A Story About Change

It was the Spring of 1996. Mary J. Blige was informing us that no, she was in fact “not gon’ cry” while La Bouche was discussing the expectations surrounding the scenario where one might “be my lover, wanna be my lover.”  The decade was like that.

I was 24 years old and had just wrapped up four years as the Director of Research at a Michigan-based market research firm that specialized in political polling.  I was in the job market, which entailed printing out and mailing hard copies of resumes and cover letters…and neither postage nor the “good paper” were cheap.  It also involved watching many Columbo reruns (Robert Culp was the best villain, end of debate).

This was not that long after I thought I might be DC-bound.  In the summer of 1994, I worked for a U.S. Senate candidate that was up 18 points three weeks out until primary day.  It looked like a favorable year for the candidates of that particular party, and the likely General Election opponents didn’t appear to be electoral Titans.  I know there were a couple of young operatives associated with that campaign who were already thinking about housing options inside the Beltway and what role they might play working for a freshly minted Senator.   Then the Killer Ad hit…cancel the movers.  Side note:  the winner of that primary went on to become a Senator, and in doing so, he helped Ann Coulter along in her fetid rise to “prominence.” But I digress.

It is amazing how quiet the phone becomes on the day after Election Day, when your candidate loses.  There is a stillness that is unique to such days, which are usually spent engaged in mundane and solitary activities such as laundry, vacuuming, or checking to make sure your phone isn’t dead (it’s not).  And, of course, there is the List of Recriminations to finish and share with your similarly embittered, recently former colleagues.  That is a critical part of the healing process and cannot not be put off, for any reason.  

So after about two months with no job offers, I remember sitting on the couch one day in my small apartment, still in student housing, intensely frustrated and deeply saddened.  Had I hit my high-water mark in what I perceived to be my life’s calling?  Was politics through with me? What am I supposed to do now?     

Sure enough, within days of Peak Sulk, a congressional campaign responded to my letter of inquiry concerning a possible job.  They were looking for a “political director/press secretary.”  The gig came with no benefits, $2,000 a month, a long daily commute, and decidedly not spectacular odds of winning. I, of course, jumped at the opportunity. About a week later, I was driving from East Lansing to Waterford in an ’87 Mercury Lynx to work in a low-slung pink building on Dixie Highway (which, apparently, used to house an apparel boutique) that served as the Campaign HQ. 

While the campaign was ultimately unsuccessful, I was not there for the end.  The principal of a DC polling firm (with whom I met the previous year) contacted me in July, right before the Primary, and asked if I would like to join their team as a Research Analyst.  This was the big call-up, from AAA to the major leagues.  Without hesitation, I said “yes,” and dialed up the nearest U-Haul shortly thereafter.  

Twenty-two years later, having changed jobs a few times since, having gone through a divorce and getting re-married, having moved a couple of times, having switched parties, having opened up my own consultancy, having weathered the Great Recession and other industry upheavals, having lost some family members and having grown apart from some old friends, I am still here.      

The building in which I spent many hours of labor, toiling for the aforementioned Michigan research company, was knocked down last year. The congressional candidate passed in 2014.  The apartment in which I fretted about my prospects is now slated for demolition as that student housing complex, with its charmingly boxy architecture, is considered “obsolete.”   

So where am I going with all of this, besides harping on the theme of impermanence?  Well I suppose it is precisely about that.  Bad times pass, as do good. To quote Yeats, “things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”  Yet the center also comes together, and the “anarchy” that “is loosed upon the world” can also be contained and rechanneled into constructive energy.

The future, as is its wont, remains cloaked with uncertainty. We do what we can, with the time given us, hopeful that tomorrow will somehow be an improvement upon today.

I know no one wants to hear dubious words of wisdom from a middle-aged white dude that comes from a blue-collar (yet unquestionably still privileged) background.  Given the events in the news, and what they portend for the future of this nation, this, as a writer, is the best I can muster.  To return to Yeats, we seem to live in times where “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

This must change, and soon.  For the moment, comrades, I have nothing else to say.

In solidarity.