the ever evolving Armin

"breaking my back, another day, another dollar"
-biohazard

I did not send that previous resignation letter to FedEx, though I had planned to send a more professional version of it to my boss earlier this week, having been told by Northwest Airlines that I'd start training in the middle of December. But, joy of joys, I found out NWA made an "embarrassing mistake," in the words of a Minneapolis HR lady. When they told me I could start working in December, they really meant Portland Airport cannot hire any new employees until January or even as late as mid-February. On top of that, they cannot absolutely guarantee me employment until that date. So, if I just got fed up and decided to quit work and cruise until 2008, I wouldn't even have the security of knowing a job was waiting for me*.

So, I'm still handling packages (stifle your giggles). And as I work in these trailers, tossing packages with reckless abandon, I try to think how I ended up here because Armin at age 5 probably would not have guessed that the 26 year old version of him would be this gosh darn successful.

In an old blog, I reflected on that ubiquitous, yet clearly misleading, childhood sentiment, "You can be anything you want to be when you grow up!" The big caveat that we NEVER tell kids is that your choices of what you can be diminish every single day that you live. I wouldn't be surprised if people disagree, but it makes sense to me. Also, I've been reading Dianetics, and while I don't agree with any of it so far, I do enjoy L. Ron Hubbard's gall--the utter balls--to make preposterous claims without any evidence. I'm going to start doing that, too.

So here is my "proof" of why EVERY SINGLE DAY THAT PASSES, YOU HAVE LESS AND LESS CHOICES OF "WHAT YOU CAN BE WHEN YOU GROW UP."

Postulate: Your life is finite.

1. If life is finite, then the number of decisions you make is finite. This number may be humongous, but it is not infinite. Scary to think, but before you die, you will have made one last, final decision. I hope it's something like which Playboy bunny should i sleep with tonight instead of which of my kids should i call to untangle my catheter.

2. Every decision you make means there was a choice you did not take.

3. With every choice you make, your life is presented by new decisions that often branch off from some previous choice you made, not unlike a phylogenetic tree, the diagrams they use to explain how organisms have evolved from common ancestors. The more time that passes, the more decisions you make based on previous choices and the harder it becomes to go back and reverse a decision that was made in the past.

Is it impossible? No, just more difficult, unless there is congruent evolution. Bats and birds can both fly, but do not have a recent common ancestor and developed wings independently of each other. Similarly, maybe at one point in your life you had the choice of being a surgeon or a ninja. You chose ninja and many years down the line, you started thinking, well I wish I chose surgeon, in retrospect, because ninjas have horrible retirement plans. But you realize the awesome sword handling abilities you developed translate well to a scalpel and you become a mob doctor. That's congruent evolution.

4. I was going to draw a phylogenetic tree on Paintbrush to illustrate my point, but it's pissing me off that the lines do not look straight. But hopefully, you get the idea already. It could also be likened to a Choose Your Own Adventure. Unless you're a damn cheater, it's not possible to go back and switch choices once you've made a decision.

5. I broke down and made the phylogenetic choice tree after all, but only one branching. Let's say this imaginary girl's name is Armin. And at 8 years old, Armin could have taken gymnastic lessons. Instead, she stayed home, watched TV and overate. Had she taken the lessons, perhaps her choices at age 14 would be whether to do a Wheaties commercial or a Nike commercial after she sweeps the summer olympics. But, statistics show that girls who do not participate in sports are more prone to drug use and early pregnancy. So based on the choice at age 8, maybe we can say Armin has another choice at age 14 between doing homework or having unprotected sex. For fun, let's say she picks the latter. You can imagine all the choices that come about from this series of choices, and had I more patience, you would see that her tree ends with deciding whether or not to bring her fat, fat baby onto Maury Povich's day time special "Help Me, Maury! My 8 month old baby is 113 lbs!"

Could she at age 21 decide, "I want to be an Olympic gymnast when I grow up?" I think even the most rosy eyed of us could agree, perhaps her Olympic ship has sailed off already.

6. Therefore, since life is finite, the number of decisions you make are finite, and the possibility to go back to old decisions and take the "other choice" is inversely proportional to the passage of time, it can be assumed that the choices of what you want to be when you grow up become smaller and smaller each day. QED.

This all comes up because, believe it or not, I did not graduate from college with a B.S. in package handling or FedEx studies. Actually, I studied chemistry and made a conscious decision to not pursue that career path. This is a big concern for my father who thinks I should get back into it, or really, any profitable industry. I, of course, shrugged off his advice as I do advice from most people. In this case, it's not pride that makes me ignore him; I really don't feel like being a chemist and don't feel I need to take a job just to make a good salary.

But, lately, since things have not been going perfectly as planned, I've been starting to doubt all of my decisions more and more. For all my cocky, trendkill** bullshit, acting like I'm so indifferent to the standards society sets for us--I don't walk to the beat of a different drum... I don't even have a drum, motherfucker!--when I have to prove that I can do any job for any shit money and still be happy, i fold like... well, like the "New Armin's" laundry which he folds immediately after it's pulled from the dryer because he's amazingly productive and disciplined nowadays.

I don't regret not being a chemist or not going to grad school after college. But, even if I wanted to get back into the field, I'm pretty far removed from chemistry at this point. Not impossible, but tougher. I'm like a coelacanth at an evolutionary dead end: "But look! I have lobed fins! If you just gave me a shot, I'm sure I could evolve into a land dweller."

With Northwest not working out this week, i took a punch to the gut. Not so much because it was my dream job or that it was the choice that would branch my phylogenetic tree into the perfect evolution of Armin. But, it was just what I imagined for myself at this point, and after I heard it wasn't happening, or at least not yet, I had that horrible feeling of "What now?" What was I qualified to do now? What did I want to do? It felt like all the choices were exhausted, not unlike my body.

These moments are good, though, because they force you to be honest with yourself. The last couple years teaching, I was able to say, "This is a good job, the money is more than adequate, I like it well enough." But really, was that what I dreamed to be? So i have to admit that any decisions I make have to lead towards a career in writing, or at least, enough free time to allow me to write recreationally, because that's all that's ever been interesting to me all my life.

So here's a pic of at least two writers who are not on strike. No, the one on the left is not Hunter S. Thompson, though I know he looks a lot like him with that very Hunter S. Thompson-ish hat. And yes, the one on the right is Matt Damon, your choice for the sexiest man alive.



* I did find out last night I was hired as kitchen staff for a new sushi restaurant in Portland. Jobs are all about the benefits, in my opinion, and while this job does not have the benefit of free flights around the US and select international points, it does have the benefit of not risking suffocation in an avalanche of fallen packages inside of a FedEx 18 wheeler. I still won't quit FedEx until i go to my first training on Monday; after the false promises of NWA, i'm a little dubious of any employment until i actually get a day of work in. God I hope no one asks me prepare Fugu.

** I use this phrase "trendkill" quite a bit. I did not coin this phrase. I got it from Pantera's breakthrough 1996 album "The Great Southern Trendkill," though I don't know if that's the first time the phrase had been used. As you would assume, it refers to the quality of being against trends that exist for the sake of being trendy.

"The trend is over and gone forever/ Waste of time, pantomime, circus doll, at the local mall/ Exterminate, it's all fake"
-"Sandblasted Skin" from Great Southern Trendkill

The problem with being against the trends because they are popular, though, is that being against trends as a principle becomes a trend in itself, doesn't it? If you like to wear Gap, but you refuse to wear it because it's popular and your equally anti-trend friends would make fun of you for wearing it, that's just as stupid. But it's a kickass album and for a sixteen year old kid who hated everything in the world, that's about as cathartic as music gets.

*********

Q & A

Thank you Tum Tum for answering the DTMFA question, thus making the Q & A section of this entry utterly useless. I hope it makes you feel good taking food out of a starving writer's mouth.