So little, part 2

I spent part of my time today in an online meditation workshop, partly because Debbie mentioned it but maybe also a little bit as another way to avoid working on finding a job. One of our exercises was to free-write about some small irritation in our lives, and I chose my serious procrastination on the job-hunting front. My first remarks were about not wanting to compete, like I wrote here a couple of days ago -- about thinking that all the other candidates are so much brighter and shinier than I am. But it rapidly shifted to something else, and I made a connection that I don't remember whether I ever made before. (Maybe I have -- maybe it's even buried in here somewhere -- but I don't have the patience to look for it.) 

You've heard me whine plenty of times about not liking the kind of work I do … not that there's anything wrong with it, really, but just that it's not as interesting as my current fantasie du jour. And suddenly I remembered hearing the exact same complaint from my dad. When my father owned his own business, he became -- of necessity -- a real expert on the kind of service that he offered. He once said, with a dry chuckle, that he was the only person he knew who could talk about this very commonplace topic for an hour without repeating himself. But in his mind he was never a businessman. (That part was true enough!) He was an actor. He didn't really care about providing this [actually useful but] unromantic service to all of his [actually grateful but] dull and commonplace customers. He wanted to perform on Broadway; he wanted to star in Shakespearean drama at the Old Vic. He didn't want to be stuck in Suburbia, pissing away his talents in community theater and in entertaining the local Rotary Club. I remember him bemoaning this fate one evening, when he segued casually into remarking that …

There is a tide in the affairs of men, 
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

And he went on to say that he feared his tide had passed him by, so that shallows and miseries were all that was left him. 

All of which is just to say, I guess, that I come by my ambivalence for my paying work honestly. Of course I also don't think much of the way my dad handled his professional life. Maybe I should get my ass back in gear and find a job, huh?