Last night I had an interview with a small English school for children in the suburbs. The CEO is a fantastic guy who really respects others and is happy to hear them out. He said he is willing to give frequent raises based on performance and that the role itself is flexible. There are five weeks of vacation every year and a half day on mondays. They offer a house, not an apartment, with 4 bedrooms. It is 10 minutes from the beach. The pay is average but the living expenses are half of that in the city. It’s 10 minutes from the beach!
It looks like a pretty comfortable position. I imagined what I’d do with a house. I’ve been living on couches and in box sized apartments since I graduated high school 15 years ago. A house! And I could walk to the beach whenever I want.
But I’m thinking of telling him I can’t take the job...
It’s so hard to turn down, the living situation is perfect! But there are not two day weekends, the days off are random, and because it’s so far from the city, that means I would only be able to go to the city on longer vacations. It’s also a position teaching kids, and as much as I love kids, I don’t like teaching them. I don’t like trying to help them fit into a world which is still so full of so much unbalance.
I feel it’s my more urgent responsibility to help the world find balance and become a more healthy environment for these kids to grow up in. I want a chance to interact with the cold hearted CEOs and drone workers of the city. I want a chance to tell that woman who had studied for 10 years and didn’t learn a thing that she’s not stupid, that school just wasn’t made for her, and that there are other ways of learning.
I wonder though, if everything is truly perfect as I know that it is, why should I put myself in a less than ideal environment in order to try and “fix” something as if it were “broken”.
I believe that on a cosmic level, while everything is truly perfect, that it is our role as humans is to define good and bad for ourselves. This is what we came here to do. We are artists and this is our art. I feel that life in the suburbs without a kind of creative community around you is, in a sense putting down the pen. It’s not the same as the countryside where we can connect with nature in a more intimate way every day, where we can create new things from the ground up. It’s not the same as moving out somewhere with a bunch of friends and trying to build a suburban community based on your ideals.
I don’t know anyone there, and I do not see how it will be a healthy environment for me without the means to come back into the city more often and keep painting that picture or without like-minded friends who understand my perspective closely. As perfect as it is out there, the fact that I cannot visit my canvas in the city frequently will make it feel like a jail.
And so I may be kicking myself in a month or two but I feel I need to turn down this job. I can only hope that it will be a few days or weeks before I find something else, and I’m trying to push myself to believe that there will be a boss I like as much as this guy and a living situations even close to as comfortable as this one near the city and teaching adults.