An email from the company that placed me where I am. They want me to focus on where I want my career to go with the company that places me where I am at, let’s call them ABCD.
They seem to think that I am a careerist, someone that wants to dig in my heels and get entrenched in this company, when all I want is a job that I go in in the morning at 8:00 a.m and leave in the afternoon at 5:00 p.m. and that’s the job.
They stay on their side I stay on mine.
“Hi John, I love where this is going however, your development plan needs to be focused on the where you want your career to go with ABCD. We need to think of the future. A couple of questions…
Do you want to stay in the receptionist position?
You mentioned your professional future. What does that look like for you? You have so many possibilities at ABCD, think outside the fruit box.
What position is the end goal?
You mentioned refining your communication skills?
What training will you take to achieve this?
Like I said, I just want to come in and do my job. I don’t plan to have a career or any ambition or any dream since I’ve never had them before, and I’m much too old to apply them today.
Just had an encounter with a gentleman named Damien, whose real name is not bothering to make it up because he just wasn’t that interesting a guy. Damien explained that he liked working at the other office where I started at which is a lot more uptight than where I’m at now. That is what rendered Damien uninteresting.
I explained that I much prefer this one, and he just didn’t seem to care cuz they don’t do conversation or small talk, it’s not something he likes to do, so he’s more comfortable sitting there awkwardly a few feet away from me and not interacting, so it wasn’t the end of the world though.
So it’s my lunch time right now, and I’m at my usual spot, or at least close to it. So it’s a woman who is documenting everything on her phone, where I usually sit. That’s another quiet day I’m keeping myself busy.
I’m dictating, not documenting.
Yesterday, before I left Mike in the apartment he suggested I bring an umbrella since heavy rain storms were expected and that’s what happened. But Mike forgot to close the window because I supposedly said that weather forecasters are wrong half the time.
And of course it rained. It rained quite a bit and Bill was on the highway and the highway flooded he didn’t get home until late and I was fast asleep.
I just walked away from the woman who is documenting everything about her life. Now I sit on the stoop of a condemned building or at least a building that’s being renovated and gutted from the inside out.
Just had a quick talk with Mike. He’s filled out 120 job applications in the past two or three weeks hopefully one of them will get back to him. He’s going to keep throwing things at the wall and he’s going to see what sticks.
The building under renovation seemed a bit sketchy or at least made me uncomfortable enough to get up and walk away from that. So now I sit under scaffolding which is also sketchy. I do like this neighborhood more than I like Tribeca.
I’ve stepped away from the scaffolding and am standing 3 ft away from it, not under it.
How do I tell the company that placed me here that I’m just looking to work, not looking to make a career, I’m much too old for that? I think if I wanted a career, I would have thought of it years ago, but I never did; I just wanted a job.
The young woman who took my spot has vacated this spot, and I am sitting here next to someone’s bicycle, and they did not know how to lock it up properly, so they locked it up incorrectly, taking up three spots for one bike. How inconsiderate.
Bill is at his gym on West 73rd Street behind the Dakota. I hope he’s having a good time.
Listening to Candy-O by The Cars, remembering driving around with Henry Venegas in 1979, listening to this, smoking cigarettes at Summit Avenue and Essex Street.
Gemini AI reimagining as a James Baldwin essay:
What follows is a reflection on the provided text, reimagined in the style of James Baldwin.
—
## The Weight of Expectation, The Lightness of Being
One receives, from time to time, certain communiqués that lay bare the chasm between what one is and what one is perpetually expected to be. This latest missive, arriving from the benevolent architects of my present circumstance—let us, for convenience, call them ABCD—is precisely such a document. It speaks of “development plans” and “career trajectories,” of “thinking outside the fruit box” and the nebulous concept of an “end goal.” It speaks, in essence, of a future I have never much bothered to imagine for myself, let alone covet.
They perceive, these well-meaning orchestrators of professional destinies, a “careerist.” They envision a soul eager to “dig in heels,” to become “entrenched” in the very fabric of their enterprise. But the truth, unvarnished and stark, is far simpler, far less ambitious. I desire, quite plainly, a job. A cadence, if you will, that commences at eight in the morning and concludes, with a quiet finality, at five in the afternoon. And that, dear reader, is the job. Let them ply their trade on their side of the ledger, and I, mine, on the other. A mutual, unspoken armistice.
“Hi John,” the email begins, a saccharine overture to a proposition I find profoundly disquieting. “I love where this is going however, your development plan needs to be focused on the where you want your career to go with ABCD. We need to think of the future.” The future. A word so often invoked by those who presume to know what is best for you, a gilded cage offered in the guise of opportunity. They ask: *Do you want to stay in the receptionist position?* As if the very notion of stasis were an affront to progress. *You mentioned your professional future. What does that look like for you? You have so many possibilities at ABCD, think outside the fruit box.* The “fruit box” itself, a curious metaphor for the confines of one’s own imagination, or perhaps, the lack thereof. And then, the pointed inquisitions: *What position is the end goal? You mentioned refining your communication skills? What training will you take to achieve this?*
The truth is, I harbor no grand ambitions, no soaring dreams of corporate ascent. Such aspirations, if they ever flickered, were long ago extinguished by the steady, unassuming march of days. I am, to put it plainly, too old for such elaborate fictions. If a “career” was to be sought, it should have been apprehended years past, when the spirit was perhaps more pliable, more susceptible to the siren call of advancement. But it was not. A job, simply, was all that was ever desired.
—
The world, even in its most mundane manifestations, continues its ceaseless, indifferent ballet. Just now, an encounter with a gentleman named Damien. His true name, I confess, holds no sway over my memory, for he proved utterly unremarkable. He spoke, with a certain flat affect, of his fondness for the other office, the one where my own journey began—a place, I remember, of far greater rigidity than my current haunt. This, precisely, was the essence of Damien’s uninteresting nature. I offered my preference for this more relaxed precinct, but my words seemed to dissipate into the air between us. Conversation, it appears, is not his preferred medium. He seemed content to sit, a few feet removed, in a pool of awkward silence. And so, the world did not end.
It is lunchtime now, and I find myself near my accustomed spot, though not quite in it. A woman, absorbed in the silent ritual of documenting every fleeting moment of her existence on her phone, occupies my usual perch. Another quiet day, then. I occupy myself, not with documentation, but with dictation, a silent rebellion against the world’s insistent clamor for visible evidence.
—
Yesterday, before my departure, Mike, in the familiar confines of the apartment, offered a prescient warning. “Bring an umbrella,” he advised, for the heavens were preparing to weep. And indeed, they did. Yet, Mike, in his wisdom, forgot to close the window. For, as I had supposedly declared, “weather forecasters are wrong half the time.” And so, the rain poured in, a torrent. Bill, caught in the deluge on the highway, arrived home late, long after I had surrendered to the quiet oblivion of sleep.
I have just now retreated from the woman who meticulously chronicles her life. My current refuge is the stoop of a condemned edifice, or at least one undergoing the throes of radical renovation, gutted from within. A quick word with Mike, just moments ago. He has, in the span of two or three weeks, cast a hundred and twenty applications into the indifferent ether of the job market. He hopes, with a certain weary optimism, that one, just one, will yield a response. He will, he declared, keep “throwing things at the wall” to see “what sticks.”
The renovated building, with its skeletal framework exposed to the raw air, gave me pause. It held a certain disquiet, an unsettling air that compelled me to rise and walk away. Now, I find myself beneath the precarious embrace of scaffolding, an equally dubious sanctuary. Still, this neighborhood, for all its imperfections, holds a greater appeal than the sterile elegance of Tribeca. No, I correct myself, I have stepped away from the scaffolding; I stand now three feet removed, no longer beneath its shadow.
—
How, then, does one articulate this simple truth to the company that placed me here? That I seek merely to work, not to embark upon a grand “career”? That I am, quite genuinely, too old for such elaborate undertakings? Had the seed of a career been planted within me, it surely would have germinated years ago. But it never did. A job. That has always been the sum of it.
The young woman, who briefly claimed my spot, has now vacated it. I sit here, beside a bicycle, carelessly secured, monopolizing three precious spaces for a single machine. The sheer inconsideration of it. Bill, I imagine, is at his gym, tucked behind the formidable bulk of the Dakota on West 73rd Street. I hope his exertions bring him some small measure of joy.
The strains of “Candy-O” by The Cars drift into my present, a phantom limb of memory. I am transported, suddenly, to 1979, to the passenger seat of Henry Venegas’s car, cruising through the nascent darkness, cigarettes held loosely between our fingers, the scent of burning tobacco mingling with the promise of youth, at Summit Avenue and Essex Street. And in that moment, the relentless insistence of career plans and development strategies recedes, replaced by the simple, profound echo of a song and a vanished time.