In Erfurt, Germany, while doing an internship at a state parliament in Thuringia, I started asking, “Was braucht die Welt?” - What does the world need? My desire to study political science had been fueled by a youthful idealism and a naive exuberance. But it left me feeling empty...spent. The internship was a farce. I wandered in and out of the parliament building and into various ministries where I interviewed the men and women who made up the government. I didn’t know what I was doing there. I didn’t know where I was going. So I asked, “Was braucht die Welt?” over and over again in an effort to lay claim to a direction. I was determined not to make a frivolous choice. I thought by asking those around me, the adults, the grown-ups, I was being efficient. I was considering law school. But did the world need more lawyers?
After pondering my query for a minute, one man responded, “Captain of container ships?”
“Really?” I said, slightly incredulous. Sitting there, in my long black pants and spiffy corduroy jacket, did I look like a future captain?
“Well, there’s a shortage.”
“Oh. Huh.”
It didn’t seem like a viable career choice for me. Not then. Not now. I chose architecture school. I emerged an artist, ill-equipped to deal with the rigors of a traditional architecture career. Digital space was deadening. I floundered. Others, looking in, saw my stagnation and made suggestions. They keep coming. It started with a letter from my uncle, whose low opinion of me led him to believe I should consider the sanitation industry and shovel shit out of port-o-potties. I was pretty sure that wasn’t how it worked anymore. I was pretty sure the process involved a large pipe or hose that sucked the contents out rather than a shovel. A friend of my mother’s said I should work for the telephone company. He had made a career out of it. He had a pension. It had been a good gig. I suspected, however, that the ‘telephone’ company was only a fraction of its former self, that it was now a patchwork of cellular networks vying for market share. Did he think I would be laying down wires in the ground, as he had done? Or would I be repairing fiber-optic cable networks? Or hocking cell phones at a Verizon store in a strip mall? People tend to suggest their own line of work, which strikes me as small-minded and unimaginative, indicative of a lack of empathy and supremely narcissistic.
My brother told me I should go into security. He is in security. The monotony, I thought. What qualified me for this line of work? I’ve broken the law and gotten caught. He said they don’t check those things if you go into management. “What a mismanaged industry,” I thought to myself. What made him think I would enjoy monitoring people’s movements? Or patrolling the inner sanctums of some building in the off hours? Would I carry a gun? Or a large flash light? Would I shine it down the hallway when I heard a strange noise? Would I have to hit someone over the head with it?
“Where the fuck does this guy get off telling you to go into security,” said a friend, when I told him of my brother’s suggestion. He followed up with a number, the number he thought might be my IQ. “What the fuck.” My father did not suggest I go into nursing, but he is a nurse. He stops life from leaving the body. I could never do it. I don’t have enough respect for life. I don’t have enough respect for myself.
When I made a move to the West Coast, I started looking for jobs. At first, I cast a wide net. If people asked what I was looking for, I told them something adjacent to the creative world at the intersection of art and culture.
“Are you interested in accounting?”
“So...marketing?”
Why did they keep missing the mark? I thought. How daft were these people? When I got an offer for a job at Pottery Barn Kids, I declined. The title of the position was Designer, but it really meant sales, with an impossible metric of $600 an hour. I wasn’t interested in schilling shit for a multi-million dollar business, or recommending the latest shade of beige as a wall color for some young mother’s nursery, or suggesting they spell out their child’s name with giant, ornamental letters, baby blue for a boy, pink for a girl. When I described the position to someone they said, “So, it’s a little bit like you’re a whore.”
“Exactly,” I responded.
“You have the wrong attitude,” said a friend of a friend when I told them I’d rather do nothing than do that, I’d be doing more harm than good, populating the world with bad taste. It turned out I had the same attitude as a cousin of theirs, a perpetually unemployed, possibly schizophrenic, sometime meth addict. And, sitting there in the hot tub, the water swirling around me, I remembered something I will never forget. “Some people,” said a professor once, during a seminar, “Go up,” and his fingers flitted toward the ceiling. “And some...” his fingers made a downward, trickling motion, like he was stroking the air, “Don’t.” It turns out, the world doesn’t need me at all.
