You are about to read a chapter from ‘American’, a book of memories and personal essays about my life in spite of - and because of - my culture and circumstances. All chapters will be posted chronologically between June and July of 2025. So, if you enjoy this read, please check out the rest of the book and other available content.
Summer 2023
The tabs are listed at the top of my browser: LinkedIn, Indeed, Gmail, Craigslist, CulinaryAgents, Tutor.com. There is no point. None. I am inept. Not as a human, but as an employee. The list of my passions and skills is longer than the Great Wall of China. I don’t network, I don’t charm, I don’t sell. But who cares? The sum of all my abnormality is absolute mediocrity, just below the bar for every opportunity.
And I live in New York.
In New York, it is not deemed socially acceptable to aspire to be just a mom. I cannot go on a date with a New York Man and tell him, in response to his question of my goals, that I only want to raise a good family. I cannot say that I have a thousand skills and each one will add to the magic of his life if he wants me to join him on the way, but not one of them is liable to take me any further than scraping by. I cannot tell him that I am okay with that, that I’ve never minded just scraping by.
A New York Man wants a shark. A woman who will skin a baby to get where she’s going in her career and has an anal-retentive high ponytail to match - a glossy, bouncy indicator of her life’s potential. I am not a shark. I am a bear. I like honey, and lounging around eating berries, and putzing around the forest, the sound mud makes squishing under my feet, and swimming in rivers, and getting enough sleep. And I will f**k you up if you get between me and my family.
Who wants a bear?
There is nothing new about a jobless, qualified American, sending in applications at a rate that could sink a hard drive. They’ll hear nothing in return, except for the occasional attempt to scam, or join the bottom rung of a pyramid. One day, they’ll accept a position as a used car salesman, which they feel is beneath them, but which instantly turns them into a piranha, chomping at the bit for the next person to walk onto the lot.
I can’t be a used car salesman. I’m bad at lying, and I think cars are a sensory assault - dull colors driving on oil-hot smelly tar roads, or smeared white metal crusts like abandoned exoskeletons that kick faint particles of salt into the mouths of pedestrians in the dead of winter.
I won’t let my soul die slowly and ascend humdrummily to Heaven with a name tag reading “Office Aide.”
It’s my parents’ fault, honestly. They raised good kids. For all their faults, they raised three kids who place integrity above all other assets. They believed in my dreams. How dare they? They raised smart kids, with skills that are worth millions to the "right people,” but who refuse to work for the “right people” because those are so often the people in the wrong.
Mathematical Economics. That’s what I studied. I loved it, too. I wasn’t one of those kids who spent every semester grinding my teeth and falling asleep in the library trying to understand the subject which I decided makes the most practical sense as a life choice. I dreamt about differential equations in my sleep, and my heart felt like it had been let out of a cage each time I sat watching my professors do proofs.
Now, I do standup comedy every night, and I bake dessert for myself every day. I read about two books a week, and I write a song once in a while. I listen to Led Zeppelin as I put on my makeup each evening, and I study Hindi on the train home at 2 am. At 3 am, I read two chapters of the Bible, and write “nah,” or “what??” next to the verses I think are ludicrous, and highlight the ones I find to hold wisdom, though the ratio (at least in the Old Testament) is about four to one. In the morning, I wake up and search for jobs, with the help of three or four or six cups of tea, then I consider posting something on social media to “further my career as a comedian.” After about thirty seconds of contemplation, I decide against such a blatant roast of my soul and then I spiral again into this dissertation on how unqualified I am to even be an American.
This is my resume.