Smartness, and Other Trivial Pursuits

Being unemployed clearly comes with a list of downsides.  Hovering at or near the top of that list is what materialists might call a lack of "cash flow".  I actually disagree with that.  There is plenty of money flowing through my life.  It is flowing in a unilateral direction away from my checking account.

But, hell, I'm an unbridled optimist.  I like to believe that all things happen for a reason, and that the closure of one door portends the opening of another.  So I've decided to brave my perfect storm of joblessness and impossible debt by utilizing my time in the wisest possible manner, to navigate the rudder of my ship of life in a new direction.  I have decided to renew a lifelong quest that long ago fell dormant under a pile of casebooks.

I will accumulate more useless knowledge than any other person on the planet.

This expedition was inspired by a book I picked up earlier this week at Borders, which sits amidst the six-figure retail icons mentioned in my last entry.  It's called The Know-it-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World.  The author, A.J. Jacobs, is a writer for Esquire magazine and later went on to publish the best-selling The Year of Living Biblically, in which he spends an entire year attempting to follow the Bible as literally as possible.  I'll read that volume later, as it is essential to my own quest.  In The Know-It-All, Jacobs sets out to accomplish the nerd's equivalent of scaling Mount Everest a hammer, nail, and dental floss: he intends to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica from cover-to-cover.  Every word of every entry on every page of every gold-embossed leather volume, from a-ak to Zywiec.  It is the sort of epic adventure that can transform your everyday polite house nerd into a remarkably maladjusted pile of Social Anxiety Disorder.  And I'm jealous.

I'm jealous because I once believed, as did Jacobs, that I was the smartest human being alive.  I had proof, too.  Count the trophies.  Third-place in the Washoe County Spelling Bee in sixth-grade, runner-up in the Sierra Pacific MathCounts competition in eighth.  Never mind the fact both of these trophies indicated that there were at least three people in my age group in Northern Nevada who apparently knew more than I did.  Narcissus never saw anyone else hogging his reflection, and neither did I.

Like an academic Linus, I clung to my intellectual superiority as a security blanket.  It was my perverse and ill-advised way of clawing my way up the public school pecking order.  I didn't have much else.  Sure, there was my stint as the class clown in fifth-grade (Ms. Davis, for the fortieth time, I am sooooo sorry for running around the classroom with scissors).  Other than that, I was a slightly above-average athlete with below-average social skills.  Knowing shit was my investment in a brighter future, one in which I would arrive at my high school reunion in 2010 driving a BMW with a supermodel wife.  I am clearly behind schedule on this plan.

Admittedly, the whole "I know a whole lot of useless crap" motif didn't work well for me socially in Reno.  I don't think I scored any points with the Bully's waitress after a softball game in which I, under the moderate influence of Killian's, recited who won and lost every World Series from 1903 to the present.  But in D.C., this sort of aversion to social connection paradoxically works.  Washington is easily the most educated city in the United States; some might say that it is over-educated.  It is not difficult for me to imagine a scene at Sidwell Friends High School where the chess champion shoves the quarterback into a locker.  And in this up-is-down, black-is-white, right-is-left, nerds-are-in and jocks-are-out town, it's time for me to utilize my strengths to climb the antisocial ladder, a ladder climbed only through the accumulation of useless trivia (see any Irish pub in D.C. on a Wednesday or Thursday night).

It irks me to no end that this pyramid of geek-hood is dominated by those, like A.J. Jacobs, with an "Ivy League education."  Oh yeah?  Well watch out.  Because I have a degree from the Western Athletic Conference.

Unemployed in Greenland

For those of you who are somehow impressed by my life's accomplishments, I would like to invite you into my world at the moment.  As I write this sentence, it is 5:46 p.m. on a Tuesday in October.  Three years ago, I would have told you that, at this very moment, I would be wearing a well-tailored suit, ironed shirt and tie, and a newly polished pair of dress shoes, perhaps hunched over the latest issue of The Washington Post Express as I ride along the Metro on my way home after a hard day of work.

Close.  Very close.  I am planted firmly on my ass in the middle of a mattress mounted on a cheap IKEA bedframe, wearing a white tank top and a pair of blue pajama pants hunched over my Macbook while episodes of Lost: Season 1 play on a loop in the background.  Sexy, I know.  But sexy is a luxury I can't afford right now.

Which is ironic, considering where I live.  About a month ago, I moved into a new apartment in the swanky, upscale Friendship Heights neighborhood of Upper Northwest D.C.  For the uninitiated, Friendship Heights sports a Saks Fifth Avenue, a Williams-Sonoma, and a Neiman-Marcus.  Say no more.  I may be in Friendship Heights, but I am definitely not of it.  My humble abode sits atop a row of brick townhouses.  It's nice and quaint, but it doesn't have the turbo-charged luxuries of some of the other places around here.  For example: there is no natural sunlight in the living room.  Well, there is a skylight that illuminates about a third of the room, giving it the ambience of a solitary confinement cell in a 19th-century French penitentiary. 

This is not to say that I don't like the apartment.  I actually love it.  But it also highlights the fundamental problem with my life right now.  You see, a few days ago, I lost my job.  Which is actually impressive, because it implies that I had a job.  It was a temporary job with a residential real estate company involved in long and protracted litigation.  I signed on, ostensibly through January, as an independent contract attorney.  Sounds glamorous, I know.  Over the course of three weeks, I was sent thrice to Atlanta, Georgia and environs to review files.  Mountains and mountains of files.  The job specifically required a J.D., but I am inclined to believe that the necessary skill level was that of a lobotomized orangutang.  But I got to wore that suit I talked about, walk briskly through the airport glancing at my watch to convey busyness, stand in light at rental car counters, and basically feel more important.  Plus, I got paid.  Not much, but enough.  And that's all a guy can ask for right now.

Until it isn't.  I got laid off on Saturday, hours before a 25th birthday party.  Celebrate good times.  Turns out that my job isn't necessary anymore, so I got the proverbial pink slip.  So now, instead of playing moderately affluent adult with a shirt-and-tie, I am back to Square One, playing the moonlighting blogger with a degree, debt, and a dearth of time on my hands.  That is why I am at home on a Tuesday wearing a tank-top and PJ's while a block away The Real Housewives of Montgomery County spend their husbands' green at Bloomingdale's.

Such is life.  Unemployed in Greenland.

A person of a darker disposition might be deterred or daunted, or delve into the depths of deriving depressing drivel from D words like it were D-Day.  Dude.  I won't make you read a sentence like that ever again.  But I digress (*grimace*).  Things aren't so bad.  I don't have to deal with the exhausting burdens of business travel every week, and maybe I can spend a little more time on things I find enjoyable but haven't had the time to.

Like reading books.

Or watching Lost for the billionth time.

Or looking for another job (eh).

Or blogging.

Unemployed in Greenland.  Thumbs-a-twiddle.