Fear and the $5 gift card

I have been carrying this Starbucks gift card around since 2007.

Believe it.

Seven years ago I was laid off from my job at the literary agency. I was feeling very broke so I'd answered some survey just to get this gift card. So that even when I had no spending money to speak of, I'd still be able to treat myself to a super-deluxe-grande-latte-frappuccino-almond-hot-chocolate-with-gold-dust-and-hopefully-organic-whipped-cream-on-top.

This little gift card was a kind of security blanket, there to help me feel less poor.

After 5 months of job searching, just when the unemployment benefits were about to run out, I found a full-time writing job in February 2008.

Did I celebrate by spending my $5 gift card?

No. I hung onto it. Because you never know.

Fast-forward 5 years.

Once again, I'm a dislocated worker.

I make the brilliant decision to spend two months in London. No sarcasm! I have no regrets about that decision. While in London, I drank my share of comforting caffeine concoctions. I also ate a lot of desserts with intriguing names like "Banbury Tart" and "Victoria Sponge."

But did I use my $5 Starbucks gift card in London? Or when I got back to Minneapolis? Or during any of the subsequent 7 months of joblessness?

NO.

I have to ask: What's going on here?

True, I am not a fan of Starbucks, or of super-deluxe-grande-lattes-frappuccinos-almond-hot-chocolates-with-gold-dust-and-hopefully-organic-whipped-cream-on-top. Let that be said.

But I really think it goes deeper than that for me, and maybe for you.

I think it is about telling ourselves that we don't have enough, and we can't get enough, and we ourselves aren't enough.

And maybe about how a mean part of us whispers that we don't deserve the good things that come our way, only the bad ones. Or that we have offended the universe by spending our severance package on a trip to Europe instead of saving it for a month of rainy days, or that any good thing might disappear at any second so we'd damn well better hold on to it with the grip of death or suffer the consequences.

Ursula Le Guin wrote,“Fire and fear, good servants, bad lords.”

Wise woman.

I start a new full-time job next week. It sounds awesome. And do you know how I'm going to throw off the shackles of fear and lack and celebrate?

That's right. I'm gonna use up every penny of this G.D. $5 Starbucks gift card.

The well-rounded jobseeker

Flesh and Stone,* Mark Roland 

When I was a young lass, still developing a passion for dead leaves, I made a list of accomplishments I wanted to acquire by the time I grew up. I still have it, somewhere--but near as I can remember, they were:

Play the piano (Beth March, Little Women).

Make skilled but strange drawings that reflect my original mind (Jane Eyre).

Experience a mystical friendship with a horse (Ken McLaughlin, My Friend Flicka, and Alec Ramsey, The Black Stallion, et al).**

Write sonnets. Sing like a thrush. Speak and read Latin. Live in a castle. Be handy with an embroidery needle and a calligraphy quill.

(Later, I mentally added to the list, "Learn to read tarot cards, speak Welsh, identify birds and bellydance with finger cymbals.")

Some of those things I learned how to do and others, I did not. But the larger goal was to be a well-rounded and educated person, in my own idiosyncratic, Renaissance Woman sort of way.

Transition, Mark Roland

College opened wide the doors to the humanities, and I fell in love. My hungry mind ate it up--seeing into the Zeitgeist of different eras and how this was reflected in art, architecture, music, poetry, literature, theater, history, politics, languages, discoveries, social movements and philosophy--both within a given period and between the periods themselves, plus across many cultures. Like an epic story, with dozens of seemingly disparate threads, which would suddenly resolve into a sudden, dazzling whole blazing with meaning; making sense of what you'd thought a shapeless mass of facts, a hopeless muddle.

Guardian, Mark Roland

Learning how to be a good and compassionate person, how to be present and kind to yourself, have a positive impact on your community (or even among your own family), how to love people as fully and as well as they deserve...learning to listen to the voice of your own inner guidance, so you can fulfill your unique purpose and do the work only you can do...this course of study is daily, lifelong and replete with worthy challenges.

Yet, the world of employment is so rarely aligned with the quest for fulfillment, meaning, personal integrity, challenges worthy of our mettle, or with using our full and unique array of talents.

It's like, World of Work isn't all that interested in Compleat Carmine. It wants a person to fit into its bullet-pointed, job-shaped space, rather than accommodating itself to a messy, actual-person-sized shape. With its many evaluations, requirements and inflexibilities, World of Work, ipso facto, can't help but be reductionist and sort of a dehumanizing jackass at times. As Robert A. Heinlein said, "Specialization is for insects."

Hence, job hunting? Thorny. Ambivalent. Would Rather Be Reading.

Incantation, Mark Roland

Nonetheless, there are new washer/dryers to be paid for and cat food to buy, so here is my wish list...my plea, incantation, prayer, affirmation, and callout.

Dear Multiverse (and Self),

Please help me to find a Carmine-shaped job where I can:

• Work with like-minded colleagues
• Be excited about the work I do every day
• See that what I do is having a direct positive impact on the world
• Be valued and accepted for who I am

Kind Regards,

Me

P.S.: Plus, lots of windows and at least one cat on the premises would be appreciated.

Threshold, Mark Roland

*I got this gorgeous print of an intaglio etching, part of Mark Roland's Enchanted Forest series, at the CONvergence Art Show last weekend.
**As I was digging for this list in the "treasure chest" where I keep old things I've drawn or written, I found a packet of horse drawings made on the backs of old spelling tests and mimeographed questionnaires (no scanner, or I'd share). All carefully dated, all documenting the height of my horse craziness. Awesome job, 11-year-old self! I hope girls still draw pictures of horses.