ninaherenorthere.com

I changed my name at my job after a year. I received a new email address, a new name plate, and requested new pronouns that are still often stumbled over in meetings or conspicuously avoided. In December, I disappeared on a “staycation” for two weeks and returned less barrel-chested. Wanting to avoid advertising my blatant physical change, I eased into wearing fewer layers and less baggy shirts to work until eventually I stopped thinking twice about choosing a tight T-shirt in the morning, or even walking up a flight of stairs to use one of two private and by default only gender-neutral bathrooms. (I ignore the man and woman signs). All of my co-workers were along for the ride, watching me unfold, knowing, if not understanding, my herstory. Or so I thought everyone knew, that everyone would always know.

We were on a product group team-building adventure and a new employee ended up on my team. She and I had sat together in a room a few weeks prior for a full-day new hire orientation. (I had been a contractor for my first year and still needed to complete employee training.) During the team-building scavenger hunt, this new employee asked if my position at our company was my first job. I must have looked puzzled because she explained that she asked because I look young, which I’ve heard a good hundred times in the past few years. I told her I’m much older than she thought, and she asked how I maintained my youth. I threw out my standard, “it helps to style myself like a teenage boy.” It was her turn to look puzzled — she thought I was a teenage boy.

I am aware of how people perceive me. When I use the women’s restroom, I always hunch and use something to cover up my flat chest; When I use the men’s restroom, I never open my mouth to speak and reveal my high-pitched voice. I am no longer surprised when a jaw drops over my driver’s license, and I never care whether it is my actual age or gender that is so shocking to these convenience store clerks and bouncers. But to have a co-worker, someone I’d spent a day with, barely believe I was old enough to hold a copywriting job alarmed me.

A few days later I ended up at a not-too-fancy Mexican restaurant in Lake Tahoe. Our hostess, a young girl, exchanged a few words with me and my friend Derek and seated us. She returned several minutes later and said, “I don’t know how to say this without sounding rude, but you need to pull up your pants.” As she walked away, I blushed a shade of pink darker than the margarita before me. “What just happened?” I asked.

“She thought you were a young boy,” Derek said. “She treated you like her little brother.”

“I’m old enough to have birthed that child,” I said to cover up my plumber butt embarrassment. I respect my mother and she raised me not to show asscrack at a restaurant, no matter how divey. But disgusting the other customers aside, being spoken down to as if I were fifteen was kind of demeaning.

It happened again a few days ago, not the asscrack thing now that I’ve started wearing belts again, but the teenage thing. I met a couple of out-of-towners through a friend — I introduced myself as Nick; I was wearing a white undershirt, the kind that cannot possibly hide even A-cup breasts; of course they were confused. I didn’t find out until later that they “couldn’t determine my age or sex” so perhaps I’m employing hindsight, but I felt the weirdness, like they were trying not to use big words. Ok, I’m exaggerating, but I felt off-balanced, like we couldn’t find a common ground.

Despite my propensity for being a social recluse and lone wolf, I actually like people and have begun to pride myself on being able to find a topic of mutual interest and chat up anyone. I didn’t quite realize that this could change, that I could be so confusing to people that they might not now what to say to me, or how to engage in a mature conversation with me.

I’ve changed a lot in the past year, and this is only the beginning. I figured that people would “mistake” my gender — whatever that means — asking me for a tampon if they think I’m a girl or striking up a conversation about sports if they think I’m a boy, or “ma’amsirring” me if they are uncertain. I expect to feel odd if and when I pass as a man, even knowing that I won’t entirely understand male privilege until I experience it. I know what it’s like for people to think I look young, like a young boyish woman, and that I should take it as a compliment. But I never expected women to chide me on the bus if I pause for an eigth of a second before giving my seat up to the pregnant or elderly, for people to appear flummoxed when I mention living in San Francisco for a decade or that I’ve held adult jobs for that long. I didn’t quite realize how much it sucks to be a thirty-one year old passing as a child.

This morning on my way to work, I saw a co-worker walking down the street in front of me. He was carrying nothing – no gym clothes and sneakers, no backpack with library books, no magazines, no homemade lunch, no folders with to do lists and rough drafts of essays, no workbooks for tuturing — NOTHING. It always kills me when I see people walk into or out of my office with their hands dangling by their sides while I’m carrying two bags. But I guess when some people leave the house in the morning, they only care about work, and I only care about everything else.

I recently discovered that my mother found my blog. The exchange went like this:

Mom: I can’t keep a secret. I saw your blog. What, did you think I wouldn’t find it?

Me: It only took you a year.

I always knew it was only a matter of time before my mom, an IT professional, Googled me, clicked, and followed two links. Right before we hung up the phone, she said something like, “Don’t let my reading your blog affect your writing.”

As much as I’d like to blame my mother for all my shortcomings, failures, and blocks, and although I haven’t been able to open my blog without seeing her little mommy face, which I can’t in good conscience describe now that I know she is reading, I will not blame my inability to post for awhile on my mother.

I’ve also been completely slammed with trying to finish a book proposal. I contemplating blogging about that process, but then I came across the following question and answer in Poets & Writers magazine.

Q: What is the dumbest mistake that a writer can make in dealing with their editor or agent?

A: Be very careful about what you blog…If I am submitting your book to publishers and an editor wants to buy it, they’re probably going to Google you before they even call me. And if they find things out there that are curious or disturbing?

So now, sitting on my shoulder next to my mother was my agent, whose face I can in good conscience describe because it is always smiling and positive. Next to my agent are the potential editors that she is trying to woo. My shoulders hurt a bit from all of the weight on them. But please prospective editors, understand that I’m not calling you fat, but rather referring to the burden, metaphorically speaking, of your potential readership, or skimmership. And just so everyone knows, this is not of those things that can be helped by picturing the audience naked.

But really, what is curious or disturbing? Is using a cliche? Maybe. Is bad grammar or spelling errors? Perhaps. Is admitting you read Poets & Writers magazine? Definitely. And what if you and the premise of your book are both curious and disturbing? What if that is the whole point?

I tried not to let my fears about the publishing industry contribute to my block, and instead focused on my fears about my boss. I tend to think it’s safe to blog about work as long as I don’t explain why I use the day time stamp rather than the hour one to indicate when my posts are published. It’s also safer now that I moved from contractor to employee because it’s much harder to fire someone than to not hire someone for having a blog, especially one that never mentions the company name.

The only reason I’d want to blog about work is that it’s been taking up a large percentage of my time and energy for the past month or two, and I need an outlet to whine or mock it. Like today, I am dreading my fourth full-day training session, during which I will grow increasingly agitated about a methodology built upon bad metaphors (scrum, stories, and sprints to name just a few). I will remember what it was like to sit in a Wharton classroom surrounding by future Arthur Anderson consultants while caring about nothing other than my “P” for pass and dreams of a career I could love. When I realize a decade has passed since then, I will go to the catered food table and have another donut.

Work, my book, and my mother were only a few of the reasons I kept hitting “Save as draft” rather than the “Publish” button. There were also the typical writer fears, or at least mine, the self-questioning flagellations: How come you’re not funny anymore, say something funny, goddamnit; do you really think people care about your life because they don’t; you’ve waited long enough, this better be good—earth, moon, and sun-shattering good; trans this and trans that and trans shut up already. From experience, I know that the best way to get over blogger’s block is to say something, say anything. Then hit post.

I couldn’t take it anymore, the weekends as Nick, the weekdays as Nina, the world sharing joint custody of my name. So, a few weeks ago, I spoke my boss and to human resources and under my own volition, I started taking field trips to the single stall bathroom on another floor. Then, in the last hour of my workweek, I sent an email to a few dozen co-workers, informing them of my new name and pronoun switch. I offered example sentences: “Nick does an excellent job with the copy. He really knows the [insert my company name] voice.” On the following Monday, I showed up at work and like magic, everyone was calling me Nick. A nameplate soon followed.

It was a relief to change my my name in the workplace, and for the most part the process has been smooth. People mess up occasionally, more so with the pronouns. I prefer it when people don’t notice their mistake, otherwise they blush and apologize and I jump to say, “no, worries” or “it’s okay,” before looking down at my notebook and starting to doodle.

It’s not the most natural thing for me either, having a new name. It’s particularly difficult because I have my old one, too. Recently I eliminated any mention of my name from my cellphone voicemail message so as not to alarm those who know or those who do not. And I have two email address, one that has my former name built into the address and the one where I am myself, Nick. I still have two names because that’s how it goes, I think. Because there are people I’m afraid to tell, bureaucratic paper trails I’m afraid to get lost in, people I don’t want to burden, people who don’t need to know that much about me.

I have not told the adult learner whom I’ve been tutoring for a year about Nick. I have not told the person who cleans my house, nor my dentist. I have not changed my name on any official paperwork, not on my benefits, my passport, my mail, nor my credit card, which has prompted several strangers to comment on the beauty of my former name. I have not changed my name at the gym where I’m sure there is a corporate manual that requires the front desk workers to address us all by name as part of a personalized customer retention plan. I have not been adamant about my mother and my brother calling me Nick, even though they are aware of it. I have not been very clear about Nick with my literary agent, nor anyone involved with my book project, since like my blog, the working title of my book includes my former name, and really that just means more mistakes and more discomfort for everyone.

I am aware that I could be more proactive, perhaps even tackle the official paperwork, but I’m not ready. I don’t know if I want to be a female Nick on my passport. I don’t know if I want to be a male Nick who often passes as a female and yet is put in a hostel room with six dudes. I don’t know if I will take testosterone. I don’t know if any of these things matter, if a name change can be just that, a name change.

Sometimes I’m so tired of the name change that I want to give up and revert. I’m tired of leaping to introduce myself before you do. I’m tired of of your slip-ups which may only be one for you but they add up to over a hundred for me, each with its unique brand of awkwardness. I’m tired of telling you about my new name and watching it go in one ear and out the other and feeling that I need to rip off my shirt and show you the gashes across my chest so that you can see how much Nick means to me. I’m tired of having to compose a narrative about it, prove my struggle to you, to well up with tears in the corner of a bar so that you can see that I’m “emotional about it.” I’m tired of your issues with male privilege when you never had any issues with my class privilege. And I’m tired of your total ignorance about your cisgender privilege. But mostly, I am tired of your mourning, of hearing you say that using my new name will “be hard because it’s ingrained.”

A couple months ago, my therapist, in what I imagine was a plea for patience, asked me to try to hold the two names side-by-side, to hold both my feminine and masculine sides. But my names have nothing to do with with masculine and feminine. They are correlated with darkness and light with invisibility and visibility with despair and hope. When you call me by my old name, it translates in my head into, “I like your vagina.” And is that something you really want to say to me? 

I’ve also noticed that it’s really not that hard to to call me Nick. Mistakes do happen, but when you try, they become the exception not the pattern. First, change my name in your phone. Then, actually try calling me Nick. Exaggerate, do it purposefully, overuse it.  And please stop throwing around my former name like you own it. It’s not yours.

I told a friend I was tired the other day, that I was out of patience to deal with those that don’t have some experience with trans people, that I just don’t have the energy to spend time with these people, which included her. ”Well, then that’s my loss,” she said. “And your loss.”

So, I took a deep breath and began to educate one more person.

I was shooting the shit with a co-worker after work one day last week, and we ended up on the topic of travel. I told him that I wanted to go to Turkey, that I’d had enough of Western and Central Europe.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

I started listing countries: France, England, Germany, Austria, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Scotland. “I spent a month in Sweden,” I said. “I’ve been there twice.”

“Twice?”

“I’ve been to Costa Rica twice, too,” I said. “And I’ve been to Australia three times.” I was getting carried away. I told him about the two dozen or so stamps I have in my passport, how I traveled alone for months in places like Thailand, Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia. I told him that I’d done the math and I’ve spent a year and some change outside of the US.

“Would you just work, work, work, save your money, and then take off?” He asked.

I used to keep my work history a secret from my co-workers. I figured if anyone found out that I spent most of my employed life acting as if $15/hr under the table was a good wage, they’d boot me out of my cushy job for being a fraud with no experience for my position. “Yes.” I said. “But sometimes it doesn’t take much to travel. I spent a month in Laos on $300.”

My co-worker was fascinated by me, and I was enjoying a warm bath in the attention. “That’s just abroad,” I said. “I rode my bicylce from Vancouver to Tijuana.” I waited for the usual surprise and awe. By now I knew what I was doing. Under the dim flourescent lights of a shared cubicle on the 7th floor of the downtown office building where I’ve worked as a contractor for ten months, I wanted, no I needed, to recount my entire travel resume. “I lived as a snowboard bum for a winter, too. In Jackson Hole.”

“You really had some adventures,” he said, his eyes still wide from a few of my digressive stories.

I used to love the idea that anything could happen. I had so many dreams, or shower-time fantasies as I call the hopeful, and usually outlandish, futures we imagine for ourselves while washing our hair. I imagined myself falling in love with a British girl during my first night in London or with an Ozzie at the Gay Games in Sydney. I imagined losing myself for a year surfing on the coast of Costa Rica or scuba diving in Thailand or working on a farm in New Zealand. I imagined that I might give up all my possessions and live on my bicycle, be a bicycling writer, much like my buddy from the road, the bicycling comedian. I thought that I might settle in a small ski town, live near my brother, and watch elk play in the snow until I grew old.

None of those things ever happened, but I didn’t mind. I got off on working five different odd jobs in a week, balancing my travel budget, owning so little that it was easy to store in a friend’s basement. I enjoyed living out of my backpack, never knowing or caring what came next. I thrived on the chaos, the uncertainty. The now was all I wanted and my next trip was as far as I could see. I had no idea what to do with myself, but as long as I kept busy–exploring, discovering, moving–I wouldn’t have to figure it out.

My co-worker kept firing questions about my favorite places, foods, and people, but I let my nostalgic montage fade out. “I signed the papers,” I said. I sounded like I’d committed myself to a rehab center or a mental institution. And that’s how I felt. “I’m employed here.”

I hadn’t told anyone other than my close friends that I’d accepted my first actual employment with a company in seven years. The whole idea was disturbing. It had taken me two weeks to read through the offer packet, which was full of words I rarely paid attention to, like vesting, stock units, 401k, health insurance, dental coverage. By signing on to a job whose benefits increase significantly with each year, I understood, even if it was only temporary, that there was an underlying comittment.

“You’re not signing away your life,” a different friend said to me. “You can always go on another adventure.”

I could plan a trip right now. I could go to the bookstore, collect a huge stack of Lonely Planets, envision myself in Morocco and Bolivia and South Africa, eventually chosing one place, like India. I could go there for three or four months, making sure I wasn’t too broke to start over here, again, as I’ve done so many times before. I thought of the book I’m working on, but don’t mention because it’s torturing me. I thought of building something here in San Francisco, what I don’t know, but something that requires a foundation. I thought of the weak and boring wish that I’d made and posted on my blog almost a year ago and that is no more exciting now that it has come true: “I’d like to have a job that doesn’t suck. With a boss and co-workers who aren’t lame. And it’d be nice if I made enough money to pay my rent and health insurance and school loans.”

“I know my life isn’t over,” I said to my friend. “I know I can go on a big trip.”

But the thing that surprised me the most, the thing that I’m still trying to accept, is that I don’t want to.

I’ve been a busy with my brother’s visit, a short vacation, and the new job, of course. I’m starting to hear the distant song of the blogging muse, but until she puts the megaphone to her lips, this post will have to suffice while I play catch up with my life.

Rather than describe a cubicle job, a hackneyed subject ever since the movie, Office Space, I’ll leave you with two samples from my job and hope that they don’t break any confidentiality agreements.

I snapped the following picture on my phone while everyone at my company went on a bowling excursion. I stayed behind because I’m a contractor and can get paid while surfing the Internet, but not while bowling. The sign is taped above the microwave with the text below.

This is simple
No Fish in the microwave
Nothing with Fish sauce. Nothing that sat next to a Fish in the store.
If you’re unsure, ask yourself, “Does this smell like Fish?”
If you’re still unsure, ask another person, “Does this smell like fish to you?”
If there’s any doubt, don’t microwave it.

I think of that as an office poem.  The other thing I want to share is an office email. It starts: “I have received numerous complaints about people using their cell phones while using the bathrooms.” I do not feel comfortable providing any more information from the email, which predominately focuses on the consideration we all need to avoid taking a piss and talking to our mothers while a co-worker is in the next stall. The email ends on an unrelated note, but perhaps one related to the fish poster, which has been up for as long as I’ve been at the company. The email ends with, ” Also, please do not post unauthorized signs around the office.”

I knew if I waited around long enough, a job would fall into my inbox. All it took was a little email OCD with the refresh button. About 2pm on a Wednesday, I received a tip-off about the opportunity. An email, resume, and phone call and by that Friday I had a short-term contract for a 3 day a week job lined up. I started work this week, from home. I still haven’t met my boss.

I got the job on account of a recommendation and because I’d done the exact same job before. Once, during the era of my dotcom serial layoff spree, a company found my resume on Craigslist and hired me. I was too busy partying with my unemployment checks to even refresh my email on a regular basis, but there’s something about already having done the job that gives employers full confidence in you.

As for my recent hiring, I know the exact moment during the interview when I secured the offer.
Interviewer: And you like doing this?
Me: I like doing this for work.
Interviewer: Good answer.

Some companies will only hire you if you express your undying love for the job description as well as the organization. But my new job is temporary and the truth is, nobody sane would enjoy doing it. Prepare to be bored out of your mind.

I’m changing the company name and the details of the project so I don’t get fired before seeing my cubicle. (Keep your fingers crossed for desk dividers and a smidge of privacy.) Now that I blog, I’m no longer concerned about upsetting people when/if a memoir of mine is published. It takes years from the writing for an actual book to hit the shelves, but this post will be live in a few minutes and could have me out of work before morning.

So, today, for work, I revised survey questions regarding a service where you can buy your movie tickets online. Questions like: Was the ticket kiosk where you expected it to be? Were you charged additional fees? Rate this service on a scale of 1-5? Would you recommend this service to a friend?

Sounds easy right, and of course, it is, but in that excruciatingly painful kind of way. Like, there are meetings about the project in which people debate over the most minute details and in order to make my employer think I’m doing my job, I contribute to the debate my thoughts on the order of questions, consistency, clarity and other dumb crap that is beyond inconsequential. Then a lot of documents start to fly around, version 1 and 1.1, and the business stakeholder keeps writing and rewriting the copy, even though this is my job, and if he sends me another version, I have to do my version over, but who cares since this is what I’m paid for; it is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing all day. If I could just take thirty minutes to eliminate the awkward sentences and passive voice constructions, then I’d have way too much time to kill.

It’s just my first week and maybe it’ll get interesting. You know, like when I get to write complex user error messages, something more challenging than “Please enter a number 0-9.” I spent a good fifteen minutes today deciding when and how many times it is appropriate to use “please.” I’ve found that the business folks love to overuse please. They are trying to be courteous, but sentence after sentence it comes off as sycophantic.

Isn’t this tragic? Listening to me get all caught up in error messages and survey copy. I’ve already done it, sold my soul to the corporate devil, convinced that my devil is one of the better ones, homosexual-friendly or philanthropic or something, and I’ve spent enough time writing instructional copy for online banking applications that I now think writing movie ticket surveys is a step up. Obviously, this is only my first week, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to sleep at night doing this kind of work. It’s not harmful, at least I don’t think so. But it sure is wasteful. It’s wasting my life. Hopefully, the ch-ching ch-ching of my mind’s cash register will lull me to sleep.

I am dying for a job. Which is why I lied. These weren’t even white lies, but gray ones, with thick black stripes. And yes, there were several. Lies are like tattoos; it’s hard to stop after one.

See, I already dropped a lie in this post. I’m not actually dying for a job. But I’ve been told that employers seek out voracious candidates. They want their prospective employees to be like dogs, drooling and ready to rip into a spreadsheet steak. I’ve been told “half of having is wanting,” and still my job desires emerge in timid squeaks. Just the other afternoon, delirious from lack of mental stimulation, I pretended a genie had emerged from a bottle to grant me wishes. “Well, I guess I’d like to have a job that doesn’t suck,” I said. “With a boss and co-workers who aren’t lame. And it’d be nice if I made enough money to pay my rent and health insurance and school loans.”

“Are you kidding me,” Kristina said. “You’re going to waste a genie with that weak wish.”

Now I’m a blood thirsty pit bull. I pounce on any job post that appeals to my Interest Of The Week, which is currently literary agencies. You can only imagine my excitement when I saw the Craigslist ad for an “Executive Assistant to a Literary Agent.” So, I pretended I was “proficient with QuickBooks.” It took me a week to figure out QuickBooks wasn’t Quicken, another software program I’ve never used. But I can wing anything on a computer, especially involving numbers. And besides, in aggressive job search mode, I block out all second-guesses and let no obstacles stand in my way. Certainly not the job requirement, “Must have car.”

I could borrow a friend’s car for an interview. If the job turned out to be PERFECT, I could buy a car. I blocked out all the negative signs, like the pay and the location. The placement agency hiring for the position called me within two hours of receiving my resume. They couldn’t give me the name of the agent, but they said she represented “self-help authors.” I adjusted my blinders and accepted an introductory interview at the placement agency.

This morning, I took public transportation to my friend’s house, borrowed her car and drove over the Golden Gate Bridge to an office park in Larkspur. I filled out reference forms and application forms. I lied only once, stating I would take a drug test if necessary. I waited for the recruiter to invite me into her office. She wore vinyl boots with stiletto heels, the kind of shoes only appropriate for kinky sex. Her office chair was leopard spotted. She looked at my forms. “You’re only interested in direct hire?” she asked.

“I’m only interested in the Executive Assistant to the Literary Agent position I applied for,” I said.

“I’m sorry. That’s been filled.”

She apologized for not calling to let me know. She referred to it as an “oversight.” She apologized for my long journey from San Francisco. She didn’t sound sincere, especially when inquiring as to whether I might be interested in another “clerical/administrative” position that would most likely require a car. She was like a Stepford Professional, an automaton.

I’m a non-confrontational person (except with customer service reps). Even in bad employment situations, I don’t burn bridges. I didn’t yell at the recruiter or raise my voice. Instead, I asked her for $5 for my toll. Her face flushed. “To compensate for your oversight,” I said. “It’s only fair. I’m not even asking for gas money.” She reached over to zebra striped purse, dug out her wallet and handed me $5.

Okay, okay. I didn’t ask her for toll money. That’s the last lie I could sneak in. Because now I learned my lesson: liars never prosper.

I didn’t intend to spend my morning at a creative staffing agency. I filled out half of the online registration form last week, but stopped when I realized that if you diagrammed the agency’s needs and clients with my skills and interests, the overlap would resemble the new moon. Despite my incomplete application, the recruiter asked me to come in for an interview. She didn’t look closely at my resume, or else she would’ve understood that I’m not a “marketing/advertising” professional. Or, and I believe this is the case, she is new, eager and weeding through duds like me to build up her candidate base. I decided to visit her, and in order to maintain my advantage, I reminded myself that the meeting was a bigger waste of her time than mine. Words from a successful business man lingered in my ears, “You will find a job because you are smart and pretty. You are BEAUTIFUL.” Maybe if the recruiter sees me, she’ll find me a job.

I’m not going to insult the recruiter. Her smile was just a response to to my desperate rambling. And I felt bad for her, forced to wear a suit from the discount rack of a department store, stuck in an office reminiscent of an airport lounge and marinating in the disappointments of unemployed middle managers. She did say one valuable thing this morning, “We don’t have writers in here often,” and at that moment I finally understood the seismic chasm between copywriter and writer, and decided I can no longer pursue the former.

While at the agency, I had to do this exercise providing a “Commercial for Me.” While the recruiter left to find a co-worker to interview me (as it turned out everyone was “too busy”) I re-wrote my commercial, using the exact same format and even employing some of the same phrases (feel free to guess which ones) that I used in the original.

A Commercial for Nina

Nina can write about anything: kitty litter, adult diapers, vaginal anti-itch cream, home bidets, and pharmacy-bought douche kits. She writes killer instructional copy, and has a proven track record with applicators and suppositories. She specializes in the delicate handling of unmentionable products and the magic of her soothing copy will have even the most embarrassed customers running through supermarkets screaming, “BUY! BUY! BUY!”

Nina is professional and for a wordsmith, she is excellent with numbers. She demonstrates these skills with her greatest achievement: rotating 10 “business casual” outfits using only 3 tops, 2 sweaters, 3 pairs of pants, 2 belts and pairs of brown and black shoes.

The complete package of ideal employee, Nina comes with this intangible bonus: she is a pleasure to be around. The celebration of her birthday will draw more crowds to the 34th floor conference room than ever before. This means more cookies, ice cream, and cake. Afternoon sugar highs for all! Her personality is so engaging that each day in windowless rooms under fluorescent lights is a bit more bearable. References will attest to her congeniality, but the comments, which filled the inside and the back of her last company’s going-away card, provide the best testimonial: “Nina, it is great to work with you!”

A relative of mine said this to me a few days ago, referring to my job search. He said it in front of my father, and although my relative wasn’t prodded or cajoled into three days of a recurring career pep talk, I could tell my dad enjoyed hearing the speeches and advice without having to do the dirty work himself. My relative also has power, the power that comes from being rich (a word I don’t use lightly), successful and well-connected in the business world. We had this conversation in his Russian Hill apartment, a tony place with two balconies and views of both the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, not to mention most of the ocean in between. He seemed to be saying, “You too could have all this, if only you weren’t derelict of desire,” or as I came to understand his braggadocio, “I could help you have all this, if only you weren’t aimless.” My father nodded a silent Amen as my relative left me with those final words, “Half of having is wanting.”

I easily forgot the other things my relative said, the untrue, sexist comment, “women don’t mentor each other like men do” in the workplace, and the one where he disclosed, and perhaps regretted later, that he doesn’t particularly like people and is “not interested in their stories.” But I couldn’t shake his aphorism, which I imagined came from either a children’s book or a book by Bill Gates or Steve Jobs titled something like Ten Tips for Success. After Googling the phrase and finding little, I decided to look for job openings at Google, since after all, he mentioned the possibility of helping me get an interview there. When I had expressed interest in Google, my dad’s eyes looked like they wanted to cry and the car heated up, not just from the seat warmers, but from my mother’s love. Later, the thought of working for a corporate entity, even one that offers a high quality of life, made me kind of nauseous.

I’m more confused now than ever about what to do about this job/future muck. It’s not that I’m old, but as I like to say, I’m old for me. Which means, I’m too old to be living off a dwindling savings account with an awful lot of graduate school debt, and I’m old enough to know that I need health insurance, that if I ever want to have a child or a car or a dog or property, or travel and stay in a hostel that is not roach infested, I need some type of sustainable employment. And I’m old enough to know that as much as I’m interested in working for a company like Google, or maybe even Wells Fargo (the company I most recently left), I’m not sure I *want* to.

I’m not entirely convinced that wanting is a good thing. I have this problem where I interpret and twist complex philosophies to my own ends, and I have this habit of thinking of the Buddhist concept of non-attachment as the antithesis of wanting. That most people walk around grasping after things and they never end up with what they want, or rather what they want comes from the least expected of places. Which is why this is the plot of many movies and is recycled endlessly in the romantic comedy. The human inability to accurately imagine how what we want will affect us is the basis of the growing popularity of a branch of social psychology explored in best-sellers like Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness and Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink.

Some people are all about knowing what they want. And isn’t this the time of year for stating it. On New Year’s Eve, I opened up the dialog by asking some friends if they would be doing resolutions this year. My one friend either misheard the question or ignored it, quickly providing his resolutions. I’m not sure if I’ll have goals this year. Usually, when I do, I like to give myself some time to seriously consider easy and hard ones, those for short term and long term, and I give myself until the Chinese New Year to come up with them.

In the meantime I’m going to do a couple things. One is to read Beth Lisick’s new book, Helping Me Help Myself. I’ve been sort of obsessed with it, ever since it came out on Jan 2. I read the first two chapters in the store, (also reserved it at my library), and heard her read from it last night at City Lights. There is nothing extraordinary about her writing (maybe that’s my jealousy talking), but she is very funny–hilarious actually–irreverent but not breezy, self-deprecating and generally my kind of person. When I read her I feel as if I’m hanging out and shooting the shit with a good buddy. The premise of the book in summary and without as much of her humor is this: She wakes up New Years Day 2006 covered in bruises from her annual New Year’s Eve party/talent show. Her husband pulls out the digital camera and together they discover that her injuries are from repeatedly performing splits, but only on one side. She vows to learn how to do splits on both sides and gets caught up in this fantasy before realizing that she is in her mid-thirties and her only real resolution to date is a party trick. So, she decides to spend the next year looking into and working with the big ones, the mainstream gurus of the self-help industry, to see what she might get out of trying to improve her life, following the tried and true methods of millions of Americans before her. Maybe the timing is right, but I seem to think that reading about her pursuit of personal goals and quest for self- fulfillment might give me insights into what the hell to do with myself.

The other thing I’m going to do is to read over my graduate thesis. Every time someone asks me what I want to do, somewhere in the fifteen minute ramble of an answer, I say, write books. I have the seedling of one in my closet now and it’s been sleeping for about six months, which is about as much distance as I said I’d take from the project. After I read it, and assuming I can stomach it, then I’ll think about if I *want* to keep working on it. And I’ll re-evaluate the want every few seconds for as long as it takes to figure this out: How many sixteenths of wanting does it take to arrive at half of having?