Distress Signal | Help Wanted or Available | Forum

This is a distress signal - and an opportunity. You might be rolling your eyes just now. You might be uninterested in me, or annoyed, but please. I promise you, I warrant some attention at least. I could be a good thing.

I’m lost. I’ve been lost for a long time, only I couldn’t see a clear path until recently. It has been hard, so hard, for me to find a way in this world. I should have existed in some other world, or some other time – only I’m afraid there’s an equal chance, that I might have been either Einstein or else Galileo.

You see, I am very intelligent. Or so they’ve always told me, and who wouldn’t like to believe that? I went to college when I was sixteen, and that was late because my mother didn’t want me skipping grades. If I had ever known, or chosen, if I had found or followed some path, long ago, I would very likely have been a prodigy. Only I didn’t. Wasted opportunity, that’s me all over. Potential has been the keyword of my life. Potential energy, potential value. I’m bursting with it.

My name is Michael. (Should I have started with that?) I am twenty-seven years old, and I’ve had as many odd jobs. I’ve been good at most of them, very very good, and I’ve enjoyed most of them – though those two mosts don’t line up perfectly. I’ve been a stagehand, and a farmhand, and an optical lab technician...they were some of my most favorites. I learned that optics lab in two weeks – after they told me it would take a year or more. I don’t normally boast much, these days, only there’s very little room in a small message, and I’d very much like to impress you. When I was in college, I skipped my prereqs, took Math Logic and grad-level Shakespeare. I was that kid.

Of course, I never finished the degree. Lots of interesting credits, no degree. Story of my life – only I don’t want it to be, anymore. I really, really don’t. I’m stuck, in half-jobs and entry-level purgatory. Now I could, with some effort, acquire another sales job, or another factory job, and make money, and work my way up for years and years. I could. And I understand that this is how many a blacksmith has begun, dabbling in the backyard, in off-hours, until he can work up to a forge and a business. It’s a respectable method, and I could do that, and I have no good answer for folks who tell me that I should.

Because my answer is essentially this : I wish, more than anything, and have wished, for some years now, to find a blacksmith to apprentice to. There are few/no schools to attend, and I haven’t the remotest chance of paying any of them back. I have neither space nor money to become a hobbyist. I am a destitute genius, with delusions of romance – and a highly romantic notion of your craft. I wish nothing more than to be allowed a cot in a forge somewhere, bread and water for sustenance, and as much hard work as you can offer me. I wish to sweat, and to learn, and to earn my keep. If I were offered a winning lottery ticket, I would give it up to procure a blacksmith’s apprenticeship.

So I’m begging round the world, as I write this, for help. I’m odd, I know – but that’s just the thing to make me interesting, and useful! I am untrained, yes, penniless, yes, homeless, very nearly – and I know how utterly worthless that sounds. But please, consider the determination and the enthusiasm of a young man who will genuinely offer to work sixteen hours, swallow a crust of bread, sleep in a corner, and wake to do it again. Smiling. (And I guarantee you I’ll be grinning like a fool more often than not.) I don’t require days off – I only require the learning and the work, and a means of living to learn and to work more. I am honest, and I am capable, and I am growing desperate.

I've written to many individuals, with varying replies. Now I’m looking to you, to this community, to find myself a new life, to throw myself into one, with enthusiasm and thirst. I can really become something, forge myself into someone valuable, if I can find that chance. Please.