the art of getting what you want
The art is in picking a worthy thing to want.
We’re not designed for endings. Two years ago, I desperately wanted a job. I had one that paid $13 an hour as seasonal customer service for a startup. I answered phones, troubleshot problems, stared out the window onto a brick wall when I had nothing else.
I was commuting two hours each way into D.C. because I couldn’t afford to live there if I wanted to eat. This was six months out of grad school, when I was twenty-seven years old and the hungriest I’d ever been, alternately despairing and prideful.
On the train in and out of D.C., I wrote four cover letters each way. Nights, I sent them all into space and rarely heard anything back.
I heard back so rarely, in fact, that two years later, I was still a temp.