The Ideal Job

Not long ago, a friend of mine asked me about the ideal job of the Gen X & Y professional. Specifically, she wanted to know how she could find out more about how Gen X & Y professionals would describe their "ideal job."

My first response was to ask her if she'd tweeted the question. (While I am on Twitter, I do have much to say about the phenomenon, as you can imagine. Don't get me started right now, that is a whole other conundrum for a whole other monologue.)

But after getting her email, my brain wouldn't stop thinking about my own "ideal job." Funny thing is, I don't have a job. I wouldn't even say that I have multiple jobs right now. More like projects -- multiple and myriad projects. So many projects that I'm borderline overloaded, over-committed, over-extended, however you want to describe it -- scattered, even.

My current projects:

• 6-week summer course at Sacramento City College (read: grading 25 essays per week between now and the end of July)
• The Urban Hive (read: finally part of establishing an uber cool coworking space in Midtown with two uber cool partners, James and Brandon)
• Just Write Sacramento (read: creative program director a week-long summer writing program for high schoolers)
• freelance writing/editing (read: aspiring toward this goal; and actually missed the mark by only $250 last month)
• docent training at The Crocker Art Museum (read: must plan and lead a tour first thing tomorrow morning)
• kick-ass party for my 30th birthday (read: not necessarily "job related," but important nonetheless)

Whew. Even just writing all that out makes me tired. That doesn't even include the fun stuff like the weekend trip to Ashland my sis and I take every year in July, or the weekend I'm trying to get up to Tahoe for a bit of Q.T. with the fam, or plain old, every day socializing with friends.

Regardless, I still consider everything I do my "ideal job." Why? It is exactly this: I set my own schedule. I choose how I spend my time. I choose what projects I want to work on. Granted, not all of them are income-earning projects, but some stuff in life is worth more than a paycheck. And I wouldn't trade that freedom and flexibility for any amount of money in the world.

The response I wrote to my friend who initially asked me the question also included my standard diatribe about the Creative Class and how this generation is redefining "job." We're basically creating a new workstyle because our lifestyle depends on it.

The only thing left to do is find Sacramento's Creative Class -- where are you, and what's your "ideal job"?

Thursday, June 4, 2009

On the train, I looked out the window and tears rolled down my cheeks.

Tiny purple wildflowers flecked the foliage along the train tracks as we whizzed past. Bits of confetti sprinkled from heaven. I imagined my tears running down, out the window and dripping along the path to stain the flowers. Passing over a river, the tears continued to pour down and mingle with the mountain water, fresh, cool and splashing over rocks.

I tried so hard to figure out why I couldn’t stop crying. The surface answer is that every time I say goodbye to Omi, I cry.

What if it is our last goodbye?

Just writing the questions brings another flood of tears.

But there is something beyond the fear of a last goodbye.

A visit to Omi’s is essentially the equivalent to staying at an authentic gasthaus in the German countryside: fresh coffee awaits every morning the moment you get up and shuffle downstairs, bare feet kissing the hardwood floor. For breakfast, pick from a schmorgasborg of pancakes, waffles, French toast, super snackers, scrambled eggs – or, all of the above.

Take a seat at the breakfast table, a café bistro set with red plaid seat cushions and tablecloth that match the kitchen’s red walls. A soft breeze whispers through the house from the yellow sun room, soft and cheery, brushing the lace curtains to the side until it swirls around the stairway’s pine banister.

After breakfast, sip a second cup of coffee outside, rocking in the porch swing with the flower boxes, wind chimes and humming birds.

She told me about Mutti, her mother, a petite woman who worked culinary miracles in their tiny Frankfurt apartment, where the kitchen is smaller than an American bathroom. Young Marlies used to watch Mutti in the kitchen and wonder how she always seemed to produce delicious morsels of food when there was none.

“She was an angel,” Omi said. “Sometimes I even saw her wings.”

She'll be 81

Marie Louise (Marlies) Davis
July 6, 1928-

Bill’s true love.
Linda’s mother.
Janna’s Omi.

Said goodbye to her today.

Tears. Uncontrollable tears.

Why so many tears?

He was just 52

Robert Lee Mallahan
July 15, 1931-March 31, 1984

Marlies's first love.
Linda's father.
Janna's Papaw.

Saw his grave today.

Tears. Uncontrollable tears.

Why so many tears?

The Power of Ten

My sister babysits for two little girls who are 7 and 4 (I think). Recently, the 7-year-old asked Kendra when she was born, and she said, "1988." To which the little girl brilliantly responded, "Wow, you were born in the NINETEENS?"

Age. Time. Years. Change. Milestones. Turning points.

I'm traveling right now on what I think will be the trip of a lifetime, and it occurred to me today how apropos it is that I'm taking it this year -- my 30th year.

Three decades. It doesn't sound like much to say it like that. But then again, I did witness the rise of the Internet and the Information Age. I mean, when I was in high school, we didn't even have cell phones or text messaging (read with same tone as parents saying, "when I was a kid, we had to walk up hill both ways, in the snow.") But what is that when compared to things like T.V. and men walking on the moon? (There is this paragraph comment by E.B. White that I use with my students in a revision exercise. He wrote it as a response to when man walked on the moon. You know, back in the nineteens.)

The trip. I am visiting family and friends on a three-week trek from Ohio to New Hampshire to North Carolina. The family I'm seeing are my three living grandparents, all 80, or close to it. My plan is to spend time with each of them collecting and recording family stories. (I even bought myself a handy-dandy digital recorder just for the occasion.)

But before getting to Omi's (Mom's mom), I spent yesterday and today with a college friend, who also lives in Ohio. Today we figured out that we've known each other for 12 years, just a little longer than one decade. (I have one friend who I've known for almost 21 years, and I know that number to the exact date because we met the day before my sister was born.) We talked about how much changes in 10 years. When we met, we were 17 and 18, freshman in college. Now she has been married for 7 years and has four kids: 6, 4, 2 and 7 months.

Omi will be 81 in July. She was born and raised in Frankfurt, Germany; moved to America in 1954.

Wonder what she'll say has changed in eight decades.