The New Girls

That campfire badge got me thinking: do I need to light a fire underneath myself or is this some valuable transition period I'm not only entitled to but, in the long run, dependent upon in order to achieve my eventual goals?

My eventual goals.

There was an obnoxious article in The New York Times last weekend. Here.

Meet the new girls.

These two young women graduated in 2008, moved to the big city to find their success in editing and, oh, right, really?, yeah?, failed.

The article coddles them paragraph after paragraph, pouring sympathy on a twin who makes $800 a week by working three happy hour shifts in a bar right around the corner from her Upper West Side home. Excuse me when I grab a tissue and cry for these poor little things. Her Upper West Side home.

The other twin walks dogs and washes cars. You half-expect her to say she also tears 2-page spreads out of TigerBeat magazines, loves her Baby G, and hopes to one day own all 7,000 beanine babies.

Seriously? Grow up. And get real.

First of all, have a plan before you hop off the covered wagon here in NYC. Have an internship, a job, contacts, an apartment you can still afford even if you make less than two grand a month. Have some common sense. Have some survival instinct.

Or have a ridiculously out-of-touch New York Times reporter take incomprehensible pity on you, write multiple pages on your plight, and possibly get you some job offers.

They were mailing out their business cards cold, packed with boxes of homemade Buckeyes, for God's sake. Look, I lived in Ohio too. It's like these two women have dabbed on some corn-fed milk-face and are Midwest minstrel-ing throughout the Big Apple for attention. Where is the focus on skill sets, work ethic, experience, passion, intelligence, career development? Yes, you two are very cute. And you talk funny. Hats off. But still no job? Hmm.

How about actually networking? How about moving to a city where you already have connections and might be able to make something of yourself -- and not just a caricature? How about really setting your sights on a specific job you want at a specific company, researching, outreaching, and investing the time and energy to demonstrate what a perfect fit you are? The Buckeye mass mailing failed? Really? How strange.

If the twins don't get a flood of job offers from this article alone, it is time for them to take their faux-hillbilly idioms ("wishing on milkweed seeds," references to woodchucks, etc.) and vanish back into the cornfields. Enough already, girls. Cowboy up, or ride off into that setting sun.

Yes, granted, I am being ridiculously hard on them. But, behind the blog, I am also being somewhat hard on myself. I don't have a 9-to-5, and I don't have a steady paycheck. I don't have a 401-K and I don't have comprehensive health care. But I also don't bake Buckeyes to send out to oblivion. I don't panhandle or perform in subway stations for a stranger's business card. I don't live in an Upper West Side 2-bedroom for $2900 a month. I would never develop a business plan in which the key monetization strategy is "somehow woo advertisers."

I am not going to sit around and fail and complain to reporters about it. I am going to sit around and marginally succeed and complain to my blog about it.

This is the fire of which I speak.

Make your own future happen, girls.

Milkseeds my tuckus.