In Which Morale Tanks

“The writer Walker Percy once said that a tragedy of our modern life is that everything is interesting but nothing becomes deeply important. One of the findings of the new field of neuroeconomics is that our brains get easily overwhelmed by too many 'interesting' choices, and we usually end up sticking with whatever we did before, uninspiring as that may be. So it’s not easy to pick your large, passionate, overarching goal and aim your energy and ingenuity toward it, but that action is what changes your life from interesting to important.” —Robert K. Cooper

Right now this thought may be the only thing that prevents me from quitting my job to become a professional Xeroxer.

The advantages of being a professional Xeroxer:

1. You don’t have to write encyclopedia entries on topics that you suddenly realize you know nothing about.

2. You don’t have to write grant proposals.

3. When you go home, you get to flake out. You don’t have to stay up late Xeroxing all the stuff you didn’t get done back at the store.

4. You can catch up on the last two weeks’ recordings of “24” without worrying that you’re going to miss your deadline for your encyclopedia entries and your grant proposal.

5. You can admit you watch ”24.”

6. You are not so stressed out that you are tempted to eat a whole five-pack of purple Peeps instead of writing your encyclopedia entries and your grant proposal.

7. If you are up at 1 am, it’s because you have a fun and decadent lifestyle.

8. You get paid more as a Xeroxer than as an associate professor in Oregon. Trust me, you do.

9. You do not find yourself saying things like, “Damn, why did I agree to go to Disneyland?”

10. Fun Xerox art hijinx vs. 1700 words on the relevance of justly neglected snippets of medieval literature to the humanities, in competition with hundreds of other grant proposals, some of them actually written in advance of submission. Which would YOU choose?

Remind me to get remoralized soon. I’m off to knock back some Peeps and dream of toner.