A phone call this afternoon bid the remark in the title of this posting. As a person who works with communities and does this as a job, I found it interesting that someone would even say something like that. And then you remember how diametrically opposite some of our personal lives are in comparison to our professional lives. How many of us fight with that inner struggle of this form of multiple personality disorder?
Analyzing things further: I laughed at the statement. Because, frankly, it was pretty accurate. In the recent past I have not listened to my friends in their warnings about Joshie Bear. People warned me back in the beginning stages that he was a bad idea. Back in November when he started on… and in December when he was gone for the month visiting family (read: cheating on me with another woman but none of us knew that until recently) or in…
Well you get the idea.
I look back even further. To my parents. To my rebellious punk rock days and what not. About how the fashion and the ideas have continued to flow even after all of that… not completely changed but… evolved as I stepped away from that lifestyle and created another and yet another.
I know that in the past I might have essentially had a similar conversation with my parents.. well… if I had stayed in Illinois and things were a wee bit different but you get the gist of it-
Stevo: Wait, time out. I just wanted to ask real quick, if I can. You believe in rebellion, freedom and love, right?
Mom: Absolutely, yes.
Dad: Rebellion, freedom, love.
Stevo: You two are divorced. So love failed. Two: Mom, your a New Ager, clinging to every scrap of Eastern religion that may justify why the above said love failed. Three: Dad, you’re a slick, corporate, preppy-ass lawyer. I don’t really have to say anything else about you do I dad? Four: You move from New York City, the Mecca and hub of the cultural world to Utah! Nowhere! To change nothing! More to perpetuate this cycle of greed, fascism and triviality. Your movement of the people, by and for the people got you… nothing! You just hide behind some lost sense of drugs, sex and rock and roll. Ooooh, Kumbaya! I am the future! I am the future of this great nation which you, father, so arrogantly saved this world for. Look, I have my own agenda. Harvard, out. University of Utah, in. I’m gonna get a 4.0 in damage. I love you guys! Don’t get me wrong, it’s all about this. But for the first time in my life, I’m 18 and I can say “FUUUUUCK YOU!”
Dad: Steven, I didn’t sell out son. I bought in. Keep that in mind. That kid’s gonna make a hell of a lawyer, huh?
Mom: Yeah, he takes after his father. He’s a son of a bitch.
Dad: Well fuck you dear.
But now, years later (I mean that movie is from 1998 for chrissakes) even after that whole speech and ultimate conclusion of one of my favorite movies of my teenage years, perhaps the message and culmination was telling me more than I knew. More that…
For the longest time my family and friends have been saying so many things about my potential career path. Marketing, although that is where my home has been and continues to be when clients surge (btw: Muse for Hire currently- comment here to connect about your projects) it wasn’t the two places I’ve been told I should essentially be since birth: writing and law.
I have stopped my world from evolving with my previous choices in lesser men. I’m not blaming them. I made the choices too. And you can look at even the postings about how much I stopped my world again the last time for this… stupid guy I fell in love with.
I gave Bear so much shit about pushing forward and pushing harder. He in turn gave me that same “sell out” argument above that… well I had over ten years ago. He told me recently that he never said he was a grown up but he was trying to be, at thirty five years old and counting he said he was “just a little behind…” and then he’d made fun of my arguing and corporate tendencies again.
So maybe Bear was right about that initial statement. Friendship wise. Career wise. Life wise. But not for the reasons he likely thinks. At the end of the day I guess this likely just makes me a… well, watch the video below and you’ll know the end punchline.
I am an Enigma 