Didn’t know how to network
This morning I spent about 90 minutes reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
A marriage, compulsive infidelity, jealousy, pain, ambivalence; Russian takeover of the country, Czechoslovakia, betrayals to the secret police, twisted thoughts in the male and female characters who have to cope, along with their colleagues. It’s a slow and profound read, written in a layered structure in which events are revisited from different angles. I’m finding a lot of depth in it. At first, because it lingered on the Tomas character for a while, I found it too trapped in the male-philanderer perspective. I felt impatient with that and thought I might abandon the book, and I’m glad I changed my mind. I’ve ordered a copy — it’s not available for Kindle — because the copy I have (a 1985 paperback) is overdue at the library. I never saw the movie. I should watch it.
Unrelated: I was thinking this morning about how my connections in the world of writing and art (in Chicago in 1987) fell away in an instant when I graduated from college. My mind was so full of turmoil over more personal matters that I didn’t even notice. I knew well-connected people personally to some extent through school and friends, and there were many others in the arts and in literary circles who knew me through school and liked me, and could have mentored or helped me. Like a lot of 22-year-olds then, I didn’t know how to keep in touch with this “network” (a career-world term I may not yet have heard).
In fact, I seem to have made up my mind that it was impossible to do so. I wrote in June 1987,
“A couple of weeks ago I remember feeling inspired and creative at the end of the school year, as if I had millions of ideas and the time to do them…. Now I feel totally passive and depressed. People I liked at school — what excuse would there be for trying to keep in touch with most of them? Some of them were really nice people, but I’d have nothing in common with them outside school. Or if I did, as I suspect I would with some, there would really be no way to get together. It would be futile outside the context of school. It’s so depressing. I liked to be always meeting new people and seeing what they were all about. What am I going to do now? I feel like my writing and picture taking would be just like sitting around playing with myself. Why do it?”
I could have used a little help to keep in touch appropriately with classmates and teachers who inspired me.
So I floundered, lost touch with art and writing opportunities, and almost simultaneously I suffered a severe personal loss. I settled in to work at a boring job and to be lovers with an emotionally unavailable man. That settling-in was virtually complete by ten months after graduation. Little changed until I was almost 30 and had learned to stand up for what I needed, without arguing. Somewhere along the way I learned that I am the one who decides what is right in my life. No outside arbiter is needed. Far too often I had gone along with others’ wishes, in large things and small, not knowing how to do otherwise.
After that, I was fortunate to meet my husband. Our relationship gave me the breathing room to practice asking for what I need and want. By then I also had learned how to “network,” at least as well as an introvert can. I’ve had an offbeat and fun career, though not in the arts, and I’ve been able to do many of the things I wanted to do in life. All the childhood losses and young-adult mistakes make me appreciate it.
