{"id":4677,"date":"2019-04-15T08:47:40","date_gmt":"2019-04-15T06:47:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4677"},"modified":"2019-04-22T14:28:41","modified_gmt":"2019-04-22T12:28:41","slug":"alternate-working-life-fantasies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4677","title":{"rendered":"Alternate Working Life Fantasies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"picture
Three occupational paths: pizza delivery frog, ninja archaeologist, and firetruck.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In today\u2019s alternate working life fantasy, I am a standup\ncomedian podcaster. I wake up at 9, write comedy bits over coffee for two or\nthree hours. In the afternoon I interview big names in entertainment and comedy\nin the book-lined studio in the basement of my home. Every few months I do a comedy\ntour. In this fantasy there are no students, I am in charge of my own working\ndestiny, and that work entails being funny and talking to other people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time the fantasy ends (usually as I\u2019m stepping off\nthe tram at my actual job) I am so hypothetically proficient at the work that I\nwonder how I didn\u2019t go into this line of work. It would have been perfect for\nme. The gift of gab, the friendliness, the questions, the comedic\nself-loathing. I have it all! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t my only alternative working life fantasy, not by\na longshot. There\u2019s the bookstore owner one. A quiet, cozy bookstore which somehow\nbrings in huge amounts of money while I lounge in a summer bed reading novel\nafter novel. There\u2019s the folklorist one, in which I am paid by a university to\nteach about mythology and fairytales. I wear a lot of cardigans in that one. The\nSaturday Night Live one, the professional Sudoku player one, the wino who has\nit all figured out one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I even have a dentist one. My dad is a dentist, a thing\nwhose ramifications I understood quickly as a lad. At least three times a week someone\nasked me if I too was also going to be a dentist, four times a week someone who\nknew that my dad was a dentist asked to see my teeth, and five times a week my\nfather would abruptly interrupt any conversation or television show simply to\ntell any of his spawn in the room not to be a dentist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spoiler alert: I did not become a dentist. But that doesn\u2019t\nmean I don\u2019t include it in my alternative work fantasies. I\u2019m a small town dentist\nworking in the small town practice in my reasonably-sized country home. With a\nhot tub. The whole part about dealing with teeth doesn\u2019t appeal to me as much\nas the sitcomic hobnobbing I do with patients between appointments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I normally don\u2019t sit around fantasizing about\ndifferent work realities, recently these have ruled my unoccupied mind. This is\nalmost certainly because I\u2019m currently applying for a PhD. While many would embark\nupon that with excitement and confidence, I have taken the opportunity to second-guess\nevery occupational and professional decision I have ever made in my whole\nentire life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have no idea if other people do this, but I have to guess\nthat they do. There\u2019s no doubt a guy sitting in a cubicle wondering what may\nhave been had he followed his love of cubist painting rather than the\nreasonable and rational path of accounting, the one his parents pushed him to\ndo. I allowed myself to be swayed out of fields by what seemed like rational\nlogic. When I told an aunt I wanted to be an archaeologist, she said, \u201cMost everything\nhas been found.\u201d This seemed reasonably discouraging to a fourteen year old,\nbut my forty-year-old self once wondered: \u201cHow the hell would she know?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of you probably have similar experiences and might even\nharbor some resentment about it all. Are parents really to blame for trying to\nencourage their kids in a direction they see as safe or reasonable? Maybe not.\nI am sure when I told my mom was relieved when I ended up in the teaching\nfield. Most certainly she was thrilled when I walked away from my first career\nchoices of frog ninja and pizza delivery toad. And when I told her that I\nreally wanted to be a fire engine, she probably thought \u201cMan, does that come\nwith a 401K? Kids gonna be living in my basement for five decades.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But even with that caring attitude, I\u2019m sure there are others\nout there who were told that they could do anything if they wanted to. And in\nthe past years, I have realized that I could have been successful in fields that\nseem unlikely and difficult if I had put my mind to it. I try to say that to my\nstudents now.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes down to it, I am one of the fortunate ones\nthat loves his field and his working life in general. It complements my side hustle\nand I look forward to doing it. That\u2019s a lot to say about a job. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This morning it occurred to me that I do an awful lot in my\nreal life what I fantasize about doing in my alternate work realities. I wear\ncardigans, a university pays me to teach students about language and writing, I\nspend a lot of time surrounded by and writing books, cat sleeping in her day\nbed at my feet or on the chair next to me. Worse paths could have been taken. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And probably in one of those other realities, in my dentist\nlife or my folklorist life or my standup life, I imagine this life as an\napplied linguist and writer, living in a small European city in a charming and\nquaint flat. I have great friends and play hooky from school once a week for\nafternoon beers and about to apply for a PhD. No teeth cleaning. So it\u2019s not\nthat bad after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it won\u2019t stop me from daydreaming. Today\u2019s is the\npractical and totally up-my-alley occupation of ninja archaeologist.    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three occupational paths: pizza delivery frog, ninja archaeologist, and firetruck. In today\u2019s alternate working life fantasy, I am a standup comedian podcaster. I wake up at 9, write comedy bits over coffee for two or three hours. In the afternoon I interview big names in entertainment and comedy in the book-lined studio in the basement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4678,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/damiengaleone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/paths.jpg?fit=1021%2C580&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1dr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4677"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4679,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4677\/revisions\/4679"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}