An Orchard

One of my favorite lines from a Fleet Foxes song is "if I had an orchard, I'd work til I'm sore." I think an orchard would be great. Manual labor is great. I can't say how many times I have stopped to think, in the middle of reading some super long and scholarly text, that I wish there were another alternative for me. I wish that there was some way back for me, to find work that let me be outside and was simple yet needed, work that speaks for itself. I can't help but feel that the more tertiary, quaternary, or even quinary I get, that I'm looking past the mark.

Sometimes I feel like my parents, family, friends, and peers see some sort of track for me, some career path that I should be following. They see it partly because of what I've said I want to do with my life, but I also feel like they see it because of the way that our culture views work. There is a definite hierarchy, a caste system of employment. Some employment is not very lucrative, but for other reasons -- like its perceived usefulness, "importance", or contribution to society -- it sits higher on the list. I'd put teachers, writers, poets, classical musicians in this category. Other employment is more lucrative, but gets short shrift because it's deemed lower in some way. I'm going to put plumbers, electricians, etc in this category. Then there's the work that is almost universally respected and is also considered to be high enough in the pay-scale that you're definitely floating a little higher in society. You know who I'm talking about about -- any kind of doctor, nurse, dentists, lawyers, management positions in companies.

And then there are jobs that people maybe respect, out of an appreciation and/or admiration for hard, simple work. I'm talking about most anything to do with agriculture, animal husbandry, horticulture; extracting resources from the earth, like mining, logging, hunting and fishing. Would I be incorrect in believing that if I were to abandon my master's degree in European and Eurasian Studies, and my plans to be some sort of policy analyst, in favor of moving to Alberta to pull oil from the tar sand fields, this choice would be looked down on? Like I'd given up/sold out or something? Or if I chose something a little less environmentally sensitive (just a little) -- if I moved to British Columbia to cut trees down. Not sure why everything is in Canada. I just like the north.

Kirovsk, RF

I'm sure people would support my choices, actually. Most people in my life are pretty great, and I think they wouldn't give me a hard time about it. But I would expect to see a bunch of side-eyes first, the skeptical questioning. I think they'd look at me askance because to do so would be to go down the ladder, according to the American middle class's rope climbing mentality, instead of continuing to climb up the ladder.

Disclaimer: if I were actually good at what I'm currently doing, I probably wouldn't even be on this topic. If I were a born academic or analyst, I'd probably be loving my current path, not questioning whether I really made the right decision six years ago to go down this path. Actually, I sort of feel like the decision wasn't entirely made by me. It was largely made by the superego, to borrow a term from Freud. I picked the "Europe" aspect of it, but the rest was determined by societal expectations.

To bring it full circle, and to wrap it up with some pith. I sometimes feel like what in having chosen to do what I have, it's difficult for me to really put my heart into it and work. I'm always fighting against my own laziness as much as I'm fighting to just read while I'm trying to do homework. Maybe if I worked in an orchard, I'd always have the will and desire to just work until I was sore. Anyway, I'd better stop writing and go to church.

For more reading/watching on this subject, look at this post of mine and especially watch the TED talk by Mike Rowe that I posted.