{"id":143721,"date":"2012-02-07T14:51:39","date_gmt":"2012-02-07T20:51:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/?p=143721"},"modified":"2013-05-17T17:40:34","modified_gmt":"2013-05-17T23:40:34","slug":"help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/?p=143721","title":{"rendered":"Help"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s an odd title for a post on this social analytical blog, an odd sentiment for the perennial optimist with an impressive if unusual resume (see About Steve Harvey<\/a>). But, as I’ve often said,\u00a0and have even occasionally highlighted\u00a0in my own case, we are not just disembodied minds\u00a0cognitively engaging with an infinitely yielding world; we are\u00a0also fallible and vulnerable human beings struggling with the sometimes terrifying challenges\u00a0of life on Earth.<\/p>\n

But I would not use this blog for this purpose, to address this theme, if it did not also serve some informative function, did not in some way contribute to the large, complex, multifaceted\u00a0map of\u00a0our social institutional landscape and our role in it\u00a0that I am, brushstroke by brushstroke, attempting to paint here. Sometimes, broad understandings are best illustrated\u00a0by particular examples, and as the voice of Colorado Confluence, it may be that all of my moods need to be expressed for this ongoing opus to develop most completely.<\/p>\n

The irony is that the\u00a0challenges I am currently confronting\u00a0are trivial in comparison to those of most of humanity, and yet they are crushing me under their weight, particularly because I have an eight year old daughter who depends on me absolutely, and who I can’t bear to let down. We don’t measure our circumstances against global or historical standards, but rather against our own expectations,\u00a0our own\u00a0sense of what is “normal,”\u00a0that of those similarly situated, and can, at times, jump out of Wall Street windows for losing what few ever dreamed of possessing in the first place.<\/p>\n

The worst\u00a0that is imminently threatening\u00a0me and my family, at least for a while, is that we may have to sell our house and possessions and move into an apartment. But we love our home, our “Casa Azul,” with it’s brightly painted walls and beautiful little garden, as if it were an extension of ourselves, and losing it doesn’t even feel like an option I can contemplate. I can’t accept that it’s one I should have to.<\/p>\n

As a teenager, I tried, with imperfect success, to take to heart Thoreau’s admonition in Walden<\/em> not to live a life of quiet desperation, and not to come to the end of my days wondering if I had ever really lived.\u00a0(Ironically, in Walden<\/em>, he also mentioned the burden of having a costly house, the absence of which made one far freer, a lesson I had also lived by until starting a family.) After spending the first quarter century or so of my adulthood serving that commitment by pursuing my dream of writing an epic novel that would distill and express some aspect of the essence of our existence in beautiful and eddifying form, and doing so by pursuing experiences and studies that I thought would best prepare me to\u00a0discover such a novel\u00a0amidst the swirls and eddies of our collective consciousness, I’ve spent the last ten years or so (since the novel’s completion) in transition, seeking a path toward more robustly affecting human consciousness\u00a0through\u00a0the social institutional landscape which is its embodiment.<\/p>\n

To do so, first I taught high school, then went to law school, then did some short contracts addressing child and family and mental health services. But I find myself now both unemployed (or nearly so)\u00a0and apparently unemployable. The institutional world assumes I have no place in it because I dared to live a life which frequently deviated from the\u00a0well-worn paths signalling to institutional actors a readiness to play a prescribed\u00a0role in\u00a0an adequately\u00a0ritualized way.<\/p>\n

At the risk of sounding bitter (which, unfortunately, I am, a bit, at the moment), little happens of great significance without imagination and a touch of bravado, and yet the institutional captains of social change cling to their unimaginative and safe check lists instead, and, by doing so, virtually guarantee that they will at best facilitate marginal improvements\u00a0even under circumstances in which\u00a0dramatic transformations are possible. That, of course,\u00a0leaves me<\/em>, with great talents and passion and a particular insight into how to ply those social systemic opportunities to maximum effect, and a desire to put\u00a0all of that\u00a0to work and to feed and house my family by doing so, out in the cold, almost literally, for not enough squares next to my name are ever checked off (though the squares next to my name that would be<\/em>, were the producers of such checklists able to imagine greater possibilities, far exceed in value and scarcity and difficulty of being\u00a0reproduced any of the superficial and easily rectified deficiencies that disqualify me). It’s enough to make one scream, which I am clearly in the process of doing, at least virtually.<\/p>\n

I know, profoundly and absolutely, as most who have seen me in action or have read my musings know almost as certainly, that I have something unique and valuable to contribute to this human endeavor of ours, that I am able and eager to do so with intense discipline and contagious enthusiasm, and that my impressive but atypical resume is part of what recommends me for positions that that same impressive but atypical resume\u00a0prevents me from\u00a0getting.<\/p>\n

It is that last fact that is driving me to the brink of despair. As I wrote recently on my Facebook page, I’m stuck in the mud on the road less traveled, hauling a cartload of esoteric cognitive\u00a0wares. The night is deepening, the weather worsening, and those cherished trinkets serve no purpose unless I can get them to market, and get out of this desolate place.<\/p>\n

Most recently (and the catalyst for this musing), I was invited first for a phone interview for a position that would be perfect for me, as the program director for an educational initiative whose logic I am intimately and professionally familiar with, and whose potential I am keenly aware of. I misread the signals, mistaking an invitation the next day\u00a0to schedule\u00a0an in-person interview, despite being told on the phone that such interviews would not be scheduled for a few more weeks, as an indication that they were particularly impressed with me, and wanted to move forward more quickly.<\/p>\n

I decided to spend all of my limited political capital to seal the deal, excited and relieved to have finally found both the perfect position (which I had not yet encountered in a year and a half of looking) and an apparent reciprocal recognition that I was the perfect person to fill it (a recognition which, at least on their part,\u00a0turned out to be illusory). I emailed friends and acquaintances who hold or had held public offices (including one U.S. Senator who generously came through for me), particularly those associated with education,\u00a0executive directors of nonprofits\u00a0and other\u00a0prominent public figures, and asked them\u00a0to\u00a0contact either my interviewers or members of the board of trustees of the organization to which I was applying, which most did, effusively praising me. Some of them, I cannot ask again. Others, I’m embarrassed to continue to impose upon. It was capital spent and now depleted or diminished.<\/p>\n

I arrived at the interview yesterday, unfortunately completely sleep deprived (unable to fall asleep at all the night before, something that rarely happens to me, but happened this time), only to discover my error; whatever the reason for the\u00a0accelerated interview\u00a0schedule, it was not some particular enthusiasm\u00a0for me as a candidate. One of my interviewers, it seemed to me, was looking for candidates that satisfied the conventional check list, which I never do. I was thrown off, answered a couple of questions badly, became too animated when expressing my passion for the mission that the position represented to me, and was thanked at the end of the interview for my interest, and told that I would be contacted by the end of the week as to whether I would be invited for the next round a week and a half later.<\/p>\n

I fell from the brink of salvation to the depths of despair in the blink of an eye. My dream job seemingly within reach was a mirage that shimmered and disappeared in the hot desert sun. I have been unable to recover from the disappointment. Even if, improbably, I am invited back for the next round, it was clear that the criteria to which I will be held are the criteria that discount me. My unique talents, my ability to rapidly learn whatever knowledge and skills are required, my passion and creativity and social institutional savvy, my leadership qualities and organizational acumen, all are irrelevant at the levels at which I must enter, because they’re qualities too valuable to be valued, in too short supply\u00a0and too hard to measure to be\u00a0placed on the check list of criteria to be\u00a0considered.<\/p>\n

So writing this is my therapy and my refuge. It is my note in a bottle, flung into the sea, giving me hope that maybe someone will find it and send a ship out to fetch me. When you find yourself stranded on a desert isle, you grasp\u00a0hold of\u00a0what hope you can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s an odd title for a post on this social analytical blog, an odd sentiment for the perennial optimist with an impressive if unusual resume (see About Steve Harvey). But, as I’ve often said,\u00a0and have even occasionally highlighted\u00a0in my own case, we are not just disembodied minds\u00a0cognitively engaging with an infinitely yielding world; we are\u00a0also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[11787,11790,942,196,412,4024,11795,11786,11794,11793,11797,11785,8848,11798,11792,11791,11789,11788,287,11796],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143721"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=143721"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":402145,"href":"https:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143721\/revisions\/402145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=143721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=143721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=143721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}