My Brilliant Semi-Career

Sometimes I worry that the only work I am fit for is running a secondhand bookstore. And the only business partner I could handle would be my cat.

This current state of work-related anxiety is brought to you by my recent career shift. I hinted before that I had handed in my notice at my old job, and found another. Now, I have some feelings about my old place of employment - good, so-so (SOMEBODY MUST BUY THE UNIVERSITY MAP SILK SCARVES, BUT WHO??), etc - and I probably won't write about it without the benefit of time, distance and alcohol. My new job doesn't look like it would give me any more raw material to write about, though it does at least have a window in the office. I'm moving on up. Right out of the basement.

The fact I'm excited about a daily dose of Vitamin D makes me reflect on how swiftly my career expectations changed after graduation, and how drastically. I wasn't joking before when I said that I entered McGill convinced I was four years away from becoming a Russian-speaking economist. I knew that dream died the moment I switch my major from economics to cultural studies, but by then I was equally convinced something grand and culturally significant lay in my path. I would have also settled for interning at a publishing house and making adorable dinners for my even more adorable boyfriend in the evening. And then I graduated, spent a year in the trenches of porn, and acquired an amusing career anecdote at a cost of nothing less than my soul. You think I kid, but no - hentai. Look it up.

It's the same story of exchanging dreams of cake for the reality of bread, a narrative my generation seems stuck in, one personal essay on Jezebel at a time. I'm trying to embrace it now, I suppose. Even if this is all there is, at least there's a window now.