This is Our War
Are we disconnected, or just different?
This month marked the beginning of my full-time focus on Melville Jacoby. June marked my latest birthday. May marked three years since I received my master's degree.
In many ways I haven't lived a normal life since.
I'm 32. My last "normal" job ended four years ago, and did so only three years after I started my first full-time position in my chosen profession. Let that sink in. Less than 10 percent of my time on this Earth has been spent in a professional workplace. The vast majority of my life has been spent not working on my career, not plugging away in an office day-in and day-out, not doing what I thought "it" was all leading toward. Life so far has seemed more about creating and recreating myself. It has been about making something of myself rather than actually being something.
And here I am trying to write a book about someone else, trying to tell someone else's story. The something I am making of myself depends on the something Melville Jacoby made of himself, and of the something of his that was denied.
And it was denied when Mel was just 25. That's the same age I was when I got that first "real" job. By that time Mel had made friends around the world. He'd dodged bullets. He'd made daring escapes. He'd met and impressed some of history's most prominent figures. He'd completed his education and made his way into a fantastic job. He'd been a heartthrob, he'd loved and lost, and, finally, he'd married an astounding woman.
Mel's life was short, but full. When I compare it with mine, it's difficult not to feel something missing. I wonder if that sense of disappointment is of my own making or a product of this era. I drafted the first version of this post in early June. That day, WePay — the site I use to process donations in support of my project (please donate, by the way) — crashed. It went down the victim of a Denial of Service, or DoS, attack. What's more, it took place just a day after WePay highlighted my project on its gallery of featured donation campaigns.
At the time, the shutdown was the latest in a series of frustrations. Death by a thousand cuts. A month earlier, I'd finally felt comfortable enough with my finances to purchase a new laptop. Two weeks later, that computer stopped powering up. I was out the system for another two weeks as it received warranty repairs. Then its return didn't go smoothly and I lost quite a few photos I'd thought I'd backed up. Fortunately, these weren't photos related to Mel's project, but nevertheless, their loss represented the latest in a series of obstacles I'd battled this Spring. Some of these obstacles were technical, some professional, some financial, some personal. Among the most noticeable was not reaching my Kickstarter goal. They all stung, but like I've mentioned about facing other failings, what option did I have but to keep pursuing the things that matter most to me?
And are these really challenges? Life, of course, is not horrible. None of these obstacles represent much more than modern life, or so I tell myself. I often think "What the bleep? How is this at all compared to war, to disease, to sleeping on the deck of boats praying that the shape you you've been seeing in the distance as you slip between darkened islands in the dead of night is not a hostile battleship? How was this at all comparable to Mel's experience?"
But then I think perhaps this is our horror. We do not face bombing raids and artillery barrages because this is our time. Yes, some in this world — indeed too many — certainly do face such violence and destruction. The bullet and the bomb still haunt many millions. Journalists continue to face very mortal dangers for the work they do (Particularly just over our Southern border, as a powerful On the Media episode recently detailed). For more than a decade our own society has been at war. When I taught last quarter, two of my students were veterans, one from each war. Yet they still seemed younger than I felt, even though they'd had these experiences I couldn't begin to conceptualize.
We berate ourselves for lamenting the petty annoyances that shape our lives. Much of our contemporary cultural discourse discusses how disconnected Americans are from the surrounding world, how insulated we are from modern times, how inoculated we are from current events. We toss around the term "first world problems" to acknowledge our privilege. We strive to simplify and slow down. We advocate for purity and healing. We seek cooperation and authenticity.
But we occupy a different world. We're quick to dismiss this world as mundanity. My obstacles are remarkable in their lack of note: Failed computer systems, broken hearts, fading identity, un-acknowledged job applications, friends battling serious illness, mounting debt, loneliness. All of these are our battlefronts. They rarely involve our own survival and yet they besiege us. They may not be romantic, but they are our enemies. Call it bourgeois, call it privilege, call it sad, call it whatever you want, but it this is our reality.
This is our war.
Help me fight my war
I need your help today to keep telling Mel's story. Any amount you can contribute makes a tremendous difference, and there are many incentives I'm offering in exchange for your support (find out more here or here. If you can't afford to donate, perhaps you have frequent traveler points for trains and planes, lodging, or other resources you can share. But if you can make a donation, please do so below and spread the word.