I would imagine the best part about working for the Gap would be that you never have to spend any time wondering if your life would be more fulfilling at some other Gap. The almost frightening uniformity must also have the power of a mild sedative. I just can\u2019t imagine someone working at the Gap in, say, White Plains fantasizing about the shirt folding boards and the long sleeved tees at the Gap in Shaker Heights.<\/p>\n
Most people, though, do fall prey to the lure of the \u201cgrass is greener\u201d siren song at one point or another. I worked in a field that was particularly susceptible to this mindset, at least on the lower rungs of the career ladder. This was partly because television news is not built to encourage lifers. It\u2019s commonly accepted that if you want a raise, you don\u2019t ask for one.\u00a0\u00a0 You go to another station at a higher market level. If you\u2019re a reporter and you want to be an anchor, you usually move downmarket to get the experience and upmarket once you have it. The worst way to succeed is to stay in one place, This creates an environment that encourages the belief that success… and happiness as well… are predicated on being anywhere but wherever you are.<\/p>\n
Most reporters I\u2019ve known have passed through three stages of disillusionment before accepting the realities of the industry. Those stages, like phases of the moon, are fairly predictable.<\/p>\n
It takes a while, but sooner or later, everyone gets it – that there is no mystical, El Dorado like market where the streets are paved with Big J journalism, that the BBC is not going to take on an American local news expat, and that while you do have a month to create a story at PBS\u2026 it takes a month for you to create a story at PBS. \u00a0That what you wanted was in Kansas all along.<\/p>\n
Working in television news spoils you for life. Results simply have to happen fast, whether you think you want them to or not. After a while, most reporters settle in and accept the reality that the grass isn\u2019t greener on the other side because they\u2019ve seen the grass. It\u2019s actually, I think, one of the great strengths of the industry. It\u2019s difficult to want for another life when you can see for yourself that it isn\u2019t as good as the one you have. Many of my friends who are still in the business joke about how they can\u2019t get out because they\u2019re not qualified to do anything else. This, I think, is far from true. They don\u2019t get out because they have no idea how they would be happy doing anything else. Whether they admit it or not. I\u2019ve gone through the phases myself. When I left the industry it was hardly by choice, but if I took anything with me, it was, at least, the knowledge that the myth of greener pastures is exactly that \u2013 a myth<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Which is why I\u2019m having a bit of difficulty with the idea I\u2019ve been having lately \u2013 that maybe being blind wouldn\u2019t be such a bad thing after all.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a strange, midworld I live in right now. Not quite blind, but not quite sighted either. The official, medical term for it is \u201clow vision,\u201d and as much as I\u2019ve railed against giving undeserved power to words themselves when the real enemies are the perceptions and expectations behind them, I have to admit\u2026 low vision? That one leaves a mark. There\u2019s just something about it that implies dimness, dullness, a certain\u2026 being kneecapped way of life.<\/p>\n
Nobody knows quite what to do with someone who can see\u2026 a little. Lately, I\u2019ve been getting the feeling that the fully blind people I meet resent on some level that I want to fall in with them and their goals because \u201cyou just don\u2019t know what it\u2019s like,\u201d and they\u2019re right. Every time I successfully pick out the salt shaker from the pepper, I know they\u2019re right. At the same time, , fully sighted people can\u2019t wait to bend over backwards to open doors offer their seats point out when the light turns green and offer any other manner of assistance I don\u2019t want and don\u2019t request, they\u2019re right too. Every time I run my forearm across a door so I can find the handle without grasping at air, when I look for or feel for the big triangle the verifies that yes, this is the men\u2019s restroom, rather than the circle on the entrance to the women\u2019s restroom, or when I let my finger hang over the lip of a cup so I can tell when I\u2019ve poured almost to the top, they\u2019re right too. It\u2019s a strange feeling of not quite fitting in no matter which way you turn. As the weeks stacked up since the last surgery, I\u2019ve been coming to terms with the idea the world of clear sight is my past. \u00a0If, to steal from\u00a0Dylan Thomas\u00a0and take\u00a0his words\u00a0almost completely out of context, the dying of the light is in my future, is it so wrong that some small part of me wants it to hurry up and get here? They say the politician who won\u2019t choose between the left and the right, but who chooses a middle of the road path, only ends up being run over from both directions. That\u2019s a little how this feels, a foot in both worlds, but planted firmly in neither.<\/p>\n
So here\u2019s where I landed on this.<\/p>\n
To date, I\u2019ve hiked eighteen of the fifty four mountains in Colorado that rise higher than fourteen thousand feet – the fourteeners, they’re called, appropriately enough. Bear with me, I\u2019m going somewhere with this. Eighteen long slogs in tough terrain, and each summit was a hard fought victory. Still, whenever I recount that number, there\u2019s a small voice in the back of my mind that whispers, \u201cit should be nineteen.\u201d He gives no quarter, that little voice, and I\u2019ve never asked for one. There\u2019s one peak in the San Juan range that should have been number nineteen, but it was late August, very late in the season for high country hiking, and a late afternoon lightning storm forced me and the hiker I had fallen in with at the trailhead to turn back and return to a lower altitude below treeline. By the time the skies cleared, there was no hope of summiting and returning until well after dark. Since neither of us had more than emergency overnight gear, the risks seemed foolish at best, dangerous at worst.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve beaten myself up over that descent for years. Over the following winter, I left Colorado for a job in Tennessee, and of the thirty-six fourteeners left to summit, that one hurts the most. I\u2019ve never met another hiker who questioned the wisdom of the decision not to summit, but I\u2019ve felt badly about this uncompleted task ever since.<\/p>\n
Until now.<\/p>\n
Like I said, bear with me, I’m going somewhere with this. Lingering between two worlds, not knowing which one you\u2019ll end up in and not really belonging to either, is like not being at either the summit or the trailhead. To me, the feeling has always been that you either climb to the top of a mountain or you don\u2019t, and that the trail is just the means of getting from one point to the other. However, what I\u2019m starting to realize is that on that very long ago (or so it seems now) August afternoon, I reached my personal summit. I reached the limits of what could be done at that time, on that day, and by that me.<\/p>\n
I think that perspective has merit today. I\u2019ve had some strange personal victories since this past May. Finding what I need at the supermarket without asking for help. Convincing a client to hang with me while I figure out how to log and edit video for her film. Making it to a friend\u2019s house for dinner without asking for a ride even though I\u2019d never been in their winding Cole Valley neighborhood. In one world, the sighted world, these are tasks so\u00a0simple\u00a0they\u2019re not worth mentioning. In another world, the world of total blindness, they\u2019re tasks that are even harder and are achieved in darkness. I don\u2019t live in either of those worlds\u2026 not quite. Still, these are my summits today, and today, I scaled them. Just because I didn\u2019t challenge the lightning doesn\u2019t make the trail up to that point less challenging. I reached my summit, is what I\u2019m saying.<\/p>\n
That realization is why I\u2019m putting together this little trip. Because I don\u2019t know what happens next. I don\u2019t know what the next summit is,\u00a0or\u00a0how hard it will be to reach. \u00a0What will define success is almost certainly fluid, but I can only hike the trail I\u2019m on. This may become the story of how I saw part of the world, and then saw none of it, or saw it differently, but I think the trail itself has value. I\u2019ve said this before, but I think it bears repeating \u2013 if you\u2019ll stick around for the ride, I\u2019ll do my best to make it worth your while.<\/p>\n
I may be in the middle of the road, but at least I\u2019m not on the sidewalk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I would imagine the best part about working for the Gap would be that you never have to spend any time wondering if your life would be more fulfilling at some other Gap. The almost frightening uniformity must also have the power of a mild sedative. I just can\u2019t imagine someone working at the Gap […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Rim5-14","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":252,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}