may be far more useful after one." 

--from "When All You Have Left is Your Pride" by Benedict Carey in today's Times

We have never yet figured out why it's so hard for us to hold a job.

True, a lifelong lack of self-esteem has sent us to ever-sillier and less-consequential jobs, and we tend to question authority in completely inappropriate ways. That's a bad combination. We're not proud of it and we don't think it means that we're smart. We think it might mean that we have a hard time distinguishing appropriate behavior and regular social cues. 

True also that many people find us entitled and arrogant. Hmm. We think some of these people came to work needing to find something like that.

We're trying to tell you that we don't think we're too good for work, and we're not ashamed of hard work, and, even as we wrote that sentence above about "silly" work, we're not really putting anything down. We spent one very pleasant summer handling phone orders for the 'wichcraft chain of sandwich shops, and, in addition to bringing us about as close to Tom Collicchio as we ever hope to be, it was a lot of fun and we got to eat a great sandwich every day. 

It wasn't silly at all, except some fashionistas' need to know that there is not one single tiny atom of fat in their fat-free lattes is a little silly. Each to his or her own.

However, as more and more people lose their jobs and try to arrange their lives around a routine that either isn't working (like pretending they're still employed) or won't be working for quite a long time (like looking for a new job), we find that we have a lot of sympathy for these newly-unemployed. It is very difficult to give yourself permission to be unemployed, but you're going to have to do it.

If you don't, even if you do get a new job as soon as you can, you're going to have bad memories about this time in your life. You might hang on too closely to your next job, or you might take the first thing that comes up, or the thing that seems steadiest, instead of the job that's right.

Attitude is crucial. (So is cutting down on your extraneous expenses and concentrating on the things that count, but you'll find other blogs to tell you how to do that). If you look on your time of unemployment as a period of failure, you'll always feel (at least a little) like a failure.

Try to remember that you are still yourself, and that you existed before this job and you are still existing after it.

Our parents lived and worked in a world where you only got fired for embezzlement or trying to kill the boss. (In some advertising agencies, you could only get fired for doing both at the same time). Whenever we got fired--we've already admitted it was more than the average working jane--they felt it as a judgement on themselves.

Our own generation has moved jobs and 401k's frequently enough, has changed careers one time or more and have come to believe that work serves life (instead of the other way around, which came to its reducto ad absurdum in the crash of '87.) Still, we went though enough business-card mixers in which your next paycheck, promotion or sex act could depend crucially on your job title. A lot of us still think we are our job and nothing more.

The big challenge of this new economy, outside of keeping food on the table and the kids in school, is going to be keeping our sense of self, our identity as individuals, even though it is unsubstantiated by paycheck or perks.

It's going to be difficult, but we've found, from long experience, that it is possible.

After Inauguration, No More Laffs? A Re-Mix

After we posted this a few days ago, we realized that it could have been improved in so many ways, from using the correct font, to cleaning up the spelling errors, to uh, actually being funny. So we mixed it up a bit and this entry is now something like a whole new entry. Really. 

Some people--the New York Times in particular--are a little concerned about what happens after George W. Bush goes home.

No, not the eternal question of Will he really leave the White House? What guarantee do we have? Or even Has anyone even told Dick Cheney about this?

The big worry is, what will we laugh at now?

For as many years as anyone's been counting, Presidents have been funny. 

Maybe it started with Vaughn Meader and the JFK comedy album. Lots of people don't remember this deeply funny tribute to a man who was inaugurated with, if possible, even more idealistic hope than President Obama, but it rocks. Check it out at YouTube. 

We have to thank our friend La Skolnique for this reference. And also for the joke, made when she was 3 years old, that goes like this:

La Skolnique's Dad, Le Pere Skolnique: What little girl has the best Daddy in the whole world?

La S.: Caroline Kennedy!

LBJ was funny because he came from Texas.  And his wife was named Lady Bird.  And he showed his appendectomy scar to reporters. So that might have been more "horrifying" than "funny", but at least it brought the man down to earth. Did it ever.

Richard Nixon was funny for the same reason that watching a cat trap a mouse is funny.  The cat takes itself so damn seriously. The mouse is blithe, unconcerned. Okay, the "kill" is not so funny, and neither was Watergate. But everything before and after was pretty cool.

Gerald Ford? We're still collapsing in mirth. The falling down. The dumbness. The pardon.

And Jimmy Carter was from the south. Always funny. He also had extremely humorous teeth. We'll see how funny teeth can be if Joe Biden does anything to attract attention to himself.

Reagan...even his best pals made fun of Reagan, and he joined in, because he was a sociable and humorous man. (You pretty much had to be, to get along with Jack Warner back in the day). Of course the opposition made fun of him too. Everyone was pretty happy, except the people who were dying of AIDS.

Poppy Bush was preppy and his wife looked like a human with Mad Cow disease.   

Now, with the Clintons you also got a two for one. Because even if you saw Hilary as an important trailblazer, there were still her hairstyles. And Bubba? Unlike FDR and JFK, WJC was dumb enough to to get involved with the girl under the desk. FDR just flirted with them. JFK didn't know their last names.

And then there was W. Don't make us talk about that.

Now we have Barack Obama, about whom no one can speak without getting a little verklempt. And even when those lumps in the throat go away...which they have to, someday, right?...he's just cool and competent and intelligent and strong and sweet and wonderful and has a terrifically good build.

So, no, not much funny. Not even from the Chicago in-laws who, back in the seventies, probably would have had a Norman Lear sitcom of their own.

But here's something I figured out. And JC, if you're reading this, you can have it free for nuthin'.

 

We're not saying the resemblance is a bad thing. But it certainly does exist.

Who We Are

In another interview, Carlin said that his early aspirations for mainstream success had blinded him to the original outlaw within himself — the kid who’d been ejected from summer camp, the high-school dropout, the Air Force demotee. “I’ve spent the first 45 years of my life trying to figure out who I am,” he said.--from the New York Times, 12/28/2008

Who am I anyway? Am I my resume?--A Chorus Line, 1975

Buddy, meet an original outlaw. Some people say we are so bad, we actually don't deserve to be an MSW.

An MSW is a social worker who has a Master's degree in Social Work. The other kinds of social workers are BSWs and those with an Associate's or two-year degree, AAs.

Generally speaking, an MSW will be your therapist, while a BSW will be your case manager. An AA might be your case manager or your case worker. (The lady to the left, Our Miss Plotnick, was probably a School Social Worker, which is something else again. You can see it in her eyes.)

It is one of the eccentricities of social work education that your case worker or case manager might also have done their school work in Botany, Physics or General Studies. Don't worry. They're just as good as the degreed people. Because Social Work is as easily learned in the field as it is in the classroom.

(Or not. This is an ongoing debate, rendered no clearer by a group of New York state laws, passed in 2004, which specify exactly the education, field work, licensing and certification necessary to the different levels of a social worker's career.)

Anyway, the MSW (who must take a licensing exam in order to be employable, thus becoming an LMSW) in any office will probably be the boss. Also, an overwhelming majority of MSWs wish to become therapists, and you can't do that on a BSW alone. If you wish to hang out a shingle and operate on your own, without supervision, you need to undergo a three year process and take another examination, after which you will be an LCSW.

The kicker, as most people will tell you, is that LCSWs, especially those who do not work in an urban area, might possibly earn $50,000 if they are lucky and know how to market themselves. Very few earn more than that--at least not on one job alone. (The LMSW to our right obviously has private resources.)

Teachers become millionaires quicker than social workers do. A get-rich-quick scheme this is not.

We have a BA in English, earned around 1980 with no excess of perspiration, plus about twenty years writing, editing, and whatever in various advertising, publishing and marketing venues. About six years ago we decided that we might be able to help with a few problems we had seen around town, and we eventually enrolled in Adelphi University's MSW program.

But then ((cue Debbie Downer music)) this fall we ran out of money and time and had to leave our studies without graduating. And, what was that other thing, find a job.

In order to do this, we have to write a resume, something which we have hated ever since we wrote our first one in 1972 (we were 14 and wanted an after-school job) and realized that, if our mother wouldn't give us a recommendation, it was unlikely that anyone else would. ("I just don't know how you'll behave in a business setting," said Mom, an extremely honest woman, although sadly unimaginative.)

That brings us to the big WHO ARE WE question, and question it is.

WHO ARE WE? The first thing we knew about ourself was that we loved to write, we sometimes wrote well, and we hated to be bossed around. We also knew we were cute--not generally to boys our own age, but to grown men and sometimes women. 

We parlayed these talents into a string of entry-level editorial jobs in which we spent most of our time writing parodies of popular culture and evading responsibility. These days we could make a handsome living at that, but in the early 1980's grownups still ruled the earth and we had to wear big floppy bows on our blouses and chirp "Yes, sir!" even to those bosses who were driven wild nightly by our elegant thighs.  (You can't really see our thighs here, but it is indeed a pic of ourself when we were young and, apparently, our dates awarded extra-credit points for imaginative use of lip gloss.)

It was a schizotypal kind of world, although we didn't know what that word meant until we went to MSW school.

Eventually we realized that neither our writing talent nor our thighs were going to last forever, and we married someone or other and had our Beautiful Daughter, of whom you will hear more. Then we divorced. Then we went back to the whole writer-editor thing, although at our age we probably should have moved up to the managerial ranks, and we never did.

After the divorce we had very little money, so we also worked retail and clerical and phone pits and whatever. Our resume grew no easier to write, because it didn't show who we were.

It showed that we had to earn a living. It showed that we weren't too proud to do what we had to do. It also showed that we had no particular career track or professional training.

Something tells us that even in the nonprofit world, this resume is not going to be any more impressive with a disconnected MSW training than it was before.

And that's our problem. Original Outlaw is only a resume plus if you happen to be a stand-up comic. (And hey, Seinfeld got pretty big without it.) 

So who are we? We are NOT our resume, although that's what we'll be flying in on, in our attempt to gain useful employment. We are not an MSW. And, although we've done everything we can to hone our writing skills, our thighs are no longer combat-ready.

Brother, can you spare a dime?

((This is our actual brother).