The BIG News; or, "You're not your job"

Well, now that it's official, I guess i can let the cat out of the bag (whatever the hell that means, though I guess if you're obssesive on those matters you can check it out here) and tell you what the big news I alluded to earlier is.

Yesterday I quit my job at Blockbuster. I know, it's shocking isn't it. Anders, the guy whose very name in these parts is synonymous wiht movies, won't be working at a video store after the end of the week. Crazy, isn't it. Basically, after nine months of bitchin' and complainin' about Jason Hobbis, he finally made a move that got me angry enough to quit (that move being the firing of one Ryan Gullen, who you can read here).

One would think that it would be easy to quit a job like this one. A job that has given me so much grief, from management, from infringement on my time, from just plain ol' stress, but it was actually a hard decision to make. A part of me loved that job, and loved being a video store clerk. It's pretty much the ideal college job for me, and I had made it a part of my identity. It was a part of who I am. "I'm Anders, and I work at Blockbuster." Kind of pathetic actually.

Really, though, this mentality is prevalent in our culture. People define themselves, not by who they really are, but by what they do. "I'm Joe, and I'm a doctor." Or, "I'm Kathy, and I sell Mary Kay shit that nobody needs." So much of people's identities are tied up in what they do. So as hard as it is to give up the free rentals, and the good times I had with some of the staff there, this is perhaps a more important decision than I originally gave credit. It's about defining myself not by what I do, but by who I am.

"You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis." - Tyler Durden, Fight Club