Lecture

I screw up. A lot. I’m convinced more so than most “normal” people.

Consequently, I get lectured a lot. Teachers, parents, siblings, coworkers, supervisors, friends, acquaintances, strangers—few have any qualms about pointing out these flaws and missteps no matter the scale. Sometimes they’re condescending and their words offer no reward other than to assert their dominance over me. Sometimes they simply reassert something I’ve already acknowledged as a fault because they have nothing better to do. Sometimes their words offer a new vista of wisdom I have yet to attain and I graciously take heed.

Sometimes it’s difficult to weed out the good advice from the bad. Often, people feel the need to toss their two cents into the jar when you never jingle-jangled the thing under their nose in the first place.

B called me yesterday.

“You quit your job?”

“Yep.”

“And I have to read the site to find this out?”

At this point I mumbled an incoherent string of vowels.

“Why’d you quit?”

“I don’t like my job.”

“There’s gotta be more. People never quit just because they don’t like their job. There’s always some other factor.”

“Not for me. I didn’t like it. So I quit. I can’t be wasting my time at a job that I don’t like. I have to start making moves towards a career I actually like before I get saddled with a bunch of responsibilities and get stuck in a dead-end job because of them.”

Pause for a dramatic moment of introspection.

“I was thinking of looking for a new job too.”

“Cool.”

I knew B wouldn’t give a shit either way, but when Gloria asked me if I had told my mother yet, I froze. My mother, who raised me to believe that what you want is not as important as what you get, would surely give me an earful about how I was planning to pay my bills and find a new job and support my lavish drinking habit and and and…

I figured I’d avoid the situation until it actually came to pass and she inevitably started asking me why I wasn’t waking up in the morning to get ready for work.

This morning, my mother decided to take the same bus with me to work.

“I’m leaving my job,” I blurted as I skipped, huffing and puffing, next to her to keep up with her constantly hurried, I’m-going-to-miss-the-bus, Korean lady scurry.

“Cool,” she says (or at least the Korean equivalent) without slowing her pace.

“Eh?”

“You seemed to have a lot of stress.” She pronounces it stless.

“Uh, yeah, I did.”

“When are you quitting?”

“End of the month.”

“So right now? Today’s your last day?”

“No, no. End of June.”

“Oh, well, there’s no use wasting your time there. You still live at home, you don’t have too many responsibilities. You should focus on something you want to do long term.”

“Er, yeah.”

“So what are you planning to do?”

“Well, I sent my résumé to some friends who have publishing connections.”

“You want to do the editing, right?” Ed-ee-teen.

“Uh, yeah.”

She nods.

A short burst of air exits my lips with a little “poo” sound.

And that’s that.

-L