Success.

I've been enjoying quite a bit of success lately, despite myself. After months of unemployment, poverty, and general misery, I finally have a job that I enjoy. Even though the pay is not much, this, to me, is unqualified success. Being a student is more or less synonymous with abject poverty, I think, unless you count student loans as income (which would be a mistake -- a mistake I've made, but a mistake nonetheless). Therefore, regardless of what job you have as a student, whether or not you enjoy it, you'll still be poor, so you might as well have a job you can enjoy.

I spent three years at a job I hated. And I do not mean this in the casual, getting-home-from-work "I hate my job" kind of way, I mean I despised this job. So much so, I'm not even going to go into why I hated it so much. I'd be writing for the next four hours. Suffice it to say, if you ever happen by Missoula, stop by Tidyman's on Brooks and have a look at the place. Or, you could just read the Ciardi translation of Dante's Inferno, Canto XIII, it's right in there, too.

I hated this job so much that I began to exhibit what my good friend Craig refers to as the "pre-work" and "post-work" modes. The pre-work mode would consist of counting down the hours until I had to go to work. The worst he ever saw it was when I got a short vacation, came home and said, "Oh, God, I have to go back to work in only four days." The post-work mode would consist of playing DOOM on the computer until I had unleashed all my pent-up aggression, then retreating into myself and resuming pre-work mode.

It got pretty bad near the end.

So why didn't I leave, if I was so miserable? Indeed. Looking back on it now, I wonder that same thing. Of course, I know why.

I've spent most of my life afraid of the world, afraid of change, and afraid of people. It was pretty easy to get me cowed into just about anything. I stuck at the job so long because I feared I was unemployable, that no one would hire me, that if I quit this job I'd be poor and unemployed and my power would get shut off. These beliefs were strongly reinforced by my manager, the Great Travini, who wanted me to feel he was doing me a favor by calling me a piece of subhuman waste every day.

Of course, when I finally did leave that job, all those fears came true. I was unemployed, and poor, and my power did get shut off, twice. It was a pretty bad summer. But I came through it, and now I'm better off than I've ever been.

A weird metamorphosis has taken place in my life lately. I'm not as afraid as I was, of anything. I have a public speaking class and a drama class this semester -- a combination that would have been unthinkable to me a year ago. I am far too much the introvert to endure that kind of public display of myself -- this web site notwithstanding. Or so I thought. But an odd thing has happened; I've done it -- gotten up in front of those people and delivered my speech, done my schtick -- and not a flutter. Not a butterfly. I'm not afraid.

It's damn strange.

My ambitions have been undergoing a metamorphosis, as well. In the handful of months that I've been playing lab monkey, I've gotten more job offers, thanks, and outright reward for my limited technical expertise than I did in four years of being a history major. I have two webmaster jobs lined up, and a third, more permanent position, in the works. My summer is pretty much set, financially -- for Christ's sake, I could be making close to a living wage next year. In Missoula. Even my mentor and personal hero, Professor Drake, gave me "permission to leave the hallowed halls of history for the technological future".

Yipes.

I have every reason not to believe in my success. Me, a webmaster. The thought seems pretty amusing to me, why not you? I mean, look at this place! Where's my Java? Where's my spinning carrots? There are people out there with a hundred times my talent, and fifty times my experience, against whom I would be competing if this whole scheme actually came through. The money is supposed to be gone from the webmastering biz, isn't it? Everyone and their dog is a webmaster. My technological education is next to nil. I don't have the degree. My resume is lackluster. College is a dream world. Once you get out of college, the real world begins, and in the real world everyone hates you and your skills aren't worth a tin shit. You're a joke. Give up. You'll never make it. Curl up and die now while you have a chance.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

The difference is, I'm not afraid of these things, whether they're true or not. A more fundamental truth is that I can remain here and convince myself I cannot succeed, doing something I despise so that I don't risk failing at doing something I love, or I can, in the words of self-empowerment videocassetes and infomercials everywhere, "go for it". Frankly, I've been down the fast-food name-tag job road before, and I'd do just about anything to avoid going back there. If I stand even the slimmest chance of success, then God-damn right, sign me up. I don't care what the odds are.

Being paid for doing something I'm actually capable of doing, instead of getting paid for being a warm body who's momentarily easier to employ than fire, has made me a different person. It may not be the Pearl of Great Price, but it is a beginning, and something I can work from. That's what's important. A friend and fellow Tidyman's vet sent me an email today that mirrors my own feelings about the "post-Tidyman's" era: