Worries, Personal Values, and Perceptions of Myself

I’m at an interesting point in my life right now.

Two days ago I had an interview with the City of Los Angeles, and they called later that day to tentatively offer me a job, pending a background check. Yesterday I was officially offered the job, and I officially accepted it. Today I found out the job details, such as my new salary, which is more than twice as much as I’m making currently.

Right now I’m freaking out.

Two years ago I graduated from USC with a degree in English: Creative Writing. I’ve desperately searched for a full time job ever since while managing to survive on my part-time salary. I’ve scrimped, saved, racked up debt (a laughably small amount compared to my college debt, but money is money), and now I’ve finally done it. I’ve succeeded. On the 22nd I become a City Employee with a pension, benefits, and everything. The whole caboodle. I can kiss Kraft dinner goodbye. I can get a new car. I can move to an apartment with non-peeling paint on the walls. I can afford to go out with my friends every time they call me instead of checking my bank balance before I accept their invitations. I can buy clothing not on the sale or clearance racks, simply because I want it. I should be celebrating.

Instead I’m freaking out.

I am now in a position of flux – I’m firmly ensconced in the in/out vortex, midway between two different phases of my life. Right now I’m a “recent grad” – on the 22nd I’ll be a “career woman.” Somehow I have to make the edges of these two identities fit, and at the moment the idea is giving me the collywobbles.

I know I can do this job. I have the ability to do so. I have the training. I’m smart enough, quick enough, clever enough, just enough – but is this what I should be doing? Is this really what I want?

In high school and college I was a quiet rebel. I was a theater technician, a jazz musician, an aspiring novelist – and I had no interest in those who pursued the “corporate ladder.” It wasn’t something that interested me. I didn’t care about it, and had no ambition for such heights. I entered college expecting to graduate as an engineer with the ability to create with electricity and wires, and I graduated college as a writer with the knowledge of how to create castles and dreams out of words. I haven’t completely removed myself from my previous ambition, since I still create and dream and make, however, my materials are now intangible, my methods invisible, and my planning purely mental. I’ve stepped away from my concrete ambitions and have instead embraced a world of abstracts.

Perhaps that’s why I’m having a hard time accepting my new role. There’s no concrete difference in my status, only an insubstantial one. My progress was validated through phantom voices though a telephone, with phantom concepts conveyed therein. I KNOW that on the 22nd I will have a very new, very real desk, a physical computer, a concrete, distinct office, and live, breathing coworkers. I KNOW these things exist – however, with only words written in my own hand on a piece of creamy paper to indicate the details of my new classification, the entire process seems somehow vague and dreamlike. I don’t FEEL like someone whose life has changed. I don’t FEEL like an ambitious woman climbing the ladder of business success, because I’m not ambitious – but perhaps I’m the only one who sees myself that way.

I’m going from making $20,000.00 a year to making $41,000.00 a year. More than twice as much as I’m used to making. The money itself isn’t important – it’s merely an indicator of status, rank, and ability, yet that is the crux of my problem – do I have the ability to be worth $41,000.00?

Part of me knows I can. I have succeeded at every job I have attempted thus far, even the jobs I took only because I had to. I’ve stuck it out, paid my dues, and now I’m being rewarded for my perseverance. However, I firmly believe that when you accept a gift in one hand, you also give a gift with your other, regardless of whether or not you intend to do so. The gift I’m giving up is the last of my naive aspirations and dreams of hoping to remain a child, innocent, and untouched by society’s politics.

Yet, I know that these aspirations themselves are nothing but an illusion – whatever innocence that I still possess at this point is tattered and transparent with wear, for even as a child I wanted nothing more than to be independent. I achieved that repeatedly, repetitively proving to myself that I could depend on myself, my ideals, my dreams, and my actions, and need not concern myself with the world’s opinion, yet here I am entering society of my own free will, giving up my “uniqueness” to follow tradition.

But that in and of itself is not a bad thing. I accept my new position, my new role, my new me – and I will transmute it to fit my core vision of myself, as I always have. I’ll allow myself to freak out a little, to wonder if my work can be worth $41,000.00, and then I’ll stop myself. I’ll grab myself by the collar, give a good shake, and say, “stop it. You know better. Now go show them you can do it, and no more whining.”

I’ve always been my best critic.

-GDR