UP IN THE AIR
There’s a 2009 film, Up in the Air starring George Clooney and Anna Kendrick. It’s absolutely fantastic if you haven’t seen it. It’s also very hard to watch. Clooney plays a corporate head lopper, someone who is hired to go to corporations and layoff dozens of people so the corporation can cut costs and make it seem like they’re doing better than they actually are.
There’s a scene where Clooney is talking to JK Simmons about the reality of the corporate job he took and cost it put on him.
“How much did they first pay you to give up on your dreams?”
Simmons frowns. “Twenty seven grand a year.”
I haven’t thought about this movie or that scene in a couple of years. Like I said, it’s fantastic, but so hard to watch. The performances of the actors getting “fired” is… gut wrenching. I ran across it randomly today. Coincidence I guess.
I’m getting laid off from my job.
I waffle back and forth between calm and despair. I find myself going back to that conversation. Twenty seven grand a year. I gave up long before that.
I’m not an ambitious person. I never wanted to be famous. All my heroes are writers and comedians. And it isn’t their fame or (as is so often the case) their infamy I respect. It’s their ability to enrich the lives of other people. At one point, I thought I might want to be a stand up comedian. But I didn’t want to be the next Dave Attell or Stephen Wright… I just wanted to make people laugh. It didn’t matter if it was an auditorium full of people or friends in my living room. I wanted to make people happy.
As I said, I’m not ambitious.
I don’t need a mansion. I really just wanted a wife and kids, a truck and a little house. And I wanted to do cool things with my friends. Travel, create, live.
Twenty seven grand a year.
I don’t work in the same office corporate structure that Simmons’ character worked in. I don’t have a wife, kids or a mortgage creeping down my neck, just the shackles of useless debt. I don’t particularly like my job. The environment isn’t bad. My co-workers are mostly pretty decent. The Christmas Parties were pretty great. But I was never embracing my abilities. I was under-utilized and unfulfilled. And in many ways, I felt miserable. But hell, its a regular check. And I was able to dull and defer my existential dread little by little by planning trips and doing things here and there. I would say, I’ll just stay until next March when my last trip is done, then I will be good to go.
But an unfulfilling job is like depression. It wraps itself around you and whispers in your ear. “Sure it’s cold in here, but it will be freezing outside. Stay a little longer, won’t you?”
And then one day you’re in your mid-forties and you wonder where all the time has gone and where is everybody?
The irony is that up until my job loss became apparent, I had felt fulfilled in a way I hadn’t in years. I’ve been writing. I’ve been working on a book, actually. Every stroke of the key makes me feel alive. Even now, as I lay my shame bare, I feel better writing it down.
Twenty seven grand a year.
I need to find another job and soon. I’m not an ambitious man. I want to be able to pay off my debt. I want to work. I want to be useful. I’d like to meet a nice girl that likes to travel and doesn’t own a cat.
And more than anything, I don’t want to go back to twenty seven grand a year, waiting for some asshole to come and tell me “you’re old and your services are no longer needed.”
