My Bohemian Self Versus My Corporate Self

I spent a glorious week in New York City earlier this month. My best friend from college lives in hipper-than-thou Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and I spent a few days with her getting to know that neighborhood and its denizens pretty well. Then I spent a weekend in the middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania, where my best friend from high school got married. As we toured Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater house marveling at the architecture, and biking the Laurel Highlands that surrounds it, I struck up conversations with intellectuals from Japan, Russia, Israel, France, Italy and the UK. When I returned to Brooklyn, I ate up my favorite Middle Eastern delicacies and gobbled up conversations about great works of literature and laughed my ass off as artist-musician-writer types joked satirically about mass American culture. 

Less than two short hours of returning home from my vacation, I was told I was being promoted. My boss looked me in the eyes and said, this is it, Holly; this is the big time. You do this right and it’s only a matter of time before you’re up there. I went about my day giddy from that high, but something nagged me in the back of my mind. How is this compatible with that wonderful part of myself I had rediscovered in New York only a few days before?

Here I am, this corporate ladder-climber, who could honestly be no-less-thrilled unless Guy Kawasaki himself had sent her an email. And I write this crazy blog that I might be a little embarrassed by if anyone I worked with actually read it, which I’m pretty sure has even kept me from getting a second-round interview. And I want to get my MBA in marketing and entrepreneurship, and I eat up books like Groundswell, Rich Woman, and E-Myth with the sloppy voracity of a pig in a garbage dump. Two of my friends refer to me as “career lady” and my hair stylist knows we have to toe the line between cutting edge and work appropriate. I’m trying to figure out how I can dress J. Crewish without looking so damned yuppie.

Then there’s this other part of me, the part of me that would be happy to be a coffee-slinging barista for the rest of her life, the part that oh-so-briefly dreamt of making the leap to a shared apartment in Brooklyn with four part-time jobs to make ends meet. It’s the part of me that sits in cafes for hours blogging, reading Henry Miller and Ernest Hemingway, and attending political rallies when I’m not supposed to since I work for the media.

How these two halves of myself possibly be at peace with another?

They usually aren’t.

When I had my weekly call with my life coach and told her about my promotion, she heard the hesitation in my voice. Is this at odds with who I am, who I want to be, I asked. What happens when I’m 40 and I look back and wonder how I got caught up on this corporate ladder?

She reminded me that this isn’t forever. I’m not making some huge statement about who I am or what I believe in. Just because I got a promotion doesn’t mean I shouldn’t still be looking at business schools and applying. This will lead to other things, as every previous position has led to new opportunities.

What’s a different perspective you could take on this, she asked me.

I hesitated.

“I could be like, a bohemian corporate climber?” I asked more than stated.

I could be the blogging, intellectual, semi-rebellious analyst, the manager who challenges the old way things are done, and bringing a new kind of savvy to the business table.

Isn’t that what this whole Gen-Y thing is supposed to be about? Changing the face of achievement in the workplace, challenging the definition of success, and infusing our workplaces with new ideas?

Do We Love or Do We Emulate?

All day they’ve been playing Marlon Brando movies. I can’t believe how hot he was. I can’t believe I’ve never noticed him before. It’s not just that he’s attractive – it’s that he’s my ideal. My type to say the least. Hotter even than Paul Newman, because he’s got brown eyes. No, if I’m honest it’s because he looks just like him, like Paul.

Before happening upon "Julius Caesar" as I channel-surfed, it’d been months since I thought of Paul. It’d been ages since I uttered the name of the man I judged all other men against. Until he was there. On the screen, except it was Marlon Brando. Is he objectively my ideal or is it that he’s the spitting image of my first love, my first romantic admiration?

Paul was the embodiment of everything I thought I could ever want in a man. I was 17 maybe, when I first walked into his bookstore. He was so cute that my shy bookworm self could barely lift my eyes to meet his whenever I came in to buy whatever Truman Capote book I hadn’t yet read. I became a regular and he finally drew me out. At some point, I even stopped blushing the entire time I was around him.

He had big warm brown eyes (I’ve been a sucker for them ever since) and short, blond hair that had a bit of a curl, not unlike Brando as Mark Antony. And though he had a small fame, he had an athletic build from years of soccer. He wore V-neck sweaters with a white T-shirt peeking out from underneath, something I’ve also been a sucker for ever since. (For some odd, odd reason every guy I’ve ever dated since has refused to wear a V-neck sweater. I wonder if they knew how much play it would get them, if that would make a difference. But I digress…)

He wrote, on an old Underwood typewriter no less, painted, and played wonderful records. He is responsible for cultivating my love for Chet Baker, jazz, and various indie pop bands. Best of all, he owned a bookstore, his dream... a dream he’s left a six-figure accounting job for in Atlanta. That made him almost untouchable in my 17-year-old lexicon.

When I visited home from college, his shop was one of the first places I went and I was always guaranteed a cup of coffee and great conversation. At some point, I think I was in my junior year, we hooked up. It was like fornicating with a god. Whenever I was between relationships, I knew I could hook up with Paul. Really it only happened a handful of times, but how many people get to do it with someone they idolized? I’m not sure there’s been a more perfect morning in my life than one cool Florida winter morning, air streaming through the window, in Paul’s bed, having coffee. He touched me the way I always wanted to be touched, and saw me the way I'd always wanted to be seen. He had a way of stripping everything away.

I’ve never dated a man who could hold a candle to Paul, and most people would probably say they couldn’t because of the pedestal I placed him on. There’s truth in that, and five or six years later, I can see his faults. He was emotionally unavailable and closed off, unable to commit. And let’s face it: he was willing to sleep with a 20-year-old when he himself was 32.

Still, I’m not so sure that’s all of it. I wonder now, though, whether I more admired him so much as I wanted to be him. I myself was an artist, a book lover, a dreamer, a soccer player, and later, I could find, a writer. I admired the courage it took to leave that kind of security, knowing that he came from the same alcoholic, working class background as I had, to pursue his dream of owning his own business.

I identified with his vivacity and openness in thought. He was so much stronger than me it seemed. He was so confident in who he was, and he seemed genuinely at ease in his solitude. I guess I still do admire Paul, though he’s closed his bookstore and moved on. While I say that I judge all men against him, perhaps it’s really myself that I’m measuring.

The public library: A lesson in resourcefulness

I’ve been a bookworm all my life. If you ask my mom, she’ll tell you it’s the result of her reading books to me in utero. My older sister taught me to read when I was 4 years old, and before that I would memorize the books as they were read to me and recite them, pretending to read. My mom and I read Edgar Allen Poe collections every night before bed when I was 8, and my dad got me into Ray Bradbury at the ripe old age of 9. I had a voracious reading appetite. I would read anything I could get my hands on.

I don’t remember any Barnes & Nobles or Borders when I was a kid. Even if they’d been around our town, I don’t think we would have gone there. We grew up pretty poor, and my parents had to be resourceful with what we did have. With a kid who burned through books faster than most kids change television channels, even the used bookstores were pricey.

Enter the public library.

Now, somehow I forgot about the library. I love books, clearly. I love the covers, I love the words, I even love the way used books smell (they’ve got personality; they’ve traveled). My dad used to get mad when I left my books on the ground or got them wet in the bathtub – “You should respect your books, Holly,” he would say.

Once I’ve read a book, I want to hang onto it. It’s part of the family. I lugged my books with me all the way to college, then from Orlando to south Texas, and packed and unpacked them at – count ‘em – yep, six apartments in the past four years. Everything from Jane Austen to existentialist philosophy, Henry VIII biographies to Gabriel Garcia Marquez fill my shelves, my nightstand, the floors. I even love listening to books in the car.

It’s not like times haven’t been tough before. Sure, I could say it’s the rising price of gas or the fear of a soft job economy that led me to think of the public library today. Honestly, I can’t remember how I thought of it. But I called my friend Mel and asked if she was willing to go on a little adventure this afternoon. Off we went to La Retama Central Library.

Thus, I became a card-carrying member of the Corpus Christi public library system today. I checked out two audiobooks and two paperbacks. The Barnes & Noble price would’ve been $67.88 before taxes. My public library price: $0.00. 

Needless to say, I was thrilled walking through the aisles of my new lending library this afternoon. I greeted familiar titles like they were old friends, and felt downright triumphant when I found books I’d wanted to read for ages, but didn’t fit into my budget.

Nothing’s been so easy as getting my library card. I simply filled out a half-page form and showed my ID. It took less than five minutes and I was on my way, clutching my new treasures. I don’t even have to return them to the same library – I can take them to whichever one I want when I’m done. If I need longer at the end of two weeks, I can go online to renew them.

Tough economic times, whether they are caused by a recession or an entry-level salary, can either keep us from continuing our lives, or we can get resourceful, much like my parents did. I have a theory that the most creativity comes when we have limitations or obstacles to overcome. What are your creative solutions to maintaining your simple pleasures? Have you been to your public library lately?