“Circumstances do not make a man; they reveal him.”
- James Allen
It was immediately apparent when I moved here: Either you can get on top of New York City, or New York City can get on top of you. And if you don’t get on top of the city, the city WILL get on top of you.
Well, to large extent, it’s pretty clear that I’ve let New York City get on top of me in recent weeks. Key word: let. Implying: permission. Implying: submission.
And a weekend home, a weekend above it all, has led me to a rather different conclusion. FUCK THAT. Fuck New York City. Fuck the job market. Fuck anyone who stands in my way. Fuck being an effect of this world. I am a cause. I am a prime mover. I am a fucking caveman. I dictate the standards of my reality and will not have my reality dictated to me. Submission is simply unnatural in my DNA.
I’ve lost my edge, my aggression, my initiative. I’ve lost the essential selfishness that drove me to get into my fraternity and to the presidency thereof; to stealing my girl from her high school sweetheart to make her happier than she’d ever known; to attaining my RA job and keeping it when they tried to take it away from me (twice); to getting an A- in the Spanish class I was destined to fail; to managing $20,000 in funds to buy books from kids waiting in line at the Sundance book store; to my TA position; to claiming the editor-in-chief position after a semester spent away from the paper for an internship that they tried to deny me – none of which were entitlements, but were achievements I claimed by disacknowledging doubt, believing in my vision, ignoring naysayers, and working my fucking ass off.
I have lost touch with this attitude as my job search has continued to break me down. I’ve become a whiny bitch, a globule of frustration. How easily we forget that we come from a bloodline of champions. In all likelihood, I have an ancestor who once stood on this earth with a sword, probably killing someone, probably getting killed. Why do we underestimate our right to stand on this earth, slicing through impeding circumstances and creating new circumstances simply because we refuse to settle for less.
I came to the city with no frame of reference for job searching, certainly none for job searching in this god forsaken economy. And so the blueprint in my mind was completely faulty: I’ll send out 20 applications, get 10 interviews, 5 offers, and I’ll choose my favorite.
At some point between getting here and sending out 200 applications, going on one bullshit interviews, and getting more than 5 offers from scam companies, I made a critical error. Instead of altering my blueprint and thus my approach, I scrapped it entirely and SUBMITTED to the mundane, half-hearted job search of the average bystander, abandoning the fire that has always burned in my gut whenever I wanted to claim anything in life.
This submission has plunged me into a funk that has defied explanation until this moment, because it’s a tremendous feat to see the picture when you’re stuck inside the frame. This funk has metastasized through my attitude and my actions like a quiet virus eating through my core as I fly auto-pilot into the abyss of mediocrity. But this funk is bullshit. It’s time to get mad.
Our fraternity recognizes MEN of ACTION and CHANGE (MAC) – nothing less, complete with a brutal process to strip away any dead weight by driving our boys to either drop or step the fuck up. Our fraternity mantra comes from Frederick Douglas: “Without struggle there is no progress.”
Nothing of significance has EVER come without struggle – from the conquering of nations to the emancipation of slavery to the pursuit of employment to the pick-up of a girl at a dive bar. Struggle complete with all its distressing themes of resistance, rejection, and resilience. It’s all the same shit, rooted in the same principle: proactive action without compromise. Ordinary actions, taken consistently over a long period of time, producing extraordinary results.
So fuck the funk and let’s get funky.
I need to step up my initiative and action in my job search, with blatant disregard to the job market, my living situation, my checking account, and everything else. Without giving a fuck about any of that, and keeping an attitude of delusional confidence and self-assurance, my path is clear to get this job the same way I’ve gotten everything else I’m proud of in life: POSITIVITY BACKED BY BRUTE FORCE.
Bring it.
