I say stupid things all the time.

The other night, I was doing some soldering. Soldering is something I haven't really had to do for a while, and it occurred to me as I was holding a piece of metal heated up to 400 degrees that I couldn't remember the specific wiring of what I was soldering. The iron was in my hand, a tiny remnant of tin and lead giving up little wisps of acrid white smoke, and there I sat - staring at the XLR connector I was about to wire as though it were some sort of weird alien that had suddenly birthed itself there on my desk. I eventually had to text Chris to ask a really easy, really dumb question - whether or not the ground wire and shield of the cable were supposed to be soldered together. Of course the answer was yes, and so my night of playing with objects hot enough to melt lead continued uninterrupted by the ravages of incomplete knowledge.

My forgetfulness serves to illustrate one thing - I have had a job far removed from the joy of playing with dangerous power tools for way too long.

And not for lack of trying. I've done a great deal of trying to get into the sound business, but eventually came to accept that it would simply take longer than I had originally anticipated and resigned myself to taking a soul-crushing job at a helpdesk. But even that was harder than I had expected. The reluctance of IT types to hire me was likely not due to my experience - I have good computer repair experience and plenty of mad sk11lz. No, my not getting hired was due to my honesty.

All interviews contain variations on a few standard questions. "Tell me a little about yourself", "Why do you want to work here?", "Where do you see yourself in five years?", and my least favorite, "What brought you to Nashville?". Everybody asks this. And why shouldn't they? I'm an Iowa boy who, by all external appearances, just woke up one day and said "Think I'll move to Nashville." My standard explanation is about Nashville being one of the top ten cities in the country for IT positions. It has the advantage of being both completely believable and exactly what employers want to hear. "He moved here to work on computers; he must be serious.".

My explanation, of course, is a bald-faced lie.

What actually brings me to Nashville is not what I actually tell potential employers. No indeed - my plausible-sounding fabrication is so that I don't have to tell them the real reason why I'm here, and risk a job. It's happened three times since I've been here - the interview seems to be going great, and then I answer the question about why I'm here truthfully. The interviewer's eyes go a little bit white before they hide their sudden uninterest behind a mask of neutrality. And invariably, they never call back.

I try to be a person of integrity. Lying makes me angry when other people do it, so I feel like it's something I should not be doing. And this is really bothering me.

Have I become so focused, so single-minded in my pursuit of my passion, so wrapped up in my desire to get out of an industry that I'm (quickly) learning to hate that I'm willing sacrifice my integrity to get ahead? When did I decide that telling untruths was a way to get a job? I tell myself that I honestly can't think of any other way to survive - which is (partly) true, I have to pay the bills. And to me, that sounds like textbook example of a rationalization by someone used to making excuses for his behavior. And sadly, that's absolutely true - I could just as easily go get one or more jobs at places unlikely to ask or care about my reasons for being here - a grocery store, security company, or some other job that pays just enough to survive.

Frankly, lying is easier, and more profitable.

But what if they do ask? What do I do when nobody except the jobs that I can't afford to live on refuse to hire me because I'm a financial liability? At some point, it may be the choice between going back to living in my car and sleeping in a warm bed. And the fact that I know the company would terminate me at the first moment that it became financially advantageous to doesn't change things a bit...it's still my integrity that I'm essentially selling in exchange for easy living.

Telling lies: okay if you'll be homeless otherwise!

Or is it?

Exit, stage left. Sparks