Where Are They Now?

A while back I left a post on my friend Clark. Things weren’t going so well for him and unfortunately he didn’t even seem terribly aware of the fact. Clark’s situation has gotten a little bit better in some ways, but unfortunately it’s gotten a whole lot worse in other ways.

Readers of the original post will recall that Clark’s wife earns between two and three times what he does. On top of that, Clark has a kind of soul sucking job for the state government. Soul sucking enough that when he first started it I told him that if he was still there in 20 years I was going to come kick his ass.

Quite understandably, Clark is starting to get fed up with this situation. Last spring he decided on a totally new career trajectory. This summer he started taking classes toward a new degree at one of the local state universities. Sounds good, right?

Not so fast. Clark’s new “calling” (a word he seems to use completely differently than the Catholics do) requires massive amounts of extra schooling just to break in. There is so little overlap between his current degree and his new interest that he’d have to take enough classes for a bachelor’s degree that it would be almost like starting over completely. Also because of the lack of overlap, he can’t really just jump in and go for a graduate degree. He’d have to take enough pre-requisite undergrad classes that it’s more or less the same. So we’re talking about basically three years of schooling if he went full time.

But did I mention that he’s married and has a daughter less than one year old? If you’re guessing that full time schooling isn’t happening, you’d be exactly right.

Oh, and his new “calling” won’t actually pay any more than he’s currently making. In fact, it might pay less. Now, in some cases that can actually be fine. Recall Roissy’s third commandment of poon: You shall make your mission, not your woman, your priority. If your income is low because you’re truly following a mission or calling, your woman very well might put up with it. In fact, under the right conditions it can be even more alpha than out-earning her.

But there’s a reason that I’ve been putting “calling” in scare quotes. No offense to my friend, but he’s been completely fooling himself here. The day we sat down for lunch and he outlined this plan he gave me some spiel about what his pastor outlined as necessary for a calling. Some mumbo-jumbo about where opportunity, means and desire overlap. Frankly, I think it’s bull. A calling is really simple: it’s what you feel you have to do, even if it’s a royal pain in the ass or nearly impossible. You know, when you’re called. Not when it’s something you maybe might wanna do if only you had the opportunity and means.

I (nicely) told him so, and gently hinted that this was an awful lot of schooling. Then I went home and told my wife that there was no way he’d be finishing it.

I saw Clark a couple of weeks ago and he’d finally acknowledged this truth. Unfortunately, this revelation came after he and his wife moved back to the town where they went to college together so that he could go back to school. She took a faculty job – a sideways move, maybe actually a backwards move in the long term. They’ve spun it to everybody else as if it’s a great career move for her, but he was rather honest with me (at first) about it really being so that he could go to school. Now they’re stuck in a tiny apartment down there, trying desperately to sell their house. Yeah, in this economy. Clark managed to transfer his current state job down there… only now he has a really long commute on top of a soul-sucking, low paying job.

Wait, did I say there was good news here? Well, there is, a little. First, Clark is finally seeming to realize that not all is right in paradise. He hasn’t exactly admitted it to me, but you can see it in his body language and hear it in his voice. His choice of words is letting it out, but only if you know to look. So at least he’s finally starting to see that something is wrong. Also, this move has seriously upset the nice, pretty SWPL life that they had. The net effect of that, at least in the short term, has been to make his wife infinitely more bearable. Some people just really don’t react well to money, and are just better people when they’re not very well off. Sadly she appears to be one of them.

The better piece of news, though, is that he’s looking into other career options. Right now he’s got himself convinced on one path that he probably also won’t stay on. There’s a good bit of schooling there as well, and the program itself is very competitive for admission. But it would result in a terminal degree (not a PhD, but the equivalent in this field) and a salary competitive with his wife’s. I don’t think he’ll stick with this plan, either, but at least he’s now thinking along somewhat more practical lines.

When they moved, I told Hermione that there were very good odds of Clark getting divorce papers in his stocking. Now that they’ve been there a few months, I think he’s got a bit more time left before that comes – but I still think it’s coming. Based on some things he said to me at our last meeting, I think he might even be open to being baby fed some Game concepts.

We shall see.