Randy Pausch

I realize that I've been complaining a lot lately about how much my job sucks and how unfair things are for me. I suppose that doesn't really help matters, particularly if I'm not making a more concerted effort to do what I really want to do and pursue my dream of making a career out of storytelling (in whatever form that takes). I saw this video and thought I'd share it:

Woe Is Me

It seems like every few months, life chooses to shit on me either out of some overwhelming desire to test my resolve and see how I respond to my fecal-coating or simply because it (life) gets some perverse pleasure out of my suffering.

I was fired recently, and though Maryland is an "at-will" employment state (meaning an employer can terminate an employee without any reason whatsoever), my employer chose to fabricate a reason and use that as the grounds for dismissal. Also, he did it over voicemail. That was a helluva day.

Karma's a bitch, or so I hear, and I want to know who I pissed off to be routinely fucked over when it comes to my employment situation. At 24, I am possessed of a bachelor's degree from a prestigious film school, an overwhelmingly vivid imagination and a passion for creative expression. Yet, I find myself back in Maryland waiting tables to scrape by on the bills.

Scraping by wasn't a problem when I had the management job - the bills were easy to pay just a month ago. Now, though, I'm roughing it from shift-to-shift.

I want to know what wondrous power compels the universe to routinely afford the disadvantaged no opportunity. Does some higher power, looking down upon His creation and seeing a person who wants little more than a modicum of fiscal security, laugh as he plucks at the strings of bondage tied so tightly to the hands and feet of his puppet?

We do our dance, ever the slave to some unseen force that puts in front of us choices that often differ little in the measure of discomfort they cause us in the end: "You can eat this bowl of shit or you can allow us to press thumbtacks into your skull."

If it weren't for the fact that I will be paying back Sallie Mae for the next 30 years of my life, things wouldn't be so bad. I could do better than scraping by from shift-to-shift. But since I've got big bills to pay, I've been forced to abandon any prospect of pursuing a creative career in entertainment (at least for a while) - it just won't pay the bills!

Instead, I'm considering that most ungodly of career paths, presenting me with a degree of stability necessary for me to make it through this trying time in my post-graduate life.

I think I'm going to work for the government.