KUBLACON!
I was in San Francisco last weekend, visiting Claire. Since the move-in/move-out situation at Mengting’s apartment was still in flux, we stayed at an airport hotel on Friday night. To my delight, the Hyatt that Claire chose was hosting a Kublacon Convention that same weekend. For those unfamiliar with the concept—which I presume is nearly all of you—Kublacon is a way for nerds to get together and play role-playing games, board games, and trading card games over the course of a weekend. You literally could not walk five feet without bumping into someone toting Warhammer figurines, twenty-sided die (in a dozen different varietals), or Magic cards. It was one of the most awesome things I’ve ever seen, principally because there were so many of them. And they all looked like some variation of the Comic Book Shop Guy from the Simpsons. The meek had inherited the earth, or at least the SFO Hyatt.
I used to want to own a comic book shop. I told my parents this when I was 14, and they were chagrined. It seemed very logical to me at the time—the comic book shop guys were cool people and all they had to do on a weekday was go to their store, read comics, play video games, and eat fast food. Somewhere along the line, however, I kicked my D&D habit and found better things than comics to spend money on. While I still have a passing interest in superhero exploits (on a whim, I recently bought two subscriptions and dropped some dough on a five-year X-Men run on ebay), I was sad to find the same men and women working at my old Singapore and San Diego comic book stores, thirteen years later. Some of them recognized me, some did not. It’s strange to revisit your adolescence and discover that the guys that you thought were neat at thirteen were still personable and witty people, but unmistakably diminished by their place in life, an element that had once been part of their charm. They were pathetic. I couldn’t help but think that. Which was an absolutely stupid fucking thing for me to think.
Since I got off trial, I’ve been kicking around the office in 2nd gear. I’ve been going home for lunch to work out, and catching a movie or two on the sly. This is going to end relatively soon, because I’m starting to fritter away all of the excess billable hours that I salted away in March and April. But in my spare time, I’ve been trying to identify what motivates me in my career. It isn’t the money, per se, because if I wanted to be a really heavy-hitter, I should have been a banker. While I enjoy the intellectual rigor of my job, in all honesty, it’s not brain surgery. Not even close. I don’t do it to survive, or to put food on my family, because I don’t have a family and moreover, I was fine three years ago with less than a third of what I earn now. Despite what Claire thinks, I can still live in shit-hole apartments if it comes down to it.
So I came to conclusion that what motivates me in my professional life is the fact that in raising me, my parents built your prototypical Asian status-whore. Now that’s pathetic. It’s not that I want the extra dough that Associate A (who left the firm to go to a NY shop) makes—it’s just that I need to be better than Associate A. It’s not that Northwestern is a bad school—it’s just that I’m constantly aggrieved by the fact that HLS grads have the UPPER HAND. It’s all very, very stupid. My parents instilled in me a strange dichotomy—they were effusive with the compliments (which led to an oversized ego), but never really laid a solid foundation for that high self-regard because everything they told me was dependent on my substantiating their opinion through some sort of actual accomplishment (grades, etc.) So now here I am, twenty-odd years later, flourishing, but knowing that it’s never going to be enough.
I’m a pretty big douche-bag to think that someone who’s smart, cool, and happy doing what they do is a pathetic human being. Sorry, comic book guys.
I used to want to own a comic book shop. I told my parents this when I was 14, and they were chagrined. It seemed very logical to me at the time—the comic book shop guys were cool people and all they had to do on a weekday was go to their store, read comics, play video games, and eat fast food. Somewhere along the line, however, I kicked my D&D habit and found better things than comics to spend money on. While I still have a passing interest in superhero exploits (on a whim, I recently bought two subscriptions and dropped some dough on a five-year X-Men run on ebay), I was sad to find the same men and women working at my old Singapore and San Diego comic book stores, thirteen years later. Some of them recognized me, some did not. It’s strange to revisit your adolescence and discover that the guys that you thought were neat at thirteen were still personable and witty people, but unmistakably diminished by their place in life, an element that had once been part of their charm. They were pathetic. I couldn’t help but think that. Which was an absolutely stupid fucking thing for me to think.
Since I got off trial, I’ve been kicking around the office in 2nd gear. I’ve been going home for lunch to work out, and catching a movie or two on the sly. This is going to end relatively soon, because I’m starting to fritter away all of the excess billable hours that I salted away in March and April. But in my spare time, I’ve been trying to identify what motivates me in my career. It isn’t the money, per se, because if I wanted to be a really heavy-hitter, I should have been a banker. While I enjoy the intellectual rigor of my job, in all honesty, it’s not brain surgery. Not even close. I don’t do it to survive, or to put food on my family, because I don’t have a family and moreover, I was fine three years ago with less than a third of what I earn now. Despite what Claire thinks, I can still live in shit-hole apartments if it comes down to it.
So I came to conclusion that what motivates me in my professional life is the fact that in raising me, my parents built your prototypical Asian status-whore. Now that’s pathetic. It’s not that I want the extra dough that Associate A (who left the firm to go to a NY shop) makes—it’s just that I need to be better than Associate A. It’s not that Northwestern is a bad school—it’s just that I’m constantly aggrieved by the fact that HLS grads have the UPPER HAND. It’s all very, very stupid. My parents instilled in me a strange dichotomy—they were effusive with the compliments (which led to an oversized ego), but never really laid a solid foundation for that high self-regard because everything they told me was dependent on my substantiating their opinion through some sort of actual accomplishment (grades, etc.) So now here I am, twenty-odd years later, flourishing, but knowing that it’s never going to be enough.
I’m a pretty big douche-bag to think that someone who’s smart, cool, and happy doing what they do is a pathetic human being. Sorry, comic book guys.
1 Comments:
Re: nerds, staying there was truly awesome. Never have I seen a greater concentration of nerds.
Re: being a prestige whore, it's so hard to wean oneself away from those worries. I'm part of a pretty accomplished summer class, AND I'm a 1L, so I feel like I constantly have to prove myself for not going to a higher-ranked school (not to mention being a pathetically quiet person). If I don't learn to let go, I'm going to go crazy.
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