false

No

That's the message that I interpret from the numerous job listings that I read. They are far afield of my interests and experience. I have both a bachelor's and master's in communication. I finished four years of a PhD program and successfully completed comprehensive exams. I was a candidate and withdrew my candidacy shortly after I turned 31. I realized that I had no interest in the paper I was writing--my dissertation.

Now that I've said my piece about my past 15 years of education, I know my qualifications:
- I am qualified to teach numerous topic under the umbrella discipline of communication
- I am qualified to study organizational communication; most with my qualifications end up working as organizational change consultants

Now the question remains why I'm not pursuing any of these fields. I dislike a stereotype I have of communication majors. They're slick communicators. They're PR professionals. They're unethical. They're the sophists.

I dislike the disposition that I feel is developed by the profession. But here I stand, hungry, indifferent to my job prospects and my interest in cultivating them.

I am angry and sad. I first had these very feelings when I took a course on business and professional writing. I felt that I had no prospects, and all around me were people who either were beginning to develop their work disposition or were indifferent to their prospects. "I'll cross that bridge when I get there." That was the attitude I saw in others. I felt that something was deeply wrong about what I felt was a synthetic constellation of attitudes toward work, expectations for behavior, and one's willing concession toward these behaviors and attitudes.

I had an office job. I was doing fine. I saved my money while there and bought myself a car. I still drive that car. It's still going strong, but it's only a matter of time before it breaks down or gets broken into. That's the reality principle in our make-believe world. That hit me hard last night.

I was standing on my porch. The birdsong that I heard outside raised my curiosity, so I took the last peanut butter sandwich in the house with me outside and ate it. Out there, at about two in the morning, I ate the sandwich and marveled at the bird's chirping.

For about 30 minutes I listened to the bird return to some familiar sounds but add in a different range of sounds, some quite strange. The bird's song sounded like cellular phone rings. Some of the sounds reminded me of rings in various states of disrepair. That solitary bird, of unknown type, filled the night with its song. Surrounding it were the sounds of cars racing along a nearby road. I could see a hospital in the distance. A cellular tower's beacon blinked behind the trees. The bird's song continued. I looked around. I was alone. The neighborhood homes were all darkened, their occupants asleep. I wondered if the residents of the home in whose yard the bird was located could hear the bird? Would a man come out and try to shoot it quiet? I then expected that the majority of these residents were more interested in the sounds coming through their television, their radios, their computers. Their attention focused on other things, their minds slumbering in preparation for another day at work, contributed to the neighborhood's collective ignorance of the bird. I almost cried.

I wanted to scream out in the night, but nobody would answer my screams. Nobody was interested in that bird that had perhaps returned to this tree year after year. It could be calling to a mate still finding its way back. Its ancestors flew to this area before this neighborhood existed. The bird and its strange birdsong, the meaning and purpose about which I could only speculate, was a life form. I am a life form. My neighbors are life forms. So much life goes unrecognized. I then realized that I could easily leave this urban world behind. I could leave into the wilderness and squat on federal land. I know very little about how to live in this wilderness. I'm too sensitive.

I could live alone and never see another person again, but I need people. My desire to be alone and my ability to do so is a privilege. My vacillation about my future and my path there, my disinterest in love and intimacy, my continuous interrogation of who I am in light of my job prospects, all of these are privileges. I have a car that runs. I have a savings account that cushions my fall. I have a small job that stops most of its bleeding.

I've discussed this so many times, and I've gone nowhere and arrived no closer to an answer.