Prodigies

[NOTE: It is December 12 as I type this, but I wrote the note to myself in June so I am going to back-date the post correspondingly.]

What do prodigies do?

All the elementary stuff is so easy for them that they never settle down; they never develop the discipline of a single craft; by the time they reach middle age they are forgotten and anonymous, eating the wrong things and drinking too much and there is nothing left of their talent.

Oh good! It’s great to know I count as a prodigy! Hey ... I heard somewhere that failure is freedom. Right?

Sure. We can go with that. Failure is freedom. So is homelessness. On that scale, have you considered there might be something to be said for slavery?

Isn’t it nice, though, to have been smart and capable once upon a time?

Sure. Isn’t it nice to have memories?

 

Visiting Debbie, 2

Once again ... I guess this is about a year later, or almost ... I got the chance to visit Debbie at the tail end of a visit to Sticksville for work. Like before, it was a pleasant visit: we talked together and cooked together. Unlike the last time, I detected no underlying romantic tension, no effort being put behind Not Doing Anything Sexual. So maybe that's now a thing of the past? Or maybe it's just a matter of Different day, different atmosphere. I don't know which.
 
What follows is slightly reworked from the email I sent Marie about it. 

• So I talked to Debbie about my job situation, mentioning the following points:
• The change of status changes my bonus potential, but not my base salary. Losing the bonus at the same time Son 1 graduates from university is close to a wash, because all I ever spend my bonus on is his tuition.
• My boss assures me that there is no risk of my losing the job itself, but I don’t believe him. I think I’ll be overpaid if I’m reclassified as a non-manager, but that’s my idea and nothing anyone has said.
• Saying I’m overpaid is synonymous with saying I’m underutilized, and according to one way of looking at it that’s bad for me too. Underutilization makes it easy for me to grow dull and fall into a rut, which in turn makes me more likely to lose my job.
• I used to tell myself that I was highly mobile and loved exploring new places, but at this point that’s more of a religious self-identification than a reality. (“Of course I’m a Methodist / Episcopalian / Jew / whatever, ... just because I’ve never been in a house of worship in the last 50 years doesn’t mean anything!”) That is to say, in the last 27 years I’ve really settled into Beautiful City as home. And I would really miss Beautiful City if I were to move.
• On the other hand, I have somehow organized my life in such a way that it involves a lot of travel.

Maybe there was more. You’ve heard me talk through this a lot.

Debbie didn’t comment on any of that directly at first, but talked about her own moves: to Los Angeles in the fall of 2013 for her M.Div. studies, to Wisconsin for a year of practical apprenticeship after getting the degree, and then to her current home a year ago for this job. Talking through her experiences, she said that she missed Beautiful City enormously. While in L.A. she’d come back from time to time to visit, and every time she got here she would start to cry. She expected to hate L.A. when she first moved there; and in both Wisconsin and her current home she felt very alone and culturally isolated.

 

All that having been said, she has also found the process of breaking out into something new to be incredibly rewarding on many levels. She has felt revitalized and challenged, professionally and personally. Yes, she still misses Beautiful City terribly. (I brought her some marmalade, made from fruit from my neighbor's tree, which she gladly accepted.) But she didn’t hate L.A. when she moved there — she loved it. Moving to her current home was a big change, but she made friends through the Unitarian Church, through her work, and through hobbies like quilting and fiber arts. And not only has she thereby made a new place for herself, but getting in motion again has reminded her of other places she wants to go too — to travel or to live — while she is still able-bodied. (She turns 64 later this summer.)


So that’s the filter of her own experience, which she offered as a perspective on my question. From there I started to talk more about the details of the job I've recently applied to, and we brainstormed some questions I should ask when I talk to the manager on Tuesday. (Gosh, I hope I can remember them all now!)

After that she got me to help with some of her gardening, and then we drove a few towns over to visit her daughter, her son-in-law, and their two-week old baby. We stayed there for a few hours; drove back, set up a bed for me in her guest room (after moving the ironing board and a couple of sewing projects), and went to our respective beds. Breakfast this morning was out on her deck in the back yard — she said that this house is the nicest place she has ever lived as an adult, and certainly the view of the yard in the morning was lovely — and then I drove 4.5 hours to the airport....