The hangover from the intoxicating Counterculture movement settled in with the recession in the early 1970s. That was the first time we writers felt that emotion which would become professionally familiar: regret. On the campus of the University of Michigan we trusty reporters for the alternate newspapers had derided those at the business school. Now we got it that they were driving off to well-paying secure jobs at Ford, GM, AMC, and Chrysler.
Then the economy bounced back and we felt smug again about embracing the noble profession of words. Corporate America, it turned out, needed us to tell its story. I did wind up at Chrysler, after all. I was laboring in the vineyards of capitalism as a speechwriter-ghostwriter for Lee Iacocca, Steve Miller, and Chris Steffen. They all went on to be very wealthy but that isn't what bothered this writer. What gnawed at me was how lawyers could be such game-changers. That act wasn't selfless since they acquired fame and fortune as they did good.
This time I caved to professional lust. I threw in the towel on writing and hightailed it to Harvard Law School. Regret disappeared in the face of how much detailed analysis legal reasoning required. I hightailed it back to writing. So traumatic was that experience that I have invested the past six years in building a regulatory, legislative, litigation blog http://lawandmore.typepad.com. It has succeeded, whereas my flirtation with a legal career just brought sorrow and shame. [The blog is housed at the Library of Congress Download LibraryofCongress].
Now, no question, regret has again grabbed many writers by the throat. We know we should have become engineers. FAST COMPANY's amazing article in its November issue hammers how the engineers are recreating the world in digital form. The title of the article by Farhad Manjoo is "The Great Tech War of 2012." It deconstructs which of the titans - Amazon, Apple, Google, or Facebook - could emerge the leader of high-tech innovation. We can't console ourselves that Steve Jobs was a design guy with talent for marketing. Steve Jobs was a genius. Few of us are.
There will be some writers, weary of the glut which is eating our souls, who hightail it to obtain an engineering degree or teach themselves. Most of us will immerse ourselves in developments in high-tech and attempt to become a player through our ability to connect the dots as well as get attention through language - and increasingly graphics.
Does it help to recognize that I do run into businesspeople and lawyers who have made career changes? They migrated to teaching, and, yes, writing. Will engineers also come to long for some kind of other professional journey? Time will tell. Meanwhile, I take in the wisdom of my Buddha teacher who tells us that discontent is wired into the human condition and that's a source of supreme suffering.
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