Love/Hate

My parents called me up tonight, and we chatted for a while. Got caught up on my grandmother’s condition and, though she’s still going through some tests, things seem to have settled down more. She’s eating regularly and still coughing a bit, but from the sounds of it is improved from last week.

Then… my mom and dad start launching into their tirade of getting more schooling and taking more classes again. And for a while, I’m not even sure what my dad is suggesting that I do. He starts talking about lawyers and copyright and learning how to protect… things… and we get into this big argument about job security. I keep trying to tell the two of them that, no matter how much schooling I get, it’s not a guarantee against getting laid off or fired. My dad keeps going on and on about school and how I need to find other options, just in case.

After a while, I get pretty fed up. I mean, I bring work home with me because it interests me and I want to figure something out. I like learning more and, even though it hurts sometimes, I like trying to get more technical shit under my belt. I tell them about how I’m learning, but instead of it being in a classroom-based environment, I’m setting my own schedule and pursuing those things that interest me.

Finally, after trying to explain all this to my mom, my dad gets back on the phone. And as I listen to him, I go from super angry to incredibly happy, in the blink of an eye. I hear my dad tell me that he wants my options to remain open. Partly because it’ll help my future, but mainly because he wants to make sure I don’t lose my love of writing.

I started to get a little choked up there.

Back when I was an undergrad, I argued with them tremendously about what I was going to study. I wanted to pursue English Lit and was pretty fanatical about it. I wanted to be a writer, a poet even back then. And the way they looked at English, they saw no future for it. Where I saw language and art and a form of immortality, they were looking for security, income, bills, savings.

My parents and I have always differed in our approaches, to both careers and to the future. They believed that happiness came from being able to pay the rent, to put food on the table and clothes on your back. Once you took care of those basic necessities, you would be free to enjoy life to the fullest. From my perspective, I believed that if you pursued what you loved, then you’d necessarily do well financially because you’d be better at your job. Because you cared, because you had a personal investment, you’d always be better than the shmoes who just went about the motions.

Where my parents said "Do what you need, then follow your dreams," I said "Follow your dreams and you’ll get what you need." And in many ways, we were both right. But to hear my dad tell me that I needed to not lose track of the writing… that was incredibly cool. And to hear him say that he thought I was good at writing was an entirely new thing that I had not yet experienced.

I’m still a bit surprised and delighted by that.

I’m used to having writer friends get on me for not writing more. But man… this is the first time my dad’s kicked my ass for not writing more. I gotta get my shit into gear. :)