David Plans for the Future

Just five weeks ago, your fabled hero and narrator graduated from college. Having miraculously emerged from the four-year ball-stomp that is the modern American university system with at least the faint recollection of my sanity, in the sense that, say, one maintains the faint recollection of an arm violently gnawed off in the godless jaws of a grizzly bear, I, your humble poet-sage, have been thrust against my will out of the proverbial frying pan and into the less proverbial fires of the current job market.

OCCUPY FLAME.

Finding my vast stores of personal wealth rapidly depleting, I'm gradually coming to the horrifying realization that, one day, I will indeed have to find a steady source of income. Even more terrifying, that steady source of income may have to be arranged as some sort of exchange for my very own individual share of labor.

You see, adoring faithful, I face the unenviable choice between consuming alcohol and prostituting my specific talents around the Washington, DC, metropolitan area. Now I certainly don't want to lose the only thing I can rely on to help me cope with my constant disappointment with my life's glaring lack of direction, but I also don't suddenly just want to up and start actively searching for employment. The moment I do that is the moment the Bureau of Labor Statistics moves my little voodoo doll from the "jobless" pile to the "UNEMPLOYED" pile, and I become an infographic on Fox & Friends and a general liability for the Obama reelection campaign. 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, presumably.

What I'm saying is that this decision has far-reaching repercussions which could easily irreparably alter the course of American history or, at the very least, disrupt the flow of human evolution.

So rather than go into this job search guns blazing and unwittingly lead mankind to its untimely ruin, I will instead just begin to prepare to seek employment. The first step of this preparation, is, of course, discovering which field of labor would suit me best, what with my distinguished bachelor of arts degree in Political Science from the American University, my dual mathematics and German language minors, and a promising though tragically short career in the barista-ing arts and all. Let us, then, dearest readers, examine a few such fields, and, with the stark honesty for which this blog has become synonymous, judge the extent to which my persona is compatible with such a career choice. My background seems to have barred me from contention for such noble pursuits as "astronaut" and "seven-time Super Bowl winning quarterback," so we're gonna have to set the bar at somewhat less prestigious.

PRESIDENT
Now, now, I know what you're all thinking, loving millions: a Wile administration would be the perfect salve this country - nay, this world - needs to heal mankind's self-inflicted wounds, revive America's tarnished image, and bring JFK's long-delayed dream of a columbian Camelot utopia forth onto this earth. This destiny is surely divinely ordained, you say. Verily, you say, go forth, idle man, and fulfill what your God and your father's God has commanded unto your soul.

Now those are all good points, and I certainly can't refute them with the evidence at hand. And true, I should be able just to waltz on up to the American people, let them experience my raw sexual magnetism and the mesmerizing poeticisms of my soothing rhetoric, and decide for themselves if my credentials, viewpoints, and pre-Raphaelite jawline are what's best for America. But before I get democracy all hot and bothered, let’s just point out a few caveats.

Can America look away from this statuesque beauty long enough to vote?

To begin with, I am but 22 years of age. According to the Constitution of these United States, I need to have "attained to the Age of thirty-five Years" to run for the Office of the President. That's a whole Bar Mitzvah between now and then. Who knows if I’ll be able to maintain my classic features and svelte frame for the lifespan of a beagle?

Second, that whole "résumé-building" thing just isn't for me. What, like I'm supposed to join a mail-room somewhere, and somebody's going to just all Good Will Hunting me and recognize my genius, gradually promoting me through party ranks until I get to be the one running for President? You can't leave God's will to mere mortals/supervisors.

Perhaps what's holding me back most, however, is the fact that I'm Jewish. In the past three elections, America has had to deal with a Catholic, a black guy who looks a little muslimy, and a Mormon, and has had a legitimately difficult time doing it. And none of those guys even killed Jesus. Is America ready for a Jewish president? Is America ready for a young, mysteriously dark-featured, professionally inexperienced, divinely ordained, Jewish president? Well, friends, that's one of the few questions my political science degree did not prepare me to answer.

Level of compatibility: Middling.

ATTORNEY-AT-LAW
With my four years in college having done little to convince people that I should be in their employ, perhaps what I need to make myself more marketable is a little more book-learning. Dare I say it, law school could be in order here. Not only would the law provide me an outlet through which I can turn my life into one half of the greatest show ever produced on television, but I hear that at least some percentage of the job could consist of me logicking at people so hard they soil themselves. The rest of it, if I'm to understand Law & Order correctly, is maintaining the fragile balance between society's expectations, public safety, and the rights of the individual citizen all while coming to grips with the innate case-by-case subjectivity of morality.

It's a bitter pill to swallow, Mr. McCoy. 

All of which seems like a good deal. Can I do it? Probably. Would it kill me? Probably. You see, my parents are both lawyers, so I have a bit more of an insight into the profession than just my immense experience with the Law & Order franchise. And if you ask my mother, "maintaining the fragile balance between society's expectations, public safety, and the rights of the individual citizen all while coming to grips with the innate case-by-case subjectivity of morality" is really just a by-word for "paperwork." And that sounds like a bitch.

If you look at it from another angle, however, a career in the law could be an excellent stop-gap while I fulfill my constitutionally-required 13-year hiatus from seeking the presidency. Twenty-seven of America's 44 presidents have been lawyers.

Stephen Grover Cleveland: Two presidents, two lawyers, one walrus mustache.

So I could go to law school, become a lawyer, and just bide my time until America is ready for the sheer magnitude with which I will charm it out of its miniskirt. And if that doesn't work out, I'm still trained for an occupation. How's that for a win-win?

Level of compatibility: Tepid.

ENTREPRENEUR
Even though all the companies and corporations which currently exist might deem me too unqualified for employment with them, if there's anyone who'll hire me, it's me. I'm my kind of guy. I remind me of me when I was my age. I like the way I think; I like my spunk, passion, desire, my style, as it were. I like the cut of my jib.

At first glace, entrepreneurship might seem pretty simple. There are millions upon millions of entrepreneurs out there. Every time I walk down my street, I'm amazed at the American ingenuity which thought, "Only three dry-cleaners on this block? That is at least one dry-cleaner too few." But only a select few have such a unique idea or innovation which fills such a vital yet previously missing niche in society that their enterprise rakes in billions in profits. People like Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, that chick who made Spanx.

And that's my problem. You see, I'm not the best at understanding society's wants and needs. When I see a woman walk by me on the street, I don't think, "Now there's a poor gal suffering from painfully flat hair who would benefit from some kind of plastic hair support system" so much as "Boobs?" I've never once shotgunned a beer and thought, "Gee, if only the company responsible for packaging this beer had made a can specifically to simplify this process; that innovation would certainly attract me to another brand." I don't look at tacos and Doritos and think, "Yes, these two things should be one thing."
 

Because who doesn't love a cozy afternoon on the toilet?

I'm just not an innovator, I guess. And I certainly can't do anything with technology. I refuse to use Macs because I still haven't forgiven Steve Jobs for the one-button mouse. A few weeks ago I tried to change the formatting of this blog and my toaster exploded. My first reaction when my Internet stops working is to punch my computer even though I know they're different things.

Not to mention that Fonz-based troubleshooting hasn't worked since 1967.

Even if I did miraculously get an idea that would revolutionize the world, turning that idea into a product and marketing it would cost thousands of dollars that I do not have. Right now, I have so little money that my bank wants to charge me for the service of having to input such a short number into their computers. Because that will solve that problem right up, Capital One. So the entrepreneurial route is, at least for the time being, not where my immediate employment salvation lies.

Level of compatibility: Sub-par.

WRITER
If there's one thing college might actually have prepared me for, it's a career as a writer. Writing was 73% of all I did in college, and the other 27% was an awkward mixture of alcohol, masturbation, and sleep. I even have my very own blog. In fact, writing is probably the only activity I do for fun that could possibly be parlayed into a career. It also comes with the additional benefit of letting me set my own hours, which, as we all know, are nocturnal.

Now, All the Wile certainly has its millions of loyal and loving admirers, but somehow that hasn't translated into cold hard cash just yet. And since I believe my blog should be a free and ready service by which the public at large can receive my tales of woe and ineptitude, I'm going to have to branch out into more lucrative mediums: novels, novellas, screenplays, amping up my Twitter presence if I have to. Fifty Shades of Grey fan fiction. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

According to my watch, the time is not that desperate.

Of course, I can't just mosey on up to a publishing house and start bathing in the lucre. To begin with, college made it such that I can only write under the most extreme circumstances. If I am not constrained as much as possible by the twin forces of the amount of work I have to do and the amount of time in which I have to do it, I am physically and mentally incapable of producing anything. I'm going to have to overcome this little college adaptation and self-motivate the Holy Spirit out of myself if I'm going to make it in the writing field.

Also, I hear writers need to have ideas, which are just the things I happen to be plumb out of. I've spent every day of the past 6 years trying to come up with a plot of any nature for any medium that doesn't suck. My freshman year of high school, I wrote a screenplay for a film noir about detectives investigating the apparent murder of Humpty Dumpty, and I haven't had a decent idea since.

Obviously a decoy of the King's by which to distract all of his men and horses.

You, avid readers who hang upon my every word, probably recall me taking an X in a course for the sole reason that I could not for the life of me come up with a research topic idea. Even my blog posts aren't really "ideas" so much as "life stories." Although, in fairness to myself and the beloved nature of this blog, that means I could at least write one bitchin' memoir.

One bitching memoir.

Unfortunately, I would need enough people who find the story of a suburban middle-class white male captivatingly interesting for that badboy to sell. Who wants one?

How about now?

Level of compatibility: Me-oww.