Year: 2010 (Page 4 of 40)

Let this be a lesson: when something’s really stirring and you have the whole first paragraph mentally written, climb your lazy butt back out of bed and complete the post. Tomorrow, “when you have plenty of time”, the mood may not strike you. That being said, I’ll try to get back in the groove of 24 hours ago and share my Gleeky thoughts.

I believe good art poses a shadow of reality, something just on the edge of your experience, but perhaps inflated a bit so that you don’t miss the meaning. It provokes you and often times puts your thoughts and feelings to sound or print, into story or in motion. The visible (or audible) sign of an invisible reality.

Now, they’ll probably take away my Art Appreciation Badge for saying this, but I’m finding the writing and production of Glee to fall in that category. I know it’s supposed to be a teeny-bopper show and I understand that the constant breaking into song isn’t a reality (unless you live with KLR or Dr. Z), but the folks they have putting together the storylines are genius. Genius. A recap of artistic ingenuity from last night, by character:

1. Karofsky. Threatening to kill the public homosexual, Kurt, after kissing him in the locker room. Clearly the guy is battling something on the inside, and the anger just boils over. I thought about the kids in my husbands class (who are awful to one another). Do they get it? That those who pick are the ones with the deep issues? When we’re secure in our identity (or at least confident in our questions), we have no need to belittle the actions of another. (Don Miller had some fabulous, church-related thoughts on this). Thinking about my own life, there are 2 specific people with whom, at times, I have trouble maintaining eye contact (usually out of annoyance or frustration). Why? Because they’re exactly. like. me. Sometimes a mirror is the scariest place to look.

2. Kurt’s dad (Burt). One of my favorite (ok, I’ll admit: tear-jerking) scenes was in the episode that Burt was in a coma and Kurt relived his favorite memories, one of them being the 2 of them enjoying a tea party when Kurt was a small (girly) boy. I thought, that man really must love his son to play such activities and not belittle the child. Throughout the series (well, season 2 – I have yet to borrow KLL’s season 1 set), Burt has been the ideal support system for a high school kid living a non-traditional lifestyle. The epitome of “love him as he is”, Burt seems to have set aside any of his own fears and inadaquacies about himself in order to love his son the best he can. Any parent should probably ask him/herself similar questions. And it’s not just the Gay Question. Like I said, art will enhance or magnify for the sake of the viewer “getting it.” What if H has weird ceramic cat-collecting hobbies or will only wear the color turquoise? Will I be okay with his decisions (or the way he was created; separate post), or will I try to change him into my ideal? Can I set aside the parenting-as-an-image-of-me practice to simply love my kid and help him be the best Him or Her that God created?

3. Sue. This woman is me at my best and my worst. We are 2 peas in a rule-driven pod. A crusade against the tots? I’ve already signed the petition. Fearing a Sex Riot during the Brittany episode? Prophetic. And she had me at hello when she told a girl that she couldn’t be head cheerleader because of breast implants, citing self-esteem reasons. Brilliant. You have to cheer for the woman when she kicked out Karofsky on hear-say in an effort to be zero-tolerance on bullying. She really does care for the kids; her evilness comes from depending on rules to be the only way to govern and make change. Control will never do it; love will. This, my friends, is why I’m not still a youth director. I’m a Sue.

I realize I might be alone in my crusade to get someone an Academy Award (or Emmy, whatever the television folks vie for), but I’m being honest. Glee is more than a song-and-dance; it’s illustrating a hyper-inflated version of what is actually happening in this neck of the woods. 

I have no experience with the glass ceiling of pay grades or fighting to climb the corporate ladder as a woman. I’m not denying they exist, I’m sure they do somewhere for some women. However, my plight with Motherhood in the Workplace has caused me a different angst in the past several weeks: Boredom.

Before leaving to have Miss M I was working a full 40-hour week and was given responsibility to make clients and candidates happy with their experience. I utilized process and made things move smoothly. I kept a pretty quick pace and loved it. There were spreadsheets running amok. Glory.

Last night I spent 4.5 hours calling people in our database trying to get them to apply to a position. I said the exact same thing no less than 80 times. It was excruciating.

Now, don’t get me wrong – the reason I first came to this job was because it was mindless and I could leave it at the door. I could pick up and take off as needed and the lack of responsibility was refreshing. But after that novelty wore off, I found it’s not really my nature to robotically work and leave a task less than cleaned up when I finish. I need clean databases. I need process and procedure. I need to see improvement. I want to be part of the solution.

So, when we made the decision to replace our sitter with yours truly and I switched to a 2-evening and a Tuesday work schedule, gone was my opportunity to participate in the type of work that I enjoyed. You simply can’t be client-facing when you leave on a Wednesday at 8:30pm not to return until the following Monday. Managers generally like a call back before that. At least, the good ones do.

So it leaves me in a pickle of choice. I get to enjoy my time at home with the kiddos and endure 18 endless hours of boredom while at work, or I get to seek out a new sitter and miss my glorious mornings of coffee and play and jammies until 10 but exchange it for pants with a zipper and packing my lunch and checking my voicemail. I have not yet found a solution that would allow me to bake a beautiful cake and get to eat it, too.

Last night at 9pm I heard youth directors (and probably teachers) across the country giving three cheers for Glee. Actually, those hip-hip-hoorays were probably echoed by anyone working with young adults these days, specifically older high school & college students.

It’s something that Marko has touched upon and waaay back when I was in youth ministry YS brought the topic up at national convention: kids remaining kids much longer, even *ahem* into their 30s. From the time my eyes were opened to this phenomenon, I’ve been struck by its far reaching effects, and simultaneously annoyed (which is quite self-righteous of myself, seeing as how I went through the very same thing and probably still have a few princess-like tendencies).

Allow me to draw upon a real-life example. I’m currently recruiting to fill several positions for a very well-known telecommunications company that wants to hire lots and lots of sales people by yesterday. They’ve got pretty tight standards (which I respect) – an employee won’t be hired if they’ve been fired in the past 7 years, doesn’t show a lot of excitement and enthusiasm, isn’t a go-getter with some internal drive for sales, etc. And they’ll take personality over experience. If you’ve got that bright, sunshiney personality but have only spent your working hours waiting tables or ringing up sweaters, they’ll still consider you (which is pretty gracious for a sales position). The pay is better than what my husband is making, benefits start day one and you can control your earnings with commissions, on top of a base salary.

You’d think this would be a cake position to fill, right? Well, it turns out that those who just graduated college (the target candidate), don’t like to work late hours, want more money and really don’t want to have their pay based upon their performance. In short, after talking to many of these kids, they want to do little to no work for the fewest hours possible and be paid more than their parents for it.

Don’t we all.

Glee last night touched upon the fact that kids don’t want to do it if it isn’t “fun.” Husband comes home amiss every day with that fact, and any effort he gives at upping the fun factor is usually met with “how lame” because apparently “fun” can only be categorized if zero learning takes place. And it can’t be fun if it’s also work, right?

I loved the way Glee contrasted 2 teachers who wanted the same thing for the students: to feel special and to learn. And kudos to the directors for showing the underlying concept that all-fun, all-the-time, without roots and depth and structure, leads to loneliness (you know it’s good art when you can’t put words to what you just saw but your heart is saying, “yes, that’s it!”). Living without regard to consequences eventually leads to emptiness.

I can’t offer a solution. I’m not really even able to name the reasons we’ve landed in this place. Perhaps it’s parenting, perhaps it’s the way the college years aren’t encouraging more independence, but I’m guessing it’s largely more cultural than that. You know me, I’ll blame everything on our consumerist culture. But I do believe that we have a role in helping these kids-turning-adults to grasp onto responsibility. As Schuester said, “we also need to teach them that their view is not the only view that is important.”

For further reading:
Generation Me
The Price of Privilege