Ahhh, a warm family embrace

IN TRANSITION #14

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | October 30, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

One night during the summer, I had dinner with my uncle, who was in Boston for business. I brought him a copy of one of my first-person articles for City Weekly.

''You don't have health insurance?" he responded with shock after he read the piece. (He's a doctor, by the way.)

No, I told him, I didn't have health insurance.

''You've got to do something about that."

Not like I hadn't tried. After my college insurance plan expired mid-summer, I made inquiries about the price of extending it. I can't remember how much I was quoted on the phone because I was so exasperated, I threw away my notes on the subject. But it was more than the $300 a month I had (miraculously) been expecting to pay in rent -- and for catastrophic coverage only.

Besides, the deductible was so high, the insurance was unlikely to be of much use anyhow. Bottom line: There was no way I was going to make those payments on part-time wages and temping. And I was a healthy 22-year-old. No wonder 45.8 million Americans didn't have health insurance in 2004.

Getting health insurance was, I must concede, a major reason I eventually acquiesced into taking the full-time position I now call my job. Or more exactly, it was the impossible price tag of buying my own insurance, combined with talking to a friend who had recently fractured her toe, needed dental work, and broken her collarbone in a car accident -- all during a time in her young, healthy life when she wasn't insured. (Fortunately, the other guy's insurance paid for her car accident-induced injuries).

What a difference a couple of months makes. I recently found myself at a Human Resources orientation explaining the smorgasbord of benefits and choices I am now entitled to as a full-time permanent employee at Harvard, where I am a staff assistant to a professor and his research program.

Overwhelmed by new acronyms -- HMO, PPO, IRA -- and new services I had never thought twice about -- long-term disability, short-term disability, retirement planning, pensions -- I felt like a little kid playing Employee in a league of grown-up Professionals.

But the benefits, which I had once thought of as ''extras" when in fact they were essential, practically made me swoon. I talked them up to all my friends back home. ''Did you know I get a full week off for Christmas -- paid vacation -- on top of the regular time off that accrues?" I asked one gleefully.

Silence.

''Oh, and don't forget the 35-hour workweek," I preened.

My friend's reaction? Hostility.

I had known there was a difference between being a temp and being a regular employee. And certainly there was a difference between part-time and full-time work.

But I hadn't fully comprehended that being on salary also meant being included in part of the family -- that old-fashioned system where the company really did treat you as a human being and member of the community for life. (Or at least paid lip service to such things.) But the other big difference was being in a union.

The day of my union christening had finally arrived. I was giddy.

''My brother's a labor organizer," I told the union rep during a coffee break after she spoke about the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers at the orientation. ''He'll be so proud," she replied as I handed her my signed card.

Some day, my union idealism may crumble, and I'll be disillusioned along with a lot of America. After all, only 12.5 percent of wage and salary workers were union members last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But it feels pretty comforting after months of employment-seeking with no health insurance or job security.

It's a feeling I wish I could share. After all, the only difference between the work I do now and the work I did then is I've agreed to stick around for the year.

Is that what it takes to be part of the family?

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

When did I become so old?

New refrain: not a boy, not yet a man

IN TRANSITION #13

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | October 23, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

In a tragic turn of events, somebody stole my umbrella last weekend.

It wasn't so much the umbrella that bothered me -- it was only ''mine" because an unknown passenger had left it in my car. It wasn't even the fact that it meant I'd be soaking wet by the time I arrived home in Somerville. It was simply a poignant end to a cold, unfriendly night, which I can only hope does not foreshadow the rest of my postgraduate social life.

But I'm worried.

The Friday night had begun with some promise -- drinks with friends from college at Charlie's Kitchen in Cambridge to celebrate a birthday. Charlie's was a mainstay: the jukebox, the jumbo-sized bottles of Newcastle, the bad, bad karaoke. But the festivities very quickly reached a plateau.

''I can hardly keep my eyes open," one friend admitted after a single round.

A full day's work -- no matter how lacking in laboriousness -- put a damper on our after-dark plans. We were beat, and minutes after the last (first) pint was empty, we were out the door and headed separate ways into the night. The rain, which had been falling for over a week straight at this point, only seemed to intensify.

Faced with the prospect of retiring early -- yet again -- I did the unthinkable. I met up with a couple of other friends who could still lay claim to the collegiate party-all-night lifestyle, being well, still enrolled undergraduates. How I suddenly envied them.

I braced myself for the confused stares and incessant ''What are you still doing here?" questioning that awaited. I had for so many weeks now successfully resisted the temptation to immerse myself in campus social life. Am I that desperately bored? I was. And I resigned myself to spending Friday night party-hopping with the college crowd.

Er, well, I went to two parties. Which was enough to remind me that maybe I'm too old to be drinking straight vodka (they were all out of mixers . . .) from already used plastic cups (. . . and glasses) while socially awkward 19- and 20-year-olds grinded up against each other to badly mixed music on a poorly ventilated, cramped dance floor/dorm common room.

When did I become so old and cranky?

It was at the second of these parties that my umbrella and I parted forever. By the time I arrived home in Somerville, I was drenched, annoyed, and confused about what to do with myself now that I'm not a student, yet not ready for the domestic, Martha Stewart breakfast-in-bed life I imagined as my fate.

I kept thinking of that bad Britney Spears schlock song from that waste of 93 minutes, ''Crossroads": ''I'm not a girl, not yet a woman."

So what am I?

People often say college is where we're supposed to go to find ourselves, but those people are lying. College is where we find ourselves hanging out after high school. I had a good time, learned a lot, trained and experimented in the things I now pursue. But I didn't find myself. Why?

Because I was in college. It's like finding out who you are on a reality TV show. It's not who you are. Just who you are on a reality TV show.

Who we are in the world? That's a more difficult one. But I wonder if maybe it's time I bought my own umbrella. A new one. After all, this rain's got to be just the beginning.

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

Wait, let's do that over

IN TRANSITION #12

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | October 16, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

I helped my friend Katie move last week. Twice.

The first move happened over the weekend, relocating my friend from futon (the same one I slept on this past August when the summer wound down and left me couch-surfing) to her first-ever post-dorm apartment, in Cambridge. Within 24 hours, she was ready to move out.

''I made a horrible mistake," she told me sheepishly when she called to ask if I would help her move a second time that week. (These sort of favors are one of the many drawbacks of having a car in the city, but I can't complain. The complimentary meals as remuneration keep me well-fed.)

The room was smaller, stuffier, more expensive, and less inviting than she had processed on her first visit -- and the neighborhood less lively and farther from work than she recalled.

''What was I thinking?" she said, miserable, on the phone.

The experience sounds far worse than it was. She had a new place within days -- despite having spent all September shopping for apartments. There was no lease yet to breach, no promises broken. Katie's short-lived roommate took the news in stride and understood. And Katie packed light; everything fit in one carload in my Accord.

Which got me thinking: how easily mistakes can be erased. Things that seem unprecedented, that burden us for weeks at a time, so often turn out to be no big deal.

For months now I've stressed about life and career decisions, every one of which has seemed so pressing. Do I take this job or hold out for another? Do I sign this lease or pack my bags for the West? The weight of each choice -- so loaded with consequences -- has dragged behind me as I walk to work in the morning.

I spoke with another friend the other day just before he took the LSATs, the law school entrance exams. He fretted about the fact that one multiple-choice question could be the difference between his top-tier ''reach" choices and fallback law schools -- one split-second gut instinct could forever change the course of his life.

Of course, he'll never know.

We only live out the choices we've made -- not the ones we wish we'd made. Fear-mongering parents may rightly cultivate an ethic of risk-management in their children (disclaimer: some mistakes, foolish or unforeseen, can nonetheless be life-altering, if not disastrous), but not all mistakes are irreversible.

Dread of missteps and after-the-fact guilt can leave us blind to the choices we do have. If you don't like where you're living, move. Sooner than you think, you may find yourself in a great new space with bay windows.

I don't mean to sound like a Pollyanna. Obviously, a lot depends on having enough cash to expand the options. And I'm sure this lesson exists in every self-help book. Yet discovering it on my own gave it a gospel sheen.

''Do you think I'm crazy for doing this?" Katie asked after the second move was finished Thursday night.

''Of course not," I replied.

I admire it.

Maybe it's just temporary, but my walk to work feels lighter now.

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville. Reach him at:benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

I've experienced monotony from both sides, now

IN TRANSITION #11

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | October 9, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

Today marks exactly four months since my college graduation day. The monotony of subsisting eight hours a day hunched over a keyboard, banished to a remote cubicle, is already weighing on me.

Is this what I have to look forward to the rest of my life?

The transition from full-time student to working stiff -- despite a few detours along the way -- happened rather seamlessly and suddenly. When did I stop going out to the bar for drinks with friends and start spending my nights packing a lunch and ironing slacks? Instead of pulling all-nighters on papers anymore, I fall asleep before getting through a two-hour rented DVD.

(On a related note, I got a haircut last week. Discovered to my horror that my hair is thinning. Really thinning. Like when wet, I can see my scalp.)

At this rate, I'll be comatose by the time I'm 30.

Admittedly, the job itself is fine. My working conditions are relatively cushy: I have a window beside my desk and a fair amount of privacy, responsibility, and variety of assigned tasks. My co-workers ask about my life and take a genuine interest in me.

But it's the routine that's hollowing out my soul from the inside. The 9-to-5 slog, day after day -- fax, photocopy, file, collate, stamp, send, delete. I navigate through the empty corridors of a faceless, cold bureaucratic machine. Sometimes colleagues glance in my direction, bathed in the blue glow of their computer monitors, their eyes twinkling with fantasies of Bermuda or skydiving or anything involving actual human contact. But I push on, entranced as if sleepwalking.

Yet every so often something -- an event -- jars me awake after weeks of coasting along through shapeless time. I recalibrate. I am reminded that every day is new and every moment, no matter how bleak, presents new opportunities for discovery and beauty.

I had just such an experience last week. The weather had turned sour. It was one of those inexplicably windy days. I had listened to the storm developing all afternoon through my window, threatening to burst through the glass and relieve me of my e-mail turmoil. When I arrived at my car after work, I found it covered in leaves -- and, to my utter disbelief, an enormous tree branch had fallen from on high and pounded into the roof.

''Is that your car?" a former professor of mine asked incredulously as he strolled down Prescott Street. I was in the middle of dislodging the log from between my side mirror and driver's window.

Miraculously, the car still rolls. The only significant damage: a large dent above the driver's door (the same door whose window I had just finally fixed). Just a few more inches and that branch would have shattered my sunroof -- and likely put an end to my driving days. To make matters eerier, I had only parked there the night before so as to rush to get to a 6 o'clock meeting.

''I think God must be trying to send you a message," my friend Phoebe taunted later that evening in the car.

Message or not, my ears have perked up. I walk home from work each evening noticing new things. A friendly couple walking their dog, a baby crying, the sunset igniting the sky in brilliant purples and reds.

I've driven this same route countless times, zooming by, letting it all pass without ever really seeing any of it.

No wonder if felt so monotonous.

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

A commitment, of sorts

IN TRANSITION #10

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | October 2, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

An ex told me the other day, ''You have commitment issues with the city of Boston."

''But," I stuttered, ''I love Boston." Then the reality sank in.

I had called soliciting advice. Earlier that day, I had been offered a job -- a salaried position with full benefits, the supposed holy grail of employment. And the timing was right. The pangs of guilt I'd felt all summer about photocopying away my 20s were starting to dissipate as each rent payment loomed. Unless I was ready to switch to a diet of Ramen and rice, this was my chance.

''Take it," one friend advised. ''You're supposed to take any job you're offered. Always. Deal with the consequences later."

But, in truth, the job itself is only a piece of the problem. Any job would ask at least a year from me -- enter my commitment anxiety. It wasn't about the position. It was about cold feet. Literally. It was about Boston.

''Where do you want to go? Where else do you want to be?" My ex was getting agitated.

''Traveling," I muttered.

''Where? Do you have any plans? Any way of paying for it?"

All these months since graduation, stewing and dreaming, finding my bearings in this new postgraduate world, never once had I sat down and sketched any concrete plans. I needed to keep my options open. That's what mattered. I was drifting -- from futon to futon, job to job -- intoxicated by the freedom of remaining perpetually available (to potential employers). And why not? I just graduated college; is there anything wrong with romanticizing life for a while? I like feeling as though I could pack up everything I own in an hour and take off for anywhere in the world at any moment.

Even if there is no destination.

And even if I know I'll never do it. At least not so spontaneously. The truth is I'm a planner. Drifting doesn't suit me. Sure, I'll try it on, see how it fits for a few months; but I need something to work toward.

I need to get out of this city.

I took the No. 1 bus into Boston last weekend. The sailboats were out on the Charles, the water rippling and blue. You could sense the trees poised for their autumn ritual, the air turning crisp. The terror of winter, waiting in the wings.

Boston, I love you, but I think maybe I should see other cities.

In a year's time (with a year's salary), I'll be able to afford it.

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville and just accepted a yearlong position as an office assistant at Harvard. He plans, at least at this point, to save up his money to travel the world next year. You can seek to persuade or dissuade him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.