because my email inbox was more disorganized than an Italian airport (I’ve never been, that’s just the simile that came to mind, sorry to the Italians whose movies and culture I adore), I missed or ignored the notice from my webhosting service alerting me to an upcoming renewal charge. so yesterday my card was charged $360 for the next three years of webhosting. I could have disputed the charge with my credit card company, since I’m really trying to save money right now (more on that later). but I don’t really want to delete this blog. but I do need to find something to use it for consistently. and now that I’m out $360 for it, I feel pretty motivated to do that.
the details of all this are too onerous to get into here, but the short version is that the library I work for is more disorganized than an Italian airport. I have suspicions about impropriety with the budget, but only suspicions. administration has been less than forthright when we union representatives demand answers about how payroll funds are being allocated. the upshot is that they’ve shuffled around, collapsed, or disappeared positions in the organization to the point that everyone who works on the floors of our libraries knows we’re short staffed and can’t keep up operations. I am trying to lend my efforts to the union’s push for transparency in the hopes of correcting the poor work conditions that have resulted. but if you’ve ever worked against the forces of capital, you know it’s almost always a losing fight, if not immediately, then in the long run. when I learned the latest development in this wanton crusade against us, I wanted to quit. not quit rabble rousing, but quit the library all together. I don’t see this organization improving any time soon, if at all. and as much as I believe in libraries, as much as I want to be on the right side of this struggle eroding the final democratic institution left in America, I don’t want to make my name as a librarian. it’s a fine thing to fall back on, something to be proud of, but, as naturally as the work comes to me, I don’t feel it’s my “calling.”
these past few weeks, I’ve been home alone while my girlfriend was out of town. top of my priorities was watching as many movies as possible. I’ll post something about movies soon. but internally, my priority was clearing away the noise that’s built up in my head over the years to better hear what is in fact calling to me. because my mind had become more disorganized than an Italian airport. I built strategies that made looking at my phone less appealing–making the phone as “dumb” as possible. the removal of social media access caused flair ups in the addiction response that manifested as lurking subreddits I don’t care about, checking in on chatrooms I no longer participate in, and, most recently, cleaning up my email inbox. the irony is that all these habits, which aim at alleviating me of the burden to think and feel, brought me to years old emails I sent to people I care about but no longer speak to, or drafts of essays, stories, ideas that I never followed through on. try as we might, we can never escape ourselves.
what’s calling to me is a better version of myself who isn’t so afraid to make a go at being an actual artist, and not just someone who flatters himself by judging other harshly while never risking being so judged.
in La dolce vita, which I watched for the first time about a week ago, Steiner warns Marcello against following his example. Steiner lives a comfortable life of domesticity, with two children and his wife, and he and his friends fancy themselves the intelligentsia of Rome, an estimation it appears Marcello shares. but Steiner admits that he doesn’t have the goods; he laments that he’s “too serious to be an amateur, and too much an amateur to be a professional.” the stability of his bourgeois life precludes him from being overcome with the teeming bustle and drama of the cosmos, a prerequisite, Fellini seems to be suggesting, for the kind of passion that fuels the brightest creative minds. the ultimate fate of Steiner suggests what Fellini thought of such pseudointellectuals.
when Steiner said he’s too serious to be an amateur, and too much an amateur to be a professional, my own disembodied voice whispershouted in my ear: and so are you, asshole.
being ambitious is hard work. because the library I work for doesn’t care about my success as an employee, I’ve been seeking librarian positions elsewhere. but the process of applying for public sector jobs is grueling and slow. if I hear back from a library and they deemed my resume satisfactory, I have to take a test, then depending on where I’m ranked among test takers, I’m placed on an eligibility list that hiring committees refer to for anything that opens in the year or so after the creation of the list. and if I get hired and I want to be promoted to a new position a few years down the line, I have to do all that over again, after having dedicated myself to proving my competence for the position I held. none of this is appealing to me. it sounds like a whole lot of fucking work. but I can’t skate by on some low level position forever, both because the pays not good enough, and I’m not someone content to skate. I’ve long skated through life, and it’s not satisfying. so if I know I have to put hard work into something, I should put it into what I care about. which is writing.
another movie I watched is There Will Be Blood. in one of the film’s many famous scenes, Daniel Plainview tells someone that “I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed.” this time watching, I wondered how much Daniel’s Machiavellianism is an exaggeration of Paul Thomas Anderson’s own ambition. how ruthless must an artist to be to achieve greatness? posed that question, perhaps you would preach equanimity and grace, that worldly success is not worth sacrificing one’s humanity over. to which I say, “I drink your milkshake” before beating you to death with a bowling pin. spoiler alert or whatever.
saving money will come in handy in the event that I decide it’s not worth it to even do the bare minimum of work at my job, and that I need to skip town or bar back or do something else that would free up more time to really commit to what I’m meant to do: lay waste to the myriad mediocrities that make up the contemporary publishing industry.
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