what the fuck am i getting myself into with this grad school stuff

Another option: fundraising/grantwriting

You're trying to piss me off now, aren't you?

Not at all - I'm just trying to think of jobs where the ability to write well would be desirable that isn't journalism or technical writing.

I'm more than just a good writer! I can lift tins of paint! It's on my CV! Forgive me, I'm going quietly catatonic here.

if you got a job working at an art supply store you could meet lots of cute girls.

if i could be in a band and write and see my friends, i would take that in a flash. i would bite your hand off. three stages of what is commonly reputed to be 'the very best education money can buy' have proven each as shallow as the last; at least i met some good people along the way

your experience is not rare.

The thing you're missing here is that you are supposed to use those good people to find jobs.

not all of us went to Harvard.

Yeah, some of us went to Brown.

LOL!

LJ most people go through the "I won't have my dream job and do everything i want" phase a little sooner than this, dig?

I think he's at a normal age to be having those feelings.

uh yeah i forget dude's like 20 sometimes.

may as well let him know that charlton peaked in the early 00's for his lifetime while he's having a bad day.

I don't even want a dream job (yet)! These things can wait. What I do want is space in which to do things I can control, i.e. creative output, social life, unpaid journalistic writing etc. However, I'm on a careerist path and everything about my education has ultimately been about that. Charlton will come back stronger than you could possibly imagine.

From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.

I don't even want a dream job (yet)! These things can wait. What I do want is space in which to do things I can control, i.e. creative output, social life, unpaid journalistic writing etc.

I'm wondering how long it will take for you realize that what you are describing is actually your dream job.

Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:

(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.

(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

(iv) Political purpose. — Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

That looks about right, Tombot, although where would you put the motivation which is 'contributing to the currency of literature'? The idea of participating in a discourse with others? I guess that's a sort of collective egotism, maybe. I think my own motivations are these days an equal-ish balance between 1, 2 and 4. A few years ago it was 1 and 2 but recently I have discovered the need for writing to have a purpose other than masturbation or entertainment. fwiw I would really like to work in politics or local administration or SOMETHING where my moral and intellectual principles can be to the benefit of society.

u should enlist in the spanish civil war then ~

lol or become a dishwasher (i think the french call it plongeur)

live with some working class ppl for lolz ~

well i'll be living in the penniless post-student class regardless of what happens, and every day will be a sitcom ^_^

some of them won't even have been students! amazing isnt it

work in politics or local administration or something

http://georgeorwell.org/burmacop.jpg

dude i am not looking for the perpetual student get-out that so many of my peers are, nor the city-centre scramble to the top, i just wanna contribute to a greener, more educated, more tolerant, more liberal society and maybe get some writing or some music done, also i wanna be part of a circle of poets, that'd be kinda cool

again with the pantslessness

seriously - communications/PR/outreach for some sort of non-profit/advocacy group sounds like something you would be good at and find fulfilling.

hmm. will think on't. would also like to get my teeth into tombot's breakdown...something tells me there might be a 5th motivation, or different boundaries, but i can't think atm

Another option: fundraising/grantwriting

― sarahel, Wednesday, 9 December 2009 12:46 (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This is a very good option.

I think the 5th motivation is the national or international bettering; the idea that one's writing (or indeed music!) is contributing to a healthier and more varied artistic discourse. Aside from the thrill of creation, and the notion of being loved for what one has created, it is the immediate aftermath of creation, the enrichment.

see point (i) in Tombot's list

I guess that's a sort of collective egotism, maybe

yeah...

Being hard-left of politic and yet desiring to create special or individualistic art is the hardest conundrum my moral mind has to deal with. I hope it resolves itself well. Can any of you think of something that discusses this conundrum? A touchstone for me to explore?

I'm drawing a blank here - the only thing that comes to mind is the movie Barton Fink

lol

Sure I'd be a radio DJ or a sports commentator but I've gone down the wrong paths to get there. Others are ahead. I've taken the wrong turnings and there's always someone who's gotten there first.

...

I don't even want a dream job (yet)! These things can wait.

xpost - um...the jungle? i think it said something like "everyone should work doing productive manual labor for half the day and then go be artists for the rest!"

xp, those statements disagree with each other, and they are both wrong.

I meant that I WOULD take a 'luxury' job despite my principles, but for the moment I am nowhere near even that. Those aren't really my dream jobs any more. They were, but I'm recalibrating. I could have oriented myself towards them but I haven't, really. I was being a tad hysterical perhaps in claiming that it's too late; my second position is more apt.

Ooh, what is the jungle? Is it some Utopian work?

I keep writing and deleting things. Basically, I felt v. similar to LJ when I was his age. I just wanted to write and make music and produce art, and I cast aspersions on the notion that a "career" (working in an office doing a specific set of tasks) could ever fulfill me. So I took a job that I didn't hate in a field that I seemed suited for, a job that for the most part allowed me to leave my work at the office and pursue my other interests outside of the 9-to-5. And over time, I came to like certain things about it, and now that I'm 30 and have gotten a lot of the extracurricular stuff out of my system, I've sort of settled into the idea that what I do for a living is in fact a career. That doesn't have to be mean that I'm defined by what I do, just that I'm invested in it. (Of course, I'm probably making less money now than I would have if I'd been more career-minded from the get-go, but I wouldn't have been happy otherwise.)

Maybe that reads like I've resigned myself to what I do, but to me it feels more like a natural progression.

The Jungle is a novel from the 20s or 30s or something that's about half expose of the meatpacking industry and half socialist utopianism. I think it's pretty terribly written, honestly, but hey it's famous.

xp - jaymc: Yeah, that's a pretty common natural progression.

The Jungle by Sinclair Lewis

Upton Sinclair I think?

upton sinclair iirc

oops - sorry. Wrong Sinclair, you're right.

There are also a fair number of essays/books about the role of the artist or the place of avant-garde art in socialist/communist critiques of capitalism, but I'm not remembering any titles off the top of my head. I dimly remember Theodor Adorno writing about this at some point, but I'm not sure.

The Jungle was also published earlier than that: 1906.

yeah, i figured i might've been off there but didn't bother looking it up.

Ooh, what is the jungle? Is it some Utopian work?

omg such massive lols

I don't remember the "be an artist" part; it was more "work for no money, then become so bitter that black people are taking your jobs that you become a Socialist".