Lamentable, but true, I have the working man’s blues.

Not because my job is bringing me down. I actually enjoy my job. I get to learn and write about some weird shit at my job. It definitely stays fresh. No complaints there.

Rather, my blues are more related to what I call the great compromise of existence. In order to pay my bills and stay afloat, I’m forced to devote a considerably large portion of my time to my job. This severely limits the time I have to do all of the many things that in my opinion make life worth living. Hence the great compromise of existence. Working…a necessary evil for the responsible adult.

Like I said, I genuinely like my job. It is much better than my previous career as a middle school teacher. To quote one of the most brilliant literary minds of the 20th century (Bukowski), “I’d rather be playing ping-pong with the risen ghost of Hitler” than teach 8th grade English ever again. Harsh but true.

But in the interim between my life as an English teacher and my life writing web content for plastic surgeons (gotta love reading up on breast implants and labiaplasties all week), I had a stop-gap job as a substitute teacher. Not glamorous, and certainly not paying the bills. It was somewhat a waste of my Master’s degree. Whereas I used to be a real teacher that supposedly was impacting the youth of America, I had become a glorified babysitter making sure these kids sat in their seats pretending to be productive. I was making full use of my talents.

But seriously, there was one great aspect of being a sub. I have to admit, I truly miss this part of subbing (although I loathed every other aspect of the job). I had a ton of time to write. I would sit in these classrooms all day with absolutely nothing to do. I would hand out the assignment and then sit there while these kids pretended to work on it.

I had 2 choices — I could either sit there staring at the wall or I could take out a notebook and write. It was a no-brainer, I must say. In my one not-so-glorious year as a substitute teacher, I got a ton of writing done. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to call myself prolific. But certainly very productive. I more than doubled my completed pieces in less than a year. Not too shabby, I must say.

Since I have started writing web pages on breast implants and car accidents, I have had substantially less time to do my own writing. Tragic, I must say. After about 2 months, I can honestly say that it is getting to me.

I know, the real answer is that I must get more forceful and creative about carving out writing time after work. But when you are playing music with the band several nights a week, you start to see your time vanish in front of your eyes. Before you know it, there is one, maybe 2 nights a week to accomplish all of your other projects, and fit in some decompression time. Trickier than you think.

So lamentably, I have the working man’s blues. While I am grateful to have gotten a full-time job to help me pay my bills during the worst economic downturn of my brief lifetime, I do miss the perks of unemployment (read: lots of free time to get my writing done).

Of course, this has not adversely affected Jababa one bit. Will and I have diligently gotten together every week to continue writing opus masterpieces for the band. Sometimes we get bogged down for weeks or even months on one song, but when that happens you know it will deliver. So do not fret — there are plenty of new Jababa tunes looming on the horizon.

What has been adversely affected is my own personal writing. I have not written any new lyrics or poetry since I started my job. I have written a precious little music to complete my ever-growing stack of musicless lyrics. This must change soon or I will start to go nuts. But I am engaged in a delicate juggling act right now. And with ski season about to kick into high gear, my time will further diminish.

For those of you out there who feel my pain, raise your glasses with me and drink to the working man’s blues!

“The Jababa Chronicles”: All musings, anecdotes, philosophies, rants, ramblings, and tirades written exclusively by Andrew Martin unless otherwise specified.

I was going to write this blog post on last weekend’s Halloween escapades, but under the circumstances, that post seems a bit shallow.

I’m going to make a one-time exception to my rule of not writing political content on this blog. The events of this past week are just too important not to talk about them. I want to talk about what the results of this election mean to me on a more personal level. I also want to say upfront that anything I write here reflects only on me. I am not speaking for the rest of the band.

Sometime during the last 8 years, I lost my faith in our government and the American people. I became convinced that I lived in a country where most of the people didn’t think or believe what I think and believe, and I felt that those who I do agree with were too apathetic to make a difference. I also began losing faith in the intelligence and judgement of our citizens and our government to have the ability to do what is right. I don’t know if I can pinpoint an exact moment when it began, but I can certainly identify the watershed moment when I completely lost all faith.  

My loss of faith in the American people came after the 2004 election. While I will never say that John Kerry was someone I felt could become a great leader, he certainly was a much better option than Bush. And after Bush’s track record in his first term, I felt that this should be apparent to the rest of the country as well. But despite a rather large outcry for a new direction in our country, the American people validated the misguided direction we had taken under Bush. They responded to the fear and paranoia tactics employed in Bush’s reelection campaign, and by giving him 4 more years, signaled to the rest of the world that we are a bunch of douche bags who agree with his agressive, divisive, misguided, and destructive tactics.

I had really thought our country was ready for change. I had thought that the American people had a sense of what is right and decent, and would send a clear message that our current direction was unacceptable. But apparently, I had been wrong. And at that point, I had lost all faith in everything American. In 2000, we didn’t really know what we were getting ourselves into. We had an excuse (sort of). In 2004, we knew exactly what we had, and said, “We want more!”

By December 2004, I can honestly say I was embarrassed to be an American.

About 2 years ago, I was flying back to Colorado from a visit to NY. I was sitting next to a young girl on the plane. She was probably about 20. She was intelligent, passionate, liberal, politically conscious, idealistic, and very Muslim. Not fundamentalist Muslim, but very religious. To a large extent, her daily actions were dictated by her religion.

She was a HUGE Obama supporter, and this was when he was still relatively unknown and a longshot for the presidency. I must have spent 3 hours on this flight trying to explain to her why she shouldn’t waste her time getting excited about Obama. Not because he wasn’t worth getting excited about, but because we lived in a country that was too racist, backwards, conservative, ignorant, and closed-minded to ever consider electing a man like Obama president.

I was the jaded 30 year old who had competely lost faith in everything important and vital in our country preaching to the idealistic 20 year old who still felt she could make a difference. I should be ashamed of myself. Lucky for me my speech didn’t work, and luckily there were many more people like her.

I’ve thought a lot about this girl and our conversation over the past week. Most likely, I will never see her again (I don’t even know her name). But if I ever were to cross paths with her, I would thank her for her continued faith and idealism. For without people like her, we would most certainly be in for 4 more years of the same right now.

It might be the case that our country had to get as fucked up as it has gotten over the past few years for the general public to reach the point where they could make the statement they made this week. But regardless of the reason, the fact that we did make a big statement this week is momentous in itself and should be celebrated and applauded for a long time to come.

I think that we have gone a long way towards repairing our image around the world simply by the results of  this election. Furthermore, we have reaffirmed the idea that in America, anything is possible IF you work hard enough and believe in yourself. Because let’s face it, Obama worked his ass off to accomplish this, and for much of his primary campaign, very few people truly believed he could win. 

But it wasn’t just about Obama’s hard work. There were millions of people around this country who came to be inspired by him and believe in him the way my friend on the plane did. And they spent countless hours of their time and energy working to help him achieve his dream. Considering the widespread apathy among young, liberal people over the past few elections, this is truly amazing. And I think that it’s obvious that Obama would never have pulled this off without the support and belief of his many admirers who poured their hearts and souls into his campaign. In uniting so much of the country behind his cause, he has shown us something that no politician has in my lifetime.

So at 32, I have turned a corner with our country this week. My faith has been renewed. I am no longer bitter and jaded, embarrassed of everything our country stands for. I am once again proud of our country and truly believe that anything is possible here, provided you believe in yourself and are willing to work hard enough to accomplish it. Obama has inspired hope in me for our future.

My faith in the American people has been revitalized as well. While I realize we are not perfect, we are a lot farther along than I gave us credit for. While racism, ignorance, self-righteousness, and closed-mindedness still run strong in parts of our country, it clearly no longer reflects the majority of our population’s beliefs. Many more people than I realized are ready to embrace the fact that we live in a multi-cultural and multi-racial world that cannot be governed by backwards religious tenets that only validate the views, beliefs, and values of a small group of people. I am hopeful that with Obama at the helm, we are ready to finally reassert ourselves as a beacon for what is right in the world, as opposed to the harbinger of the evils of power and greed that we have embodied over the past 8 years. This may be a bit melodramatic, but it is how I feel.

Finally, this election has renewed my faith in the power of hope. Obama won largely because he was able to inspire hope in the majority of Americans during a time when most people had no reason to be hopeful. This hope was powerful enough to combat all of the negative fear and paranoia campaigns designed by the Republicans to turn the American people against him. In previous years, these fear and paranoia campaigns were very successful, largely because the opposition candidate didn’t have the ability to inspire hope. In the absence of hope, fear is very powerful. But in the presence of hope, fear has no chance. I hope that many politicians recognize this and realize that the way to win a political campaign is not by inspiring fear against the opponent, but by figuring out how to inspire hope in the American people that you can soundly and successfuly lead the way.

So for me, this election was important because it inspired my hope and faith in the American people once more. For that, I must thank Barack Obama and the American people for helping me to find my faith.

“The Jababa Chronicles”: All musings, anecdotes, philosophies, ramblings, rants, and tirades written exclusively by Andrew Martin unless otherwise specified.