"Should I Stay Or Should I Go?"

I feel very fortunate that, within a few weeks of starting college, I was able to start doing radio as a DJ. I quickly took up the Saturday night shift, from 8 to 2, six glorious hours of playing tunes. No one else wanted it, because the school was unfortunately a suitcase college, which is to say that people often went home for the weekend. Losers. I can't at all relate to the people who wanted to go home, but then again, that's partly because there was nothing to do or look forward to at home.

So I made up this persona, Jeff Jones, and leaning into the Indiana Jones movie that came out just a few years earlier, called my show "Jeff Jones and the Saturday Night Music Crusade." Yes, it's kinda dumb, but 18-year-old me thought it was clever. By the second week, I had settled into a routine that included starting the shift with "Working For The Weekend" by Loverboy, and ending with, "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by The Clash. It was kind of a lonely thing, because it was hard to find people who would hang out. On occasion, I could get the local pizza place to send me free pizza by playing a few songs for them. What I know about myself now, with the autism and such, I get why this was an oddly euphoric experience that I continued through my junior year. My senior year, I was working for an actual commercial station on Saturday nights, for money ($4.50 per hour), so whatever I was doing on the college station was pretty limited.

Tonight we watched Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, presumably the last in the series. It starts out quite dark. Bridget's husband, Mark Darcy, apparently died in a terrorist attack while advocating for someone abroad. She's left with two kids, and the suss Daniel acts as a babysitter for her. She is decidedly middle age, with the extra burden of being a widow and single mother. She is not the young single person looking to looking to hookup that she was in the first movie. Everything about her life is vastly different, sometimes complicated, and not what any of us expects at that age. And she chaperones a bus trip with kids, belting out "Should I Stay or Should I Go."

It was kind of emotional to watch, not because of any specific situation that Bridget was enduring, but because everything about her life is so vastly different. My challenges are different, but I too am in a vastly different place relative to my 20's. The challenges of parenthood, career and generally transitioning through life, certainly did not become any easier. I think back to those radio shifts, and I was so optimistic and hopeful, despite being so alone for six hours on a Saturday night. Why was it easier to roll with life back then?

The stakes seem higher now, even though I can intellectually conclude that they're not. I have a stable relationship, but in terms of my role as a parent, there are limitations in terms of what I can do to affect another human being. Work is kind of similar, in that I can contribute in the best way that I know how, but I am ultimately working for other people (and having your own business is still working for other people, by the way, even if you are the "boss").

That song is about deciding whether or not to be with someone, I guess, but I suppose it could also be about figuring out whether or not you should be in a particular situation. But realistically, unless you're a hyperfocused Type-A freak obsessed with box-checking, few of us ever really end up in a place that we expect in life. I think that's totally OK, as long as we exercise the agency to change things when we believe that we should.