In the everyday adventures of the big city unemployed, I come into contact with a bevy of different professionals doing their "professional" work, refusing to be pigeonholed into the normalcy of the working world. I popped in on a medical clinic, where girls in slinky socks and clogs mingled with secretaries wearing highnecked sweaters and gstrings, who were either acupuncturists, herbal doctors, massage technicians, or possibly even plain janes who fell into a job on the temp service site of craigslist. I stopped in to a tall building downtown, across from Powell's universe of books where I go weekly to volunteer to file random things in an ancient cabinet and there were three women and a tall smile laced man who greeted me warmly. They were curious people, asking about my day and how I was. I dropped off a CycleDeli menu in the hopes that they would order next week, but these are writers working for a nonprofit who hoard their money for books, new releases, a bottle of nice wine, and maybe a new pair of Dansco clogs for the upcoming anthology release party. Then I crossed Burnside and down into Oldtown, where my friend Sam (not the woman who lets me live with her) works in an old building with lots of windows and a habittrail of hallways and stairwells. He is a internet guru, a web designer who surfs the web like Laird Hamilton surfs pipeline. He showed me the set up, showed me the conference rooms with handmade (from recycled doors!) tables, the huge windows, the dominating Vaio video monitors on the wall and all of the young, hip, urban, funky folk who live and work there. A coworker was shovelling some food into his mouth from a styrofoam togo box, while an uneaten slice of pizza the size of a dinner plate sat untouched in front of his buddy to the left.
The point is that all of these people that I came into contact with are living the life of a professional, whether they want to be called that or not. I have never considered myself a professional, and only just recently became aware of the fact that I have/had a career. What seems funny to me is that in my former life of an Alaskan, there were very few "professionals" in my immediate world, most of whom would be reluctant to call themselves that for fear of being labeled an "adult". Most of my friends and associates were what I would call "workers", able to do most any job capably and some jobs quite proficiently. We weren't professionals at all, just people trying to get by and make some money so that we could hang out together, and bitch about working. PeterPan syndrome, I believe is what some call this infatuation with staying young and refusing to grow up, but the ability and desire to try new things, to avoid the rut of putting in years of servitude is what keeps us young not the refusal to grow up because I like my graying hair and expanding belly. I am a cook, that's what I am, but because I refuse to scale the ladder of success in that field, I find the word professional offensive.
The move down into this professional world has always felt at odds with who I am. When I was cooking here, I felt like I had to prove my worth in the cooking community and act the part of a respected professional in my class. Well, that's just not who I am and maybe that was why that experiment didn't last very long. I'm still a kid trying to get used to the idea that I have a career and a house and a fiance and a dog and a car and a stock portfolio. I also have a 31 year old woman living with me who insists that I stay young forever because she doesnt want an old man cramping her style.