I’m well aware that I’ve been out of the loop with ye olde blog, and with good reason, I might add. Before you get all huffy puffy with li’l ol’ moi, I’d just like to say in my defense that I have been in and out of jobs, continually on the prowl for employment.

Baby, it’s a friggin’ jungle out there. I hate to resort to clichés, but it’s the damned truth. I didn’t believe it either until I jumped in headfirst to start swimming with the sharks. Of course, when you’re constantly dog-paddling, trying to get adjusted to the water, those big-ass great whites are either A) waiting to devour your ass, or B) disregarding you because you’re way too miniscule for their time.

The job market is desperate right now. I could go on and on about who’s to blame, but I would just be spinning my wheels. The bottom line is that it’s ugly right now. Any of you who have just recently graduated know this. Hell, some of you who graduated a couple years ago (like myself) know this as well. And I’m one of the select that has gone on to pursue a postgraduate education. I have a Bachelor of Arts in English with a focus in Creative Writing and a minor in Business, and a Masters in Business Administration in Marketing.

And I’m only working part time.

I haven’t been here for that long. Just shy of a month, in fact. My first job out of the box was essentially a sales position (although the company was billed as a “promotional marketing firm”). Long story short, I was driving 45 minutes from Waterbury to Hartford to be in the office by 7:30 AM, and then after an hour and a half of meetings, workshops, and the like, it was off to Greenfield, MA; more than an hour northward of the office. I was doing this five days a week. I trained for one week, and then did it by myself for one week. At the end of that fortnight stint, I called it quits. I wasn’t even paid for my training, which I was lied to about.

So why did I take this job? Well, chalk it up to naïve optimism, as I was promised everything from a six-figure income in six months to running my own business in a year. I am not exaggerating, that is what was set on the table in only my second interview. When you’re 23, fresh out of school and having never worked a full time job before, that sounds pretty tempting. Well, needless to say I took the bait, and boy, did I pay for it. I never claimed to know it all, and I am more than willing to admit my shortcomings and mistakes. This, needless to say, was a big one. One that, in all honesty, I have yet to get over.

I won’t go into the gory details of my two-week-stint, but I will say that it set me back about a month for various reasons. And in the weeks that followed that month, I began to realize how bone dry the well is.

Now when I went for my MBA, I was fully aware of the difficulties in the job market, and the contemporary economic state. I figured that by the time I finished my studies, the market would have shown some significant signs of improvement. I wish I could have a definitive yes or no to my presumption, but all I can say is that if it has improved, it’s been by baby steps rather than the leaps and bounds I’d prayed for.

At the rate things are going in this nation, the amount of education a young person will have to have in order to get a reasonable entry level job will take the individual well into his or her early 30’s. I simply can’t fathom that. We put so much pressure on ourselves as a nation and as a people to succeed that we feel the need to push one another and ourselves to the furthest imaginable limits in order attain that level of accomplishment. And personally, I think it’s getting more than a little bit out of control. My cousin and I are the only two in the family that have our MBAs, and we have had several conversations about how nowadays, such a degree is being regarded as the bare minimum one needs to get a decent job. In another fifteen or twenty years, the bar will be raised up to a Ph. D.

I feel like we just push ourselves, and our children way too hard. I mean, my old grammar school has computers now. Shee-it, back in the early 80s, we did it with a pencil and paper. What are these schools trying to do? Ensure that all of our future doctors will have crappy writing by never making them use a writing utensil? Kids should be kids. Let them roam free and have fun, the rest will come in due time.

Perfect example: I have a cousin living in the Dominican Republic with his wife and one-year-old son. The kid isn’t even out of diapers yet and he’s already being tossed headfirst into school. He already has language and music lessons lined up for him on a weekly basis. Language and music lessons at a year old? Whatever happened to playtime, naptime, recess, that stuff? Did that just get tossed out the window? At what point did we say, “Our children don’t deserve to appreciate their childhood like we did, so let’s deprive them of fun and shove them straight into school”?

My parents often bust my stones for being a big kid at heart, but I can’t help it. I wish I could go back to my youth. That’s why I write about so much “kiddy” stuff here. That’s why I still watch cartoons, read comic books and play video games. I really don’t think that’s a crime.

Look, I’m all for education, don’t get me wrong, but there’s a fine line that is very slowly being crossed. There’s another aspect to life. It’s called “living.” You should try it, and you should encourage your kids to try it, too. There is plenty of time for education, work, and all that business, trust me. Let them enjoy their childhood, for Pete’s sake. It’s only fair to them.

Personally, I like George Carlin’s philosophy on children: “I think that every child should be allowed three hours a day of daydreaming. That’s all, just daydreaming. And you could probably use some, yourself. Just turn off the video games, the TV, the stereo, and just sit and look at a fucking tree for a little while.”

And on that note, I’m gonna neglect the rest of my duties at the office for the remainder of the day so I can stare out the window.

Goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow.