canceling the apocalypse?

[Originally published on Tuesday, May 15, 2018, at 1:17 a.m.]

Another unpleasant conversation with Stu this evening. My basic position during our meeting was: I'm outta here. Bye. After a long, stony silence at the end of a rather useless exchange, we parted on a not-very-heartfelt note of "I hope you'll reconsider" from Stu. I can tell he dislikes me as much as I dislike him. Fuming, I walked back into the R&D office and spoke a bit with my boss, who leaned hard on me to stay. (Earlier in the day, his boss, a Mr. Kim, also did his best to persuade me to stay. Persuasion involved a lot of gentle wrist-grabbing and hand-squeezing while Mr. Kim said, in Korean and in the third-person singular, "Kevin has to stay!") Stu then walked in, probably after having eavesdropped a bit, and spoke with my boss. A few minutes passed, during which I tried to concentrate on my work. My boss walked back into the office with a grim smile on his face, and he told me that Stu was now willing to offer me the salary I had originally requested, and on a three-year contract. Do I thank my boss for this change? Do I thank Stu?

I almost laughed. This turn of events wasn't entirely unexpected, but the whole thing, since this all came to a head last Thursday, has played out as some kind of bitter comedy. I had already told both Stu and my boss that I was out of the Golden Goose—and I was sincere. Now, after the last minute, came the offer I had been wanting.

Here's my theory. Stu is enough of an arrogant dickhead to be afraid that, should I leave the company, he'll end up looking bad because he's the guy who pushed me away. I think this theory is very plausible, which puts me in a difficult position. On the one hand, it would be my utmost pleasure to give Stu a massive fuck-you and reject this latest offer. On the other hand, I know that, in doing so, I'd be throwing away a secure future for what are ultimately very petty reasons. My boss, after laying out Stu's latest offer, told me that, were I to re-sign under these new conditions, I wouldn't have to deal with Stu for another three years. That wasn't exactly reassuring, but I understood the spirit in which the boss was speaking.

Over the past few days, I've assumed that I'd be leaving the Golden Goose. I had already begun imagining life after this job—taking a long vacation, for starters: hiking along South Korea's east-coast bike path from Gangneung to Busan, flying to the US and France to see friends and relatives, taking up a university position sometime early next year, and working on book projects in the meantime. Now, I've been thrown back into turmoil because I suddenly have in my grasp the deal that I had originally wanted, plus more: a three-year contract to make it binding. While my job at the Golden Goose isn't my ideal métier, I don't hate what I do, and I like my boss and coworkers. Were I to leave, I'd be losing something good (although never seeing Stu again would be a huge boon). So: what to do?

I haven't operated, over the past few days, according to a grand plan. Although I'm not very religious these days, I do tend to go through life with the basic faith that the cosmos will provide if and when I'm in need. For that reason, I never worry too deeply about my future. This might be a mistake, if we heed Aesop's tale of the grasshopper and the ants, but it's an outlook that has kept me sane for years. Sure, like everyone else, I worry about and get stressed over quotidian matters. But fundamentally, I've always had faith that things somehow work out in the end. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. My point is that I didn't actively work toward forcing the company to present me with this latest offer. I wasn't deliberately holding out or trying to play chicken. Quite the contrary: I really had been ready to walk out the door! The fact that the Golden Goose suddenly folded and coughed up an acceptable offer is more the Goose's doing than mine.

Or maybe not: as the Tao Te Ching says, "The sage accomplishes everything by doing nothing." Maybe all I had to do, to get my wish, was to be Lao Tzu's Uncarved Block, just standing there while others reacted to it. Heh. It's a cute thought, but in reality, I hadn't actively worked toward this outcome.

So, now that the company has come around to seeing things my way, through no action of my own, perhaps I'll say yes and sign on for another three years. As of tonight, that's the way I'm leaning. I'm losing a chance to fuck Stu over by making him look bad, but in the big picture that is my existence, Stu is but a poor player that struts and frets his hour across the stage.

This will be a good life. Good enough.