The Economy of Me

"The young are naturally splendid and liberal because they still don't know what it's like to want, and they don't have to earn with their own hard work the riches within which they swim."

-"Of the Noble Customs and the Liberal Studies of Youth," Pier Paulo Vergerio, Padova, 1370-1444, Translated by Sam


I think I would consider myself a conservative liberal.

Whatever that means. All I know is that I went nuts at the grocery store because they were out of AA batteries, which means another day without NPR on my walkman at work.

Compensation. Today's thoughts have revolved and spun and whiz-banged around this idea. I stormed into the bedroom and started heaving unfolded and perfectly clean laundry into the air, yelling, "Laundry! Laundry! Tons and tons of laundry!" Because no matter how much laundry I do, there is inevitably more, and it spends more time on the floor than on my body.

I'm not pointing fingers here--it's a joint effort between Sam and I to leave our clothes all over creation, along with the food, and the books, and the CDs, and everything else. All in all, I think we're very clean. But somehow it compounded today as this week I celebrate my first five whole whopping months of full-time employment, and I ponder this idea of just compensation, and how at least at this point, I feel it's not happening to the extent that I would hope.

It could be ingratitude. It could be delusion. It could be the notion that I feel I have great talents to offer up to the world around me, talents which are stifled by circumstance. I could be playing the victim--not unusual for the likes of my kind. I could be longing for a new direction. Or I could be longing to make at least as much as if I were working retail or food service, which I'm not sure I am.

Strange how my experience at McDonalds seems so far . . . and yet, so close to home.