I’m not the best at decision making. If you head to the supermarket by my apartment, chances are that you will find me staring slack-jawed in the cereal aisle, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of options to shove in my maw. The more "adult" the decision, the more I will agonize over it, and I’m not talking about the idea of disrobing with a stranger, though that would get an equal amount of deliberation. I mean that the more responsibility and commitment that come with the decision, the harder it is for me to pull the trigger. Which is why, after receiving a call from my first yoga instructor inviting me to a two-hundred hour summer intensive teacher training program, yes and no ran headlong into each other in my throat and I’ve been losing sleep ever since.
During this recession, we’ve seen the number of underemployed people rise to staggering numbers, up to 20.3% of the workforce. Many people have taken the opportunity to spend their time collecting unemployment and bettering themselves. Personally I know of a former hedge fund manager who is now a personal trainer, a restaurant manager who became a sous chef, and an administrative assistant who got certified to teach pilates. Self-employment is rising at about 4.5% annually. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the economic shitstorm has led to a new enlightenment, but it’s certainly flooded the market with a glut of Jacks of all trades, like freelance writers and yoga instructors. I’ve written about my somewhat tumultuous love affair with yoga before. It isn’t a stretch to say that since the financial implosion, yoga teacher trainings are carpeted with the mats of former office staff who wish to become zen and make a buck helping others. In 2004 alone, Americans dished out $2.95 billion on yoga classes and related apparel, equipment, and retreats. People who can use money as toilet paper – Steve Jobs, Christy Turlington, Madonna, Sting, and the like – are avid yogis. I can’t imagine the hourly rate of their gurus.
So what is my truth? To pursue a side career in yoga while still copywriting? Or to say the Sanskrit word for no and opt for a July full of late nights and lazy days? (As lazy as you can get hustling for clients from a hammock.)
My mother always used to advise me to have "something to fall back on." Usually she used this term when pressuring me to apply to law school, or to keep my job as a legal assistant. Her theory was that if writing didn’t work out, I needed to have something to make money. Mind you, this was well in advance of me writing for a living, back when it was just a pipe dream that I yammered about incessantly. I followed her advice a little too judiciously, attending bartending school, obtaining a food handling certification, even getting accepted into grad school but refusing to go. Twice. I wonder how much my own fear and doubts have inspired me to suffer through different jobs in the past, supposed "safe bets" that could potentially insure more money, a stable future, something to do in case what I truly want to do doesn’t work out. Sure, these decisions were financially motivated in part. But I think that self-worth also played a role. I liked "being" a legal assistant. I liked the impression that it gave.
We live in a society where what we do is who we are. My friends are lawyers, personal assistants, hedge fund managers, graphic designers. They have tiny scraps of paper with their names and titles emblazoned on them that they hand out to every new person they meet. They talk about work as though it is the skeleton for their whole life. And, certainly, a few of my friends in question have always been passionate about the paths they’ve chosen, but more often than not, their jobs are just a means to an end, something that they fell into. Over time, their job has become part-and-parcel with their identity, and not the other way around. These days, if you have a job, you’re holding onto it for dear life. It’s no wonder that being an employee – any kind of employee – has become synonymous with having a modicum of success, adulthood, self-sufficiency. I’ve always written, therefore doing it for a living isn’t really more than just being myself and hoping to make a buck off of it. It isn’t an impressive title, and it surely doesn’t come with a fancy benefits package. It won’t impress anyone into sleeping with me, or garner envy at my high-school reunion. Perhaps being a copywriting yoga teacher would be a more lucrative and awe-inspiring title to put after my sans-serif moniker. It would at least theoretically require divorcing myself entirely from this way of thinking and my ego. But, really, is it more that I require making money off of what I love? Can’t I just be content to enjoy a hobby, or is it impossible for me to embrace something without the option of monetizing it? It might be a horrible thing to admit about myself, but until I can make a so-called living, part of me doesn’t believe that I deserve to be happy, even for an hour when I’m stretching myself to the point of nearly being able to give myself cunnilingus.
When presented with "quick fixes" for the financial quagmire I’m in, I have to look at my motivation before anything else. It’s important to ask myself why I would pursue certain things, and to prioritize what I want. I’m still applying for part-time administrative jobs. Why? Because they are easy and would give me a little money to throw towards certain things like a functioning vacuum and my phone bill, while still affording me time to write. I peek around at odd jobs like dominatrix gigs because I think they would give me some fuel for the writing fire, while also potentially assuaging the aforementioned vacuum issue. Why would I become a yoga teacher? Because it feels like something more stable than banking entirely on my desire to write for a living? Is it? Moreover, I think it’s important to question if you really should apply for a particular job before you do so. There’s a clerk at Duane Reade who makes it clear that she’s rather be undergoing a urinary catheterization than bagging my body lotion. Everything about her radiates job hate. Meanwhile, there’s a tall drink of water who works at my favorite coffee shop who is all sunshine and giggles as he steams the milk and serves the scones. (He might be high. But he also seems to be in a really good mood while on the clock.)
If I were to give up a month of my summer to become yet another cog in the wheel of the yoga business, would it be worth it? Maybe, if I made some cash. But the truth is, I would have to drop a chunk of change on even obtaining this potential certification, without any knowledge of when, where, or if I will be hired. Furthermore, I suck at instruction and I am a little like Howie Mandel when it comes to touching strangers. The idea of having to lay my palms on top of someone’s sweaty feet, or needing to wrap my arms around a furry man with a few spare tires in order to adjust his downward aching dog, is enough to make me need an antiemetic. Ultimately, I don’t think I would be of service to my students. Just because I enjoy something and like to talk about it a lot doesn’t mean that I’d be a prime candidate to coach a human being from a supine position into a handstand.
The allure of pursuing a different career makes sense if your pockets are more empty than a bottle of vodka around a Lohan. There’s the hope that the new endeavor will be more fruitful than your current situation. There’s the rush of adrenaline and quasi-ambition that comes when you take on a new project. There’s also that sexy feeling of having an additional, unchallenged title that can be woven into conversation or printed on business cards. Novelty is fleeting, however. Perhaps it’s generational, but I think the most zen thing I can do is continue to write. If I opt out of om-ing my summer away, I can dedicate more time to writing my book proposal, hustling for new Ministry of Imagery clients, and penning articles for sites and publications that could possibly net more exposure. And while that might not come with the squeaky-clean feeling of a fresh start and a new beginning, sometimes just continuing to struggle in the face of desperation is the most promising job opportunity of all.
UNRELATED TO ANYTHING: If you haven’t seen any press regarding Glenn and Henry Forever, you absolutely must take a look. Glenn Danzig and Henry Rollins as lovers in a comic book. How can it be bad?
