I’ve lived a lot of the past couple of years in solitude. There hasn’t been a permanence to much, partly because I’ve moved from one place to another without giving it much thought.
Before moving back to Jordan in 2016, I excitedly and intensely expected that it would be the first step to the fulfilment of my ‘dream,’ but the experience unfortunately proved to be a wickedly tough one.
After a couple of months, I decided enough was enough and traveled to New York in search of ‘normal’ jobs. I had at that point lined up a couple of interviews, one of which was with a supposedly reputable ‘direct marketing’ company located in Wall Street. They asked me to come in for training one day and it sucked.
Here’s what I wrote that day:
“Zaid today I went with the company to try out a day of their work (what they do). It’s terrible. They set up a table in the middle of the street and they sell free phone packages to lower income people.”
We took the subway to the shadiest part of New York City, set up a booth, and aggressively tried to sell ‘free’ phone packages to lower income people. It was humorous, but also very saddening. I still remember how the faces of the people ‘training’ me lit up when they talked about their mundane and robotic accomplishments. Ugh, it was so cringy and I did not belong there.
When one of the girls was telling me how she though my personality type fit the job description perfectly, I dipped out. I just walked away.
Yes, in the middle of her talking that crazy talk.
I just walked away, really.
Walking away has become the norm for me, whenever confronted with a situation like that.
Why stick around?
I tried the Jordan thing and it didn’t work out, so I walked away. Similarly, I tried the New York thing and it didn’t work out, so I walked away. Walked away from nothing to nothing, so it didn’t really bother me that much. It would’ve only bothered me had I been walking away from something.
I had nothing to lose. That which a normal person considers a ‘thing,’ I might consider nothing. From a normal perspective, I had many things-but from my perspective, I had nothing.
When interviewing for jobs in Colorado in 2017, I coined the term “strategic carelessness.” I didn’t care what jobs I was rejected from- because in the end, they were all just jobs and I would still be distanced from the fulfilment of my ‘dream.’
I thought being normal would feel nice, but it didn’t and now I’m stuck. Luckily, I’m always persistent when it comes to embarking on the journey that leads to the hopeful fulfilment of my ‘dream.’
I’ve had some dark failures the past couple of years. I feel like I’m now only a couple failures away from my first success.