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Starting in 1994, I began attending the Ohio State University in Columbus, where I studied biology and philosophy. I studied half-heartedly and partied less. I was never too exciting socially, with the exceptions of very frequent punk rock shows and dating my future wife, Robin, who somehow tolerates me. The high point of my college memories was the time when one of my roommates, a Chewbacca-like behemoth named Bart, passed out in the shower and we all poked him with sticks. To fill the social vacuum, I spent a good amount of time working at a small deli on High Street and being rude to the customers, whom I loathed. It was a great place with a great crew and though our wages sucked, the job was a blast. I worked there for four and a half years, taking only a four-month sabbatical wherein I "studied" abroad in Luxembourg. (Quotation marks = sarcasm.)
I graduated with all sorts of bragging rights in 1999 with a B.S. and a B.A., and was well on my way to becoming the professional, Nobel Prize-winning geneticist that I had always known I would be. I enrolled in the Ph.D. program at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland in 1999, elated to get away from the street-dwelling whackos and some of my more idiotic fellow undergraduates. I worked in a lab, occasionally wearing a cool white lab coat, and was on the cutting edge of science, beginning work on top-notch research which would make the world a better place.
Then I quit.
I had been working on my first novel, The Bialy Pimps, for a few months by the time I turned in my Pipettemen and fruit fly brushes and hit the road. I missed my old town and old co-workers, and realized very quickly that the sterile, serious atmosphere of grad school was not at all for me. I was used to "work" consisting of screwing off, playing offensive music, and treating the customers like lepers. I tried to make the transition smoothly; I tried to joke around. Nobody seemed to be able to figure me out. So I signed some papers, walked away, and symbolically flushed my secure future down the crapper.
To fill the void, I sought a job necessitating the smallest possible amount of maturity and responsibility. The choice was obvious. I became an unpaid writer, creating short stories which would not sell to complement the completed novel which would not sell. One time, a neighbor of mine mistook my bag for a briefcase and, not trying to be funny, exclaimed, "Oh, did you get a real job?" As a writer, I was raking in the professional respect. This was the high life.
Somewhere in here, my new in-laws were no doubt looking at the situation and saying, "Well, shit."
In an attempt to support my financial dead weight while Robin labored 9-5 at one of those "real jobs," I took a job as a coffee barista at Borders book store under esteemed Cafe Espresso manager Mr. Richard "Dicky" Doll, A.K.A. "Bowling Bastard." Eventually, enough pay began to come in to allow me to leave Borders, as I earned my first publication credits: first on marketing brochures, then online at hoeck.net, then for News for a Change, and now regularly for the 50,000-circulation Human Resource Executive. All of this is on the "Strictly Business" side of the site. Now, I joke with Rick. "You know what was funny?" I say. "When you used to be my boss!"
I think that Robin is happy that I now have an income. "It's about damn time you start pulling your weight," she tells me. Ah, young love.
