To despair and back
So I did what any nerd would do: I bought a book. Though I've never really read self-help stuff, for me How We Decide was exactly that. Jonah Lehrer is a writer who studies neuroscience and psychology. Until last week, he had a blog called Frontal Cortex at Wired magazine, but just moved it to The New Yorker. The book presents a lot of examples of how people respond in different situations and what the brain actually does when presented with choices. What I learned was that once people get past just a few factors, the choices they make become far more difficult and are less likely to be the best decision. Overthinking often leads people to choose an option they will be less happy with or that's not worth the grief of the decision-making process. As a scientist tells him in the book, "The secret to happiness is not wasting time on irrelevant decisions." It was a damn revelation to me. Essentially what I came away with was that, although of course you should still be thorough with the big decisions, it's usually best to focus on the most important factors when making a choice, and then go with what feels right based on that. For me, what that usually means is thinking Is this going to have a large impact on my life? Is it worth being anxious over for the next 10 minutes? Almost always, the answer is no.
For the last few weeks I've been looking for jobs. In truth, I started a bit before I graduated, but now that I'm officially unemployed and broke, I've ramped up my efforts. Part of that entails stopping to ask if a job is worth applying to. For instance, there are certain jobs I've decided not to apply to: the online learning editor in Louisville (I'd be doing work I've done before and hated which outweighs the potential benefit of being in a city I like), or a couple of non-profit jobs I saw in L.A. (blech) and Largo (hot hot). I'd be happy to be doing any of these things for a few months, but when I consider having to pack and move, I'd rather not go anywhere or do anything that I can't imagine doing or being for a while. The flip side of that is trying not to see myself in places before I hear back from people. So the question I try to ask myself now is, Would this job be worth spending two hours writing a cover letter and compiling appropriate writing samples for? If the answer is yes, I do it. My mantra is apply, apply, apply. Truthfully, it's depressing as hell. I'm on the brink of despair at least once a week. Friday I found out that the tutoring job I was supposed to do this summer was no longer an option: the kid's soon-to-be high school English teacher offered to tutor him, and they thought that made more sense. So my one small prospect of income is gone. But now, on Sunday, I can say that my resolve is not.
If I wanted to, I could just be living on student loan money right now and not worrying about it, but I chose to use the summertime to stress about finding a job in the hopes that I wouldn't have to do it again come fall. I have too much time on my hands not to look for a way to occupy it for the summer; I figure I might as well try to find a permanent way to occupy myself rather than a temporary one. Articulating exactly why I feel I need to go now has been a challenge, but what I've come to is this: it's been five years since I decided I wanted to do work that had a positive impact on other people, and three years since I realized I wanted to do that through teaching. Although I know it would be a good experience, staying and continuing to teach at Vandy feels lateral to me; I'm ready to move forward.
(photo by Kotama Bouabane)