I never thought experienced mattered worth a nickel until I got some. I mean, I'm smart. I know I'm smart. And I'm conscientious and hardworking.
Well, I used to be conscientious and hardworking.
Anyway.
I figured I was as capable as the next person because what I didn't know I could be taught. Quickly. So what difference did experience make, right? Not much.
I had half a point there, people. The other half I missed. But the part I had, well, I was right about the experience not mattering to my potential employer. I'd manage just fine. Better than fine. I'd be the best little worker bee in the hive.
The part I missed wasn't how experience would benefit my employer. I might have been young, arrogant, and overly confident, but that confidence wasn't misplaced. I could do whatever the job required, come hell or high water--as my Nana used to say. The part I missed was that I have no particular affinity for hell or high water.
If there's going to be hell or high water, people, I prefer to not know about it. I don't just mean watch it from a safe distance, I mean truly-ignorance-is-"let-them-eat-cake"-bliss. If my neck is going to be on the chopping block for it someday, well, fair enough. But why meet misery halfway?
In any case, experience is a handy thing for a person who hates surprises, likes to plan, and would really rather not have to wonder what is going to happen. Experience is the difference between a gasp and a sigh. If you haven't got it, you're going to spend a lot of time gasping.
Sigh.
Moving on. The thing is that now that I have experience, I can anticipate life and people and how those two things happen together with such ease that occasionally I appear clairvoyant. Only I'm not. Really. It's more like I remembered to wear my glasses to the train station and everyone else maybe forgot theirs at home. I'm just looking up at the big schedule and clock on the wall and matching the numbers to the trains, not conjuring spirits.
If only the trains never broke down. If only there were no operator errors. If only--if only a lot of things, people, because here's where experience breaks down for me: having the schedule is no guarantee. I can still end up stranded in East Nowhere, just like anybody else. In the meantime, someone who never even glanced at the schedule, just boarded a train completely at random, can find themselves transported to a free outdoor concert, hosted by their favorite performers, on a sunny summer day.
Not entirely likely, but not entirely impossible either.
And here's where experience picks up for me again, people: so long as a person has money, one can always just rent a car. One with GPS.
You know how I love GPS.
GPS is better than experience, it's guidance. Oh, now that I have experience, how I do covet me some guidance. I want to be guided, people. Lead by divine wisdom. Preferably not off the side of a mountain, but lead never-the-less.
Sheesh.
None of it is enough, people--not intelligence, not work ethic, not conscientiousness, not experience, not guidance. None of it is enough. None of it is a promise that everything happens in a way that makes sense, that everyone gets what they deserve, and all things begun are neatly and satisfyingly ended.
But it's a place to start,

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