Dialogue

As February is the month in which we celebrate love (and black people), I thought I would throw in my two cents on Love, Relationships, and the Implications Thereof. I do not make a habit of blogging my personal life. I don't think anyone would really be interested and, well, some (most) of it is quite humiliating. I don't want this post to turn into something like that, but the fact of the matter is that one' s thoughts on love are necessarily born of one's own experiences. Also, I recognize that Valentine's Day is long gone, but the last week has brought this topic front and center so I consider the post timely (and I get to be self-centered on my blog). This post will take the form of the age-old rhetorical device of the Colloquy. This conversation takes place between myself and Love. Ahem.


Amy: Hello, Love. How's it going?

Love: Oh, fine. You know how it is.

Amy: Sure, sure. You got a minute? I was wanting to maybe ask you some stuff.

Love: If I had a nickel for every time I heard that...

Amy: Lots of questions lately?

Love: Well, the advent of Internet Dating has raised a lot of issues. Not that I have much to do with Dating, as a rule. Not really my scene.

Amy: Really? I thought that the whole point of dating was to, well, fall in love.

Love: And by implication this means I am not around while the dating is going on. You can't really fall in love until you stop dating.

Amy: Huh. This seems quite contrary to everything I ever learned from Meg Ryan.

Love: No way, I think they got quite close in When Harry Met Sally...

Amy: Good point, good point.

Love: Thanks.

Amy: But would you distinguish between dating on the one hand and relationships on the other?

Love: Well, I should say something here. Kind of a caveat. Kind of. Well, see, there are all kinds of different types of love, you know? There's the lusty kind that behaves rather like lighter fluid on a pile of logs. There's the soul-mate kind that always, for whatever reason, reminded me of the way certain kinds of igneous rock suffuses softer rocks and then solidifies so that you get this two-part mass that's inseparable save by...nevermind. I'm babbling. The point is that when you say "relationship" it can mean eight thousand different things, if you would permit some hyperbole.

Amy: Well, I guess what I'm getting at, and I only vaguely know myself, is, well, do we do it right? I mean, is going through a bunch of relationships really the way to find what it is we are taught to look for...lifetime committment, I guess? 'Cause some places have success with the arranged marriages, for example. Some folks write the whole thing off altogether. Who's got it right? Where do love and relationships fit in our lives? [breaks into a cold sweat]

Love: Geez, dude. Here, have some water. You need to relax. Clearly there's no answer for this. It depends on the person, it depends on the friggin' century, if you take my meaning. What I can tell you is this: you are viewing love as a destination when maybe that's not quite right.

Amy: I don't think I understand.

Love: Well, it's sort of semantics. Sort of that old cliche about how it's not the destination that matters but how you get there. I mean, look at the soul-maters for example. They find each other and they are, as it is said, in love. They didn't hit it and stop. It's more like a road or a, I don't know, canal?

Amy: Love is a canal?

Love: Nevermind. I'm just saying, you are killing yourself trying to get to the other side of something that can't be crossed. Maybe you should just drift. Loving is not like getting a Law Degree.

Amy: Gah! Don't go there.

Love: Sorry. But you get my meaning?

Amy: Yeah, I think so. Love is what happens while you are looking for perfect, or whatever.

Love: Sort of, yeah. Look, I gotta run...

Amy: Wait! I have one last question. Why, when I do a Google search for love images, do I get Kylie Monogue?

Love: She's my ambassador on Earth.

Amy: Ah.

And there you have it, Constant Readers. He's a squirrely little guy, Love. And I don't really know if I am more informed now as I was before. Any additions to the information posted here would be greatly appreciated.

(Brief Aside: I had all kinds of fancy things going on on this post but the format kept screwing up. So you'll just have to read my thoughts, Unadorned.)

Chagrin

Okay, in several different ways over the past few weeks it has been brought to my attention that those folks to whom I apply for jobs will be googling me to see just who it is they might hire. This is troublesome to me for many reasons. My first response was a cheeky post right where this one now sits in which I googled myself and provided these potential employees with an efficient listing of the results complete with capsule summaries of my own design. Gardner informed me that it sounded defensive. Having gone back and read it again, I tend to agree with him. But I'm at a loss. I'm not interested in deleting my blog and yet I could see where many of the posts might sound unprofessional. But should that be a problem? It's a personal blog, which is, by definition, unprofessional. There are pictures of me in party situations on my Myspace page, which are, of course, also unprofessional. I would be more than happy to replace them with pictures of me at church, but I feel that would be rather dishonest. Another option is to take them away and replace them with nothing. And that's likely what I'll end up doing. Because while I know I won't chug beers in the workplace, I guess there's no way for people who've never met me to know that.

What is the future of all of this? If a future employer had thumbed through my yearbook and read all the dirty things the girls at my high school wrote, or thumbed through the yearbooks of others and read all the salacious things I wrote for them, the result would have been the same. They would have seen an unprofessional side of me that they would not want clients to see. The thing is, future employers would not thumb through a yearbook. They would not call my friends to see if I drink at parties. They would not read my journal to find out what I really thought about the movie I saw yesterday. They would, if these were the only methods of finding out "who I am," hire me based on my professional qualifications and let the chips fall where they may. The difference is, of course, that the information to be found on the internet is, presumably, information that I have taken out of the forum of the diary and yearbook and placed in the public sphere. So do I "deserve it" then? Have I absolutely jeopardized any chance I have of being hired because there's a picture of me with a High Life on Myspace? Is this fair? I believe that eventually web presences will not be such a big deal. Maybe it's a generational thing. Once people who grew up with chat windows and reality television are in charge, the blurred line between private and public won't matter as much. Maybe.

The bottom line is that there's nothing I can do about it. I'm going to try to go through and fix things so that I don't get passed over because of something offensive on Myspace. This post may make potential employers believe that I am defensive and difficult, but aren't those good traits for lawyers? What this post doesn't tell you is my huge sense of job loyalty and my desire to learn from people who know more than me. But that's the problem with these web presences, isn't it? It only tells you some of the story. Which is also true for resumes. Everything is tailored to present a certain image, and not a bit of it is the true, real thing. What can you learn about someone from a one-page synopsis of the most formative years of her life? What can you learn about someone from the rambly rantings on her blog? What does that picture of me with the High Life really say? I would argue that it says nothing. And then I would get the rejection letter.