Friday Playdate » Blog Archive » the American dream

the American dream

Filed Under other places on May 22, 2008

“I’m starting to hate that job.”

“You hate all your jobs.”

“No I don’t!”

“Yes, you do.”

“Huh … I think you’re right.”

“I am.”

“Maybe I should quit.”

“Yes, but then? They stop paying you.”

“Well yes.”

“I like the getting paid part.”

“Yeah me too. But really I’m starting to hate that job.”

“I would like to get paid but not work.”

“Only Paris Hilton gets to do that.”

“Well yes.”

15 Comments so far
Leave a comment

Ah. I have felt this way about every job I have ever had. Is something wrong with me, for that? I’ve heard of people who LOVE their jobs, who wake up each morning and bound out of bed with joy and energy every single day, because they love their work so much. I even know at least one of them. It seems HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS to me.

I love how you left out who said what.

You hatin a job, Susan???

Sigh. Yes, the American Dream indeed.

It’s sad really.

I am compelled to share a once-in-a-lifetime experience here.

When I was in college, I was an athletic trainer working for the school. I was paid a weekly salary, though my hours varied.

My junior year I wound up going home and missing spring semester (mono or something like it). I went to tell my boss at the athletic department I was leaving and he told me he wasn’t sure what would happen with my pay, but not to be surprised if it continued coming.

Sure enough, the months of February, March, April and May, I continued to receive biweekly checks from the university. Apparently if you don’t use your budget, you lose it the next year, so he just kept right on paying me my full salary.

Bureaucratic red tape — it’s not always all bad.

“I would like to get paid but not work.”

Hey! ME TOO. If you guys find a job like that (and you don’t take it for yourself), please feel free to give them my name.

i work but don’t get paid. i think i’d rather get paid.

Jan that is the funniest thing I’ve heard all day.

And Jessica Simpson! And Nicole Richie! Why not you too?

Hey, I figured it out and I’ll let you in on the secret —- I know you want to get paid but not work, I’m doing just the opposite; working without getting paid! It’s sort of the same, but not really!

Toiling endlessly doing the bidding of others, putting the welfare and interests of others before my own, long hours, dirty work, on call 24/7 —–

oh, wait. I’m a mom. You already do all those things, right?

Never mind, not such a big secret after all.

At our house, this conversation always ends with my husband wondering aloud why he didn’t marry an heiress, like he’d always planned, so he could be a kept man. And then I suggest that he go find an heiress, and we can all live off of her money.
And then he goes to work and I read blogs - I mean cook, clean, and take care of the kids.

William Butler Yeats had the same conversation:

Adam’s Curse

We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.’

. . . . . . . . . And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There’s many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, ‘To be born woman is to know-
Although they do not talk of it at school-
That we must labour to be beautiful.’

I said, ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

i like my job, actually…but i really wish i didn’t depend on the money so much…

So true! It seems like the i-need-a-vacation epidemic is really going around. All of my latest dreams involve chaise lounges and pina coladas…not sure how “american” that is.

Ye Shall purchase the amazingly flattering “Not Your Mother’s Jeans” from Nordstrom. Half yearly Baby!

Don’t forget Vanna White! OLD SKOOL!

RSS feed for comments on this post.

TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

Blog design by So Chic Design

Content

Categories

Admin