I have always been a heavy sleeper, and I have trouble with alarm clocks. This is probably why I wasn’t terribly surprised six years ago on the morning of my Astronomy final to find that I had exactly zero minutes to make it to campus. I was in a panic, just not surprised. Everything was a blur, in that just woke up kind of way. I rushed through the routine: get dressed, put on glasses, tie my shoes, pack my bag, grab my keys. I ran out the bedroom door, and down the stairs. No thinking, just doing what I had to do. It would be better to show up late than not show up at all.

Then, everything went black.

When I came to, I was on a gurney in the corridor of a hospital, my friend Alex next to me, and with a very large lump on the right side of my head. I didn’t know where I was, how I had gotten there, or what happened to me at all. Hours had passed in the space of a black instant. Alex filled me in: I was at Jefferson Hospital. I had a concussion. And, yes, I’d missed my Astronomy final. Eventually a room opened up, and they wheeled me in, sticking electrodes to my chest and hooking me up to monitors. There was nowhere to go, but I had a book, my cell phone, my iPod and headphones. Alex had to leave but I was joined by another friend, and eventually my oldest sister. I called my girlfriend, desperate to hear her voice. At the time, my parents were on vacation, having just arrived in Florida after driving from Philadelphia. When they heard what happened, they immediately turned back around for home.

I had to stay overnight for observation. By the time things had settled down, the hospital kitchen had closed, but they were able to get my a roast beef sandwich. Sleep was almost impossible with the things stuck to me, but somehow I managed. The next day, I was set free, and taken home by my sister. I got a call, almost immediately from my Astronomy professor about the missed exam. I ended up taking it at home, after explaining the situation—an automatic open book exam that I aced. Despite being told to stay home and rest for 24 hours, I went to campus the next day for my Humanities final, knowing there was no way I could reschedule. The professor was leaving for Japan the next morning. Word had, apparently, gotten around about my accident, and my Professor seemed surprised to see me. I aced the exam, despite my unsteady state.

The attending physician had told that the memories I lost in the concussion would, eventually, return. They did not. Even today, the entire morning is a complete blank in my memory. Chance encounters in the following days and weeks helped me fill in some of the blanks. Another student told me that he’d found me wandering the building where my astronomy class was held, confused and clutching a check that I couldn’t explain. (I had won it in the semester’s creative writing competition.) He was the one who called 911, and sent me to the hospital. Alex would later tell me that I spent my time in the hospital hallway calling for my girlfriend Kassandra. Weeks later, a man on the El recognized me and told me that I had fallen down the stairs of the Spring Garden El station that morning.

I remember none of these things happening. Once I left my bedroom, everything just went black. In my memory, that morning does not exist. Lost time. A reel of blank film with no soundtrack. Damaged sectors on a hard drive. I wish I knew what happened, but I don’t think I ever will. If the memories haven’t come back by now, they never will. The accident itself stays, however. All I have to do is touch the right side of my head, about two inches above my ear. There, under my hair, is the knot from where my head made impact. Unlike that morning’s events, it has never gone away, and it probably never will.

I am a city boy. I was born a city boy, and aside from Summer weekends in the South Jersey pine barrens, [1] I was raised a city boy—more specifically a Northeastern-US-city boy. I get nervous when there’s nothing around me taller than six stories. Nature bothers me. It’s nice to visit the “great outdoors,” but after a day or two, I just want artificial light, traffic noise, and to be able to walk somewhere for a slice of pizza. I’m not agoraphobic, but I do prefer close quarters. I value efficiency of space over room to spread out. I like to live high up, and I like to travel underground. I like to be anonymous. I like to be able to walk into a pharmacy, buy a box of prophylactics, and not have to worry about who sees me. Give me the city. Give me the big city. Give me places to go, things to do, people to see, and people to see me. Give me the option to live without a car, to walk to the grocery store, and to have actual weather.

My city, my home, has been Philadelphia for most of my life, but I’ve wanted to live someplace bigger for a while now. My sights have often cast themselves north, to New York City. It was a place, I thought, well suited to me, and ten years ago, I picked Polytechnic University in Brooklyn for college to give it a try. After a few difficult months of rooming issues, I eventually found myself settled in, but my place at the school never really gelled. I took the same Introduction to Pre-Calculus class seven times in three miserable semesters. After earning a 1.2 GPA, I was politely told to vacate the premises and never darken their doorstep again. I was more than happy to. [2] However, this meant I couldn’t stay in the big city any more. I would have needed a place to live, and money to pay for it. I didn’t have either. I had to tuck my tail between my legs, and slouch back home a mass of chagrin and shame.

While I didn’t settle in at the school, I became part of the city. When I left, I left behind dreams, and I left behind a wonderful person as well. Even as my academic life collapsed around me, I had found someone important and special in that city, and I wanted to get back for her, even more than for myself. Love has a tendency to do that to a person. Sure, we are now a two hour bus ride and an hour subway ride from each other—instead of just the hour subway ride it was before I moved home—but that extra two hours made all the difference. Thankfully, we’ve made it work, but it has been hard spending over seven years of our eight and a half year relationship separated by 115 miles. People have been separated by further distances, for longer, but I am not them.

My plan was to re-try college at the Community College of Philadelphia, pick up an Associate’s, enroll in a school in New York City, and try again. I got two out of the three, then ended up having to get my Bachelor’s in Philadelphia as well. [3] “Fine,” I told myself, “I’ll finish my education here and get a job up there.” No luck. I ended up taking a miserable job here, and got stuck for a time. I have a lot to say about that job, but that’s for another time. Still, with money coming in, I decide to live on my own and made the move to West Philadelphia. My new plan was to make a go of the crappy job for a year, and if I didn’t like it, start looking for work in New York. One big reason I took the job in the first place was that they had an New York office, and I thought I might be able to transfer up there. Turned out their New York office was just the second apartment of one of the owners, which says a lot about the place.

Fourteen months later, I was fired. If I were more clever, I would have seen that as my time to move, but I thought it would be smarter to stay local, collect my unemployment, and look for work in two places at once. Thus, I spent a year in the wilderness. I was saved by a low-paying, mind-numbing government job, but it was something. That was a year ago, and in that year I’ve struggled to find some direction in my life. All I know for sure is what I don’t want to do, and among the things I don’t want to do is stagnate. I don’t want to sit in the little fabric-covered box I sit in for eight hours a day, doing the exact same things, over and over again, until I’m 67 and can retire. That path leads to ruin.

This move is a chance to shake everything up. I will be leaving behind my home town, my apartment, my family and the social life I have slowly fallen into here. They’ll only be 115 miles away, not out of reach. It will be a goodbye, not a farewell. Still, it’s scary. Sometimes I wonder why I’m so willing to put everything I’ve built aside and try something new. Maybe it’s insanity, maybe it’s Saturn’s return. Maybe it’s both. Once again, I don’t know what I want, but I know what I don’t want. I certainly don’t want ten times more of what I have now. For God’s sake, I am ready, at least, to be scared shitless and stop doing what I am expected to do, and go do something new and different. What, specifically? Hell if I know. But I will be doing it, in a new, and different place.

Just… not quite yet.

Let’s face it. I talk a big game in the last few paragraphs, but I am in a holding pattern for another few months. My lease expires in August, so the current plan is to move to New York City by August 31st. September 1st, at the latest. In the meantime, that leaves six months to make things happen: finding a job is probably the biggest concern, but I won’t let the lack of one keep me from making the jump this time. Things will happen. I am not going to die. Even still, I am done with putting it off. I am done with pissing around. The reason I am still here, and not there, is my fear. I’ve clung to my city, and my apartment, and my two sub-par jobs, because the idea of giving them up is scary as hell. Absolute brown trousers time. But, if I want to get what I want—even if I don’t know what I want—the only way out is through.

Wish me luck.

Or, if you live in New York City, offer me a job.

Until recently, I did not know how to dress myself. Well, I exaggerate. I knew what clothes were, how to put them on, and could arrange my clothing as to go outside clad in a manner that was mostly weather appropriate and in tune with local decency laws, but that still left a lot of leeway. I don’t know why I never learned how to dress myself properly. It may have been the stringent uniforms of my early Catholic School education days that left me with a distaste for ties, dress shirts, and canary yellow that I’ve only recently gotten over—save for the canary yellow part. It might also have been the adolescent infatuation I had with the “goth” thing which lead to me wearing all black in a vain attempt to be rebellious and threatening. It could also be the transition from that into an equally apathetic college wardrobe of all black because I was lazy. I don’t know.

I do know that awareness of “proper dress” came to me about the time I was about to graduate college. Facing down the idea of job interviews and life as a working man, I realized that something had to change in my appearance. I posted a question on Ask MetaFilter asking for advice on dressing like an adult, but the answers lacked some of the more concrete details… So, as I graduated college, I went from being a long-haired, bearded, chubby dork who wore monochrome to a clueless, short-haired, clean-shaven dork, who wore bad outfits, cheap clothing and a rather pretentious, cheap black felt hat. Still, I think I was more ahead of the game than some of my peers who even now somehow manage sartorial disasters that blow my mind, or just look like schlubs, even today.

It was during my period of semi-unemployment that dressing correctly really came to my attention, thanks in part to the great blog Put This On, which taught me the basic rudiments of classic men’s style. With my limited income and access to some thrift stores and eBay, I began to toss out the ugly sateen shirts and beat-up cheap shoes that I had worn to my office job. Sure, I’d dressed well enough to get the job, but that job probably would have hired me even if I had come in with only the barest minimum of interview-appropriate attire. I needed to step up my game, not just for the job hunt, but for myself.

Fear of a White Shirt

For many years, the only whites in my wardrobe were my undershirts. No other white garments even existed in my wardrobe. No white socks, no white underpants, nothing. I wore a lot of black and gray, some reds and blues, and the occasional spot of brown when I felt flashy. I remember the first non black or gray item of clothing I picked out for myself: a short-sleeved brown button-down shirt. I still have it, but not for long. The majority of shirts in my wardrobe were polyester blends, ill-fitting, and often in dark shades. It lead to a bit of teasing at my old job whenever I sauntered in wearing a bright red shirt. [1] I decided to invest in something white, just as a first step. I secured a lovely Oxford Cloth Button Down—OCBD, in the style parlance—at my local thrift store. It was as good a fit as one can get from off the rack, and looked good paired with dark denim. It was a start. Until then, my “best” shirt was a garish blue number with French Cuffs. [2] Not long after I got the first of my OCBDs, I got a full weeks worth, some with pointed collars, some button-down, and explored a new world to me: patterns.

Pattern Recognition

I never liked strongly patterned clothing. Still don’t. Stripes and things were just too darn complicated for me. Keep in mind, my idea of varying my wardrobe until about a year prior was wearing gray shirts or blue jeans instead of black ones. As I’ve grown my wardrobe, I’ve started to get an idea of what goes with what, both in terms of color and in terms of pattern. One help has been the BeSpeak app for the iPhone. It gives suggestions based on items in your wardrobe and tips on what patterns and colors suit you. It mostly focuses on suits and ties, but it is still a great resource. I now wear striped shirts and patterned ties, and thanks to BeSpeak, can even match them properly.

Suiting Up

Early on, I had made the mistake of thinking I could fake a suit. I had purchased a nice enough gray blazer, and it matched well enough with a particular pair of gray slacks I had, but it wasn’t enough. I think people could tell that I was trying to fake it. One of the most important purchases I made, early in this project, was a lovely, gray herringbone wool Hickey Freeman suit. It was a bit long at the sleeves and legs, but it was perfect interview wear. I kept promising myself that I would get it altered, and eventually I did—over a year after the fact. [3] Now that I have it back, I only wish I had done it earlier—the fit is so improved it’s insane. I look good, and I feel good in it. After alterations, the gray suit cost me a mere $80, and looks incredible. It feels great to wear a real suit, and to look good doing it. Now, I just need to get the three-piece navy pinstripe suit I found to my tailor, and I’ll really be set.

Shoes and Perish

Douglas Adams wrote an amazing thing about cheap shoes—the Shoe Event Horizon—which states that as shoe demand increases, quality diminishes, causing people to buy more shoes of lesser quality, until at last the economy collapses. I didn’t have $200+ to spend on high quality shoes, but there’s a wonderful resale market on eBay for them. I picked up a pair of $250 Allan Edmonds shoes for $80, and with care, polishing, shoe trees, and occasional resoling, they’ll last me for life. I’ve bought a few other nice pairs of shoes this way, too. The only shoes I’ve bought new were a pair of city boots that, though not exactly fashionable, are at least well made and good for the cold, wet, urban winter. Now I have shoes for almost every occasion I would need, and don’t have to pray someone doesn’t realize I’m wearing boots.

Putting it all Together

I’m far from a fashion plate, and I certainly am not trying to be. I do, however, have the ability to dress myself now, in a way that is attractive, appropriate and functional for home, work, and play. I’ll never forget visiting my parents and the look of surprise on my father’s face when I appeared with a striped Oxford Cloth Button Down, a brown sweater, and looking quite nice. I look better, and I feel better, and that’s a huge boost to my self-esteem—as long as I don’t have to wear canary yellow.

A little over a year ago, I lost my job. Actually, it was taken from me, not that I wasn’t more than willing to be rid of it. It wasn’t a job I liked, or was even any good at.[1] They let me go just before lunch, so I was given a nice send off from my coworkers at a nearby bar.[2] A few months later, when I saw a few of my former coworkers again, the conversation turned to the job, and I expressed my dislike of the place and how glad I was to be rid of it–while still searching for a new gig. One coworker mentioned that I seemed pretty heartbroken at the time. I remember that day. I was nervous, shaky, confused–and by the end of lunch, a bit drunk. I attribute my reaction less to heartbreak and more at the shock of freedom. That day, I was an animal, born and raised in a zoo, now being released and seeing the plains of the Serengeti for the first time. It was pure, animalistic fear of my newfound freedom.

What some would imagine were the biggest fears could be easily addressed. I could get Unemployment, and I had a part time job I could use for extra money. Since the handwriting had been on the wall for months, I had already been working on my résumé and searching for opportunities. I was ready, or so I thought. In fact, I was ready for more than just finding another 9-to–5. I would use my downtime productively: finish my novel, pick up some freelance web design work, and lay the foundation for my eventual severing of ties with the idea of working for “the man”.

Fast forward about eleven months, and I hadn’t accomplished a thing. All I had were two job interviews, no prospects, and a ticking timer to the day my Unemployment benefits stopped.

Not long after that point, I was working full-time again, now in the lucrative world of civil service clerical work. It’s not a dream by any stretch of the imagination, but I find it far more tolerable than my previous job. Yet, I feel as though I’ve driven into a cul-de-sac. Consider again, the zoo animal metaphor released upon the mighty Serengeti. The fear can be most adequately explained with two words: option overload. In short, having the option of everything quickly lead to paralysis.[3] Taking the job I have now, at least has restored the bottom tiers of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and dispelled that specific existential fear endemic to the long-term unemployed, but at what cost?

The preceding is a rather long-winded prelude to something more personal. As I counted down the days to rejoining the working world, an Internet Hero of mine, Merlin Mann started a new podcast, Back to Work, which does more-or-less what it says on the tin. The common theme in the first few episodes was that of getting started, getting finished, and actually making things. I listened, weekly, with Merlin and Dan providing a vitamin-infused dose of inspiration right in the middle of the work week. As I listened, I noticed there was been an itch they hadn’t scratched yet. The first few episodes of Back to Work had started from the assumption that the listener had committed to something, be it a personal project or a professional obligation. Where I felt a bit lost was less about getting started and more about knowing what to start on, especially on any sort of meta-level. Again, like the zoo animal, I was confused, and overwhelmed, and needed a prod to step out of my cage. So, I e-mailed Dan and Merlin asking for their advice, and providing the backstory.

It seemed to have struck a chord. The Monday before they record, Merlin sent me an e-mail indicating that he would be more than happy to turn the darn thing into an episode. I was floored. Now, I was no longer shouting into the void. The episode, “Vocational Wheel”, was surprising–inspirational, but useful too, and I’m not just saying that because it’s about me, at least in part. There’s a lot to take away from it, not the least being the stories Merlin and Dan share of their 20s, and a similar lack of direction. The discussion of Saturn’s return also hit home. It summarizes a feeling that I’ve had, mostly in the last year, but even before I lost my job, not only of desiring change but also finding motivation to change.

I neglected to mention this in my e-mail to Merlin and Dan, but a couple of years ago, I set up a good college friend of mine with a good friend from high school, who is now his wife. Last March, they discovered they were expecting a child. This got my college friend, who was notoriously slow to rouse, extraordinarily motivated to accomplish things. I was envious–not of him now having a wife and family–but of how having a wife and family lit a fire under his ass. The major motivating factor for me at the time was making sure I had something full-time before my Unemployment ran out. I made the buzzer shot, but it wasn’t anything special. I was motivated enough to get the necessary stuff done, but not motivated to get the cool stuff, the creative stuff done. Fear, it seems, is only enough of a motivator to end the fear.

What I took away most from “Vocational Wheel” was, beyond the sympathetic stories, the practical advice–and in the intervening weeks and months I have tried to take it to heart. It’s hard to get into a habit, but Merlin made a good point: “Everyone has three minutes a day to do something.”[4] I grabbed a leftover Moleskine notebook from my college days when I assumed that spending big money on a notebook would convince me to use it. (I didn’t.[5]) This essay is proof of the failure of that assumption–I started it in my notebook not long after the episode aired, and picked it up with this exact sentence almost four months later. There has been writing on other topics in the interim–bursts of work on my novel, some articles for Kittysneezes, and stabs at what I intend to make a long-term project of music journalism. Everything is a start.

There are still those questions that spawned my yelling into the void, and no podcast can truly answer them as they are more philosophical and rhetorical. As I try to figure out what to do with my life, they pop into my head–questions like “What motivates me to get up in the morning?” and “What would I do even if nobody paid me?” There’s a lot here that balances on the meaning of “work”, which has two potential meanings in this context. The first is work in the sense of “going to work”, something you have to do for the purpose of paying the bills. The value of that kind of work is that it pays the bills (one hopes). You sacrifice your x hours for y value of currency, and that is how you feed, clothe, and shelter yourself and your family. Certainly there is nothing wrong with that, and it is all the better if you quarantine work to that x hours. Certainly, I prefer to take that approach with what I do now.

The other way to view the question is in the focus of work as what one chooses to do of their own free will, whether it makes them money or not. Certainly, this definition places more value on “work” than currency can for the first. This is the world that professional artists and other creative types inhabit, wherein what they do is what they want to do. A professional artist does the work they choose to do, for them, and hopefully they make enough bread to keep it up. Even if they don’t, they probably still do the work, augmenting their artistic work with a straight job as in definition one.

What interests me is where these definitions intersect; e.g.: what can I do for a living, either for myself or someone else, that I would gladly do for free, or at least find fulfilling on more than a financial level? I know that I am the sort of person who is motivated by three things. The first is knowing that a job is done, the second is being mentally engaged in an activity that challenges me–something that is not repetitive or rote, and the third is having a sense of control over what I do and when. Of these, the third is where I am most flexible, especially since my unemployment experience showed that I am a terrible manager of myself–or perhaps the lesson to take from that is how to be my own boss, do the work, and take responsibility for myself. In either case, finding that nebulous intersection of work as means to and end and work as an end to itself is going to be the greatest challenge.[6] At least I am not going at it alone, and I am not the first to undertake it.

In August of 2008, I introduced a good friend of mine from my college days to a good friend of mine from my high school days. The original plan was to meet up at Eulogy Belgian Tavern, and I would introduce one to the other in person, but they went behind my back and had a first date on their own. Rob and Rebecca seemed to hit it off quite well, and before long, they’d moved in together, and talked in an idle way about possibly getting married one of these days. Then, this past April, I got a text from Rebecca dropping big news: the talk was becoming reality, spurred on by the impending arrival of their first child. I was to be Best Man. On September 4th, the big day happened. In a catering hall in Langhorne, PA, at about 1:00 PM, Rob Asheuer and Rebecca Friedenberg got legally married in an interfaith ceremony, in front of 100 family and friends.

It’s a remarkable thing watching two people who you know so well get married. It’s even more remarkable when you know that it was you that put the whole thing in motion. Though the day was all about Rob and Becca, their friends, family, and the bridge and groom themselves repeatedly laid down thank-yous and “I’ve heard good things about you”s all afternoon. Standing at the side of the stage, with Rob’s little brothers as groomsmen, handing over the ring, hearing two people who know so well, publicly profess their love for each other, well, it brings a tear to one’s eye. It should be the start of a wonderful life for the both of them.

As part of the Best Man duties, I wrote a short speech/toast for the couple. Here it is:

You know, time goes by fast. When I set these two up, what was it, a couple months ago? When I set these two up, I didn’t expect it to go this far, or this fast. Well, mostly I didn’t expect it to go this fast.

Okay, obviously, it was longer than that, but it feels like it was pretty recently. But, now, here we are, basking in the union of two people who totally deserve each other—and you can take that statement in whatever way you want to. After all, I remember when I told my parents that I was setting Rob and Becca up. Their first remark was, “Well, we know who’s going to be wearing the pants in that relationship.” I think that prediction was borne out, am I right?

So, now, they’re starting that journey of “mawwige,” and hopefully they’ll stick with it for a while. Otherwise, there goies my potential career as a matchmaker down the tubes, so I hope you two keep that in mind before anyone goes calling an attorney somewhere down the line. I have a reputation to uphold now.

To get back to these two, I would like to paraphrase the great Douglas Adams: “They may not have gone where they intended to go, but I think they have ended up where they needed to be.” From what I know of Rob, and what I know of Becca, before they got together—well, we’d be here until tomorrow morning, and I don’t think they’d get the deposit back—this relationship’s brought out the best in both of ‘em.

Rob, Becca, you two are going to be great together. I know it.

Now, don’t prove me wrong.

Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Asheuer. All the best to you.

Robert and Rebecca Asheuer, September 4th, 2010