La-Limbo Land

Janice asked my 2nd degree Ex (Who I will dub 'monkey hands' for fun) what she thought of my regression. The regression being that I was at university and back working casual in a market research call center. This is regression because back in 2004-'03 some time I was at uni and working casual in a market research call center.

In the intervening years I had a full time job and a 'promising' career. I don't know what monkey hands said, or more likely I don't remember monkey hands answer. Anyway that's not so much the point as having an opportunity to call monkey hands 'monkey hands' was the point of that anecdote.

The implication of Janice's question is, that there is some kind of scorecard, and rather than simply being able to progress through life we can somehow regress forwards through life. I would be regressing if knowledge was not cumulative in nature and I was attending some Nietzschien institution of 'unlearning' where the end result was being stripped of my qualifications whilst simultaneously having my mind whiped of my experiential development at Honda whilst the economic benefits were undone.

The economic benefits cannot be undone, I can only consume them or possibly gamble them away. At best I could be shortchanged with mere 'psychic income' like the 'thrill' of lottery tickets or gambling to show for my savings. Then knowledge is cumulative, true economics and marketing might contradict eachother but they are not irreconcilable. Infact I plan to take the fulcrum of economics 'the rational utility maximiser' and simply expand that sentence out into everything I know (know I don't know) about people's minds from marketing.

So 'regression' is not the word. I'm progressing. One may have noticed that last year where my 'progression' through life took on the aspect of 'drifting' (to the superficial observer) I was obsessed with failure and losing. I still am.

I'd like to talk about my call center work though. It's wonderful. I mean the work itself is not wonderful, intellectually stimulating or particularly rewarding. No! What is wonderful about it is the pool of talented young people that work there.

It's ironic, but far from losers that may form the charectirization of such professions in political discourse and popular media. The majority of call center workers (in Australia) are young people undertaking higher education studies trying to accumulate savings and earn disposable income whilst covering their living expenses.

One may be tempted to call them 'ordinary decent folk' whom due to unfortunate economic circumstances are the recipients of misdirected anger from other 'ordinary decent folk' who alas cannot distinguish between the diaspora of telemarketers who cumulatively aggrevate them.

But this is inaccurate. It is inaccurate because having been priveledged to 'regress' I have come to appreciate how extraordinary these quasi-young people are.

I say quasi because 'young' is a relative concept. I find them generally to be young, whereas there are coworkers in my call center that would shunt me into the young category, furthermore I can certainly imagine younger people than the people I work with.

Now, to talk about the 'extraordinary' part, I shall sidestep a bit and raise another anecdote myself and for lack of a fun moniker to conceal identities we'll call Not-bryce. I was visiting Not-bryce in melbourne one year back when I was a Balifornian through and through (and always will be!) and she was talking about how great the Rockestedford is. Now naturally the Rockestedford involving choreography and general 'gay-ness' in the teenage balifornian sense and let's face it, probably in a literal sense too, is the kind of event I was not into (and never will be, largely because of the choreography which I fear and not homosexuals, which I don't, unless its Omar from 'The Wire' and that is because of his tendency to shoot people with guns which I also fear, the homosexuality is coincidental.) Anyway, my scepticism that the Rockestedford is great must have been plain on my face, because Not-bryce began talking about how great it was to be around the positive energy and youthful exuberence... or something and I said (being facetious you understand) 'yeah, they haven't had their dreams crushed yet!'
Not-bryce didn't find this as funny as I evidently did and some kind of tirade followed, I know Not-bryce doesn't like me paraphrasing or misrepresenting her so I won't attempt to recall and reproduce the details. (Alas, i've always quickly forgotten criticism anyway).

Now, back on track. Or the quasi-track at least. What is extraordinary about the quasi-young people I work with, and infact this extends to even the quasi-old people I work with: 'they haven't had their dreams crushed yet.' (In some ways the old people at the call center are more extraordinary but that would take me off the quasi-track).

I understand now when I was this sonny-jim-whipper-snappers age why periodically extraordinary quasi-old people (and we are talking quasi-60 year olds here) would treat me like I was a breath of fresh air, like I was a genius. Unfortunately at the time I took their violent likitude of me as endorsement of my theory that I was some kind of genius. I throw out this theory now in favor of my new theory. It wasn't something they saw I had, it was something they saw I lacked. That sinical world view that my wildest dreams are impossible.

Alas, every test group needs a control group. Before I introduce them I want to put in a caveat as insurance against you, the readers ego, narcisistically reading some insult into this. I'm of the general view that as we get older our physical or chronological age becomes diminishingly reliable as an indicator of our age both physically and mentally. Another insight my job affords me is that I talk to a wide range of people between the ages of 16-100 eache night. The number of times I assumed I was talking to a 40 year old and they have turned out to be 75 is roughly on par with the number of times I've talked to a 70 year old and they turned out to be 40. So certainly there are exceptions...

...but generally: What I call quasi-young is between the ages of 19-24. For the purposes of this post, quasi-old is about 25-35. And since it's getting tedious I'm going to drop all the 'quasi' talk.

The control group is 25-35 year olds. Now a lifetime of romcoms about perpetual bridesmaids and former SNL cast members that can't grow up and what not prepared me for the depressing period of life which is where all the people you knew start to get married and settle down to a life less ordinary. In much the same way that my primary school teachers invested a not-insubstantial amount of time preparing me to deal with the peer-pressure that would get me hooked on smoking (including role plays) this advice turned out to A) exagerate the threat and ii) was delivered too late to those whom it bore the most relevance.

The majority of my friends as I head into this 'old' phase are not depressing because they are getting married. They are depressing because their lifestyles imply that their dreams have either 1) been crushed or C) where never ambitious to begin with.

Infact, I remember another Balifornian dialogue with a peer, let's call him Donut-burns that was about the life ambitions of yet another peer, let's call him Sticky-date. Donut-burns professed that Sticky-dates life ambition was to 'get married settle down and raise kids'. Now given my memory may not be too reliable now that I am old, Donut-burns wittily evaluated that this dream was 'admirable, but fairly dead end.'

So to be charitable, let's admit that society is comprised of individuals, the human-race infact, and like a combustion engine powered auto-mobile most of it's energy is going to be exerted just moving itself. Similarly for the propulsion of the human race we need some critical mass of the individuals in our society to expend their lives simply raising the next generation of individuals.

'We can't all be Ghenghis' in other words. But I feel I am being charitable.

I'm also getting ahead of myself. While I am regressing, and having the priveledge of working with young people. My old peers are 'progressing' (according to Janice) by knuckling down on their careers.

Furthermore, rather than giving up party-bachelor lifestyles and getting married, they are giving up party-disposable-income lifestyles and buying houses. This I never anticipated. The only person that warned me of this held a minority position. Ironically they were also one of the minorities to predict the collapse of US real-estate which caused the GFC. It was Peter Schiff who made the claim 'it used to be two-people got married and bought a house. Now people buy a house and get married, they have two houses they gotta sell one of them!' (paraphrasing).

This depresses me. Why? Well that was explained to me by Germaine Greer in a book that hails from the days when people got married then bought a house. 'Insecurity as freedom'. A mortgage is an ongoing financial obligation, an investment that carries with it risk. The major risk people worry about is defaulting, since an amortised mortgage loan treats the asset as collatoral. So if you default on your loan and the bank forecloses they take your home, house and land.

This has a depressing observable effect. People's risk tolerance goes down. They BELIEVE they CAN'T walk away from their jobs (not realising that they CAN, lose their house and in reality actually don't want to. I'm of the somewhat stalwart opinion that these people misdirect their anger at their employers whereas their insecurity and lack of bargaining power is in fact, by their own choice).

Most people when I hit them with the financial equivalent of 'legalese' (I don't know what it's called yet) brush it off and tell me they aren't buying a house for 'Financial Security' but for 'Residential Security' the basic human need for shelter.

Alas, security is security and either way you get it. People don't realise that being locked into a property is almost* the same as locking yourself into a job. But instead of signing a 20-40 year contract with your boss that says 'this contract is open to renegotiation pending the agreement by both parties (employer and employee)' which in general is a provision for payrises and promotions, you effectively sign one that says 'this contract is open to renegotiation pending the agreement of one party us!(not you)'

Of course the actual contract is with a bank, the aforementioned onesided contract is a hypothetical illustration of your diminished negotiating power.

Blah, too much housing talk tohm. What's so depressing about being locked into a career? That is this security that denies freedom? Well let's just say I've always found something miserably depressing about the heirarchy of professions according to private-secondary-school students. That is Doctors and Lawyers at the top, moving down to Dentists (first losers) and Actuaries, Accountants and Engineers ... Telephone Booth Cleaners (soon to be redundant).

I find it miserable because surely, surely a young person can gaze higher than doctors and lawyers. They could want to be Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, Slash, Michael Jordan... uh... Madonna! They could in fact want to be actual stars instead of just the highest paid regular joes. Most careers that can afford a mortgage rule out the prospect of being a true star, those careers are high risk. The payment is binary - you either get paid Bazillions or you don't get paid at all. Furthermore the distribution is not equitable, it's winner takes all, 99% earn $0 and 1% earn the Brazillions.

These are professions you only embark upon if you are a delusional dreamer. They are undertaken by 6) people who grossly miscalculate the odds of success or B) people who are not phased by the prospect of failure. I somewhat narcisistically would describe myself as the later and as having been the former (back when I was young).

Most of the young people I mix with are the former. The call center work is just a stepping stone, so too are their chosen careers. They may be undertaking studies (or saving for) some career more conventional, but they don't see their performance as being conventional. Their career too is some stepping stone to higher dreams where houses, partners and babies are all afterthoughts not pressing concerns.

This is refreshing, invigorating, uplifting. If I was sinical I would anticipate that these quasi-young folk will in due course become old folk. They will embark bright eyed on their career before they experience that congested highway to nowhere - the pyramid organisational chart where for every promotion there are 3 (and possibly limitless) contenders. If you will (and I'm aware I'm starting to strain metaphores) most (office) workplaces are the organisational equivalent of a freeway where instead of having 5 lanes for every onramp has 3 onramps for every lane (and if you get off this one without finding another one your house explodes).

If we strain that metaphore and find our stepping stone in the bottom, what I find is that the transition from 'young' to 'old' is where that stepping stone starts weighing you down dragging you to the bottom of your dream-continueum rather than propelling you towards the stars.

Confused? I am.

The caveats! Chances are if you are reading this and know me personally, don't worry you are probably not one of them 'old fogies' between 25-36 that I'm talking about. I pick my friends carefully, and ordinary don't typically make the cut. Enough of this blatent sycophancy, remember I also said age isn't a reliable guide?

That 25-36 isn't a reliable guideline either. My dreams have not yet been crushed, even the ones that have, I don't care because I don't fear the failure as much as I fear not trying. I live in the 'Limbo land' of age, I know I am not as young as these nipperkins I work with, I'm not finishing my first degree and trying to line up depressing office jobs with perplexing enthusiasm being excited at how much more exciting working in an office will be compared to working in a call center in an office.

However I am also not ready to accept gracefully that I am old and go talk to a bank about how exciting it will be to establish a foothold in the housing market (facetiousness warning), a market so promising the bank needs to lend me money to buy into it rather than just buying into it itself with the same money it is going to lend me anyway, but with presumably higher yeilds it wouldn't have to share with me!(end facetiousness). Thus I am stuck in limbo, my body deteriorates but my mind stays fresh and delusional. But almost anybody can come to Limbo-land, all you have to do is dream.

Secondly, this post began with Janice pointing out my regression. I used to work in a Market Research call-center that no longer exists in Melbourne. I hope I don't come across as honestly believing that having your dreams crushed is inevitable. In fact I believe we can only crush our own dreams, explicitly or implicitly (by seeking security in one form or another). My old call center was stepping stone to band members of Barbarion, Skybombers and Temper Trap. Band members I all worked with and I was only there 8 months. They are only the successful stone-steppers that will have something sweet and real to show for their existence to their children or mentees that I know of. But for a room that only employed 100 people or so 5 of which I am quasi in-touch with, that seems like a lot.

So keep dreaming!

*but not-quite I will concede this much.