“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The symptoms then began as he began to think in terms of job hunting. Your remarks concerning the benefits of a regular job would bring the symptoms to a pitch, and did so as recently as a week or so ago.

His father, in his old age, did have a job for others, as did Joe in his late years. In both cases, the jobs were considered marks of degradation. From the Irish side, a woman who worked for others, you see, was a domestic. There was, in the family history, always a struggle to work for oneself, this being a matter of class pride and independence.

At the first sign of failure last autumn with the ESP column, he pulled out entirely, while he applied for job after job.

The method, a job, now became unacceptable. But only the method. The signs were obvious. Whenever he fights what you want, or believe necessary, there is a very strong reason, and you had both better inquire into it, for he does not cross you lightly. And when he does, he does so in such a manner as to shield himself from the knowledge, you see.

[...] At break Jane experienced a real outburst, during which she said most forcefully that she wouldn’t get a job, had no intention of doing so, etc. [...] I hadn’t asked her to get a job recently. Anything I said concerning Jane and jobs referred to past experiences, which hadn’t worked out, etc.

He felt when or if he spoke of this you were deeply hurt, thinking he did not understand your sacrifice—the job, but he did not want your sacrifice. [...] He thought that you would not be satisfied to quit unless he had a job, and this he could not do because of his own commitment to his work.

[...] The obvious to him was to quit your job (Jane, as Seth, almost laughed), paint, and have the time you needed. [...] At the same time he felt you would begin to resent the time spent from your work, but you would cling to the job like a lifeline until it was too late.

[...] He refused to make a pattern of jobs. [...]

This occurred precisely when you had strong doubts as to whether or not you should stay on the job, and strongly considered it would be best to leave. [...]

The job has served to keep you from realizing that. [...]

You were more affected by your friend’s (Curtis Kent) departure than you realize, wondering if you yourself should find a better-paying commercial job, and yet angry that you even had such thoughts when what you really wanted was to stay home and paint.

The episode also has some connections, again with your father, in that you feel sometimes, and subconsciously, that you will be old and trembly and still at the job. [...]

[...] As soon as I realized that she was rebelling against a way of life that we had fallen into, probably mainly at my unwitting behest, I tried to make amends by leaving the job, etc. I would say the realization became conscious late last year; I kept the job until we finished checking the script for Seth Speaks, by the end of January.

The fact that you would say “I am giving you the opportunity to do this by my job” entrapped him further, for he felt basically that underneath this was another reason: that if you wanted badly enough to paint all the time that you would do so, that you should have done so, that you should do so, that you would and could have managed without jobs, particularly in the later years, and that you were betraying yourself and therefore him. [...]

[...] The fact, however, that you have left your job gives you a strong advantage and starting point, but you must use it. This means that you must first of all honestly admit your feelings about leaving your job; both of you, both your fears and hopes. [...]

[...] This mainly involved the idea of leaving your job, particularly as money accumulated in the bank.

It was the only kind of job he could have taken and kept for any time, outside of the Avon job. [...]

[...] The job could be kept for a semester. [...] It offers him an alternative beside a regular outside job, to supplement the writing income.

He felt particularly sensitive looking for a job precisely when his book had arrived in the bookstores. [...]

(“Did the nursery school job contribute to the symptoms?”)

[...] Jane took the teaching job for the high pay given; this is the main reason she accepted it. It is the highest paying job she has ever had, $25.00 a day.

I did not recommend that Ruburt call off the substitute job because he would not have faced this through if he had done so earlier.

[...] She has had odd jobs teaching in the past, but never in a school system, in a formal classroom, etc.

[...] Jane said this refers to the fact that in order to keep the job as a substitute teacher she must begin taking 6 credits a year at Elmira College, after she has taught a total of 40 school days. [...]

Practically speaking, while you had any kind of a job you were ill at ease and off balance. You compared your lot with that of others who had jobs also. [...]

Here you were influenced, where Ruburt was not, toward a job because of ideas of security that came from your mother, and, despite your conscious evaluations, from the activities of your brothers. Your having a job made sense to you therefore for these reasons, more so than it did to Ruburt, who had no such countering influences. [...]

You, personally, have been gravely perturbed because of your job for some time. [...]

[...] You realized that a full-time job was out of the question. [...]

[...] As stated on page 120 after the “mistake” data, the last time Jane saw Marjorie was when job hunting. Before stopping in at The Art Shop to buy the gesso for me, Jane had applied at the local YWCA for a job. The job involved teaching children various games, for the school or sports connection.

[...] Jane had never seen the object; I obtained it today, October 24, from Marjorie Buck, the proprietor, when I bought pencils and paper stumps with which to do the job my old friend, Bill Ward, mailed to me over the weekend. The job arrived yesterday. [...]

(Bill’s letter outlined the steps necessary to finish the job, which consists of five pages of a comic type story, in pictures and text, for a men’s magazine. My job is to do the backgrounds and to add gray, black and white halftones with the pencils. [...]

[...] This dream also involved a friend at my present job, at Artistic Card Co., and that part of the dream also worked out.

[...] No connections; unless, as Jane speculates, these figures are an attempt to get at her wages from the job at the JCC. The job is a part-time one and Jane is paid twice a month. [...]

[...] As stated, on Friday November 4, Jane called the JCC the first time about the teaching job. [...] Jane started the job on November 14, for instance.

[...] It is possible that a number four connection also applies here, for Jane is on Christmas-New Year’s vacation from her job, until Wednesday January 4. This data would be legitimate, in that the envelope object refers to the teaching job at the JCC.

(On Friday, November 4, Jane called about a job teaching nursery school at the JCC. [...]

[...] Better that than have you tied to that job at Artistic for any longer a time. [...] Yet it was good that you left the job when you did.

[...] The part-time job on your part was of course a compromise, but loving you, he felt it was at the expense of your creative output and purposes.

(I told Jane after this session that I’d intended to leave the job in a year or so —in other words, at about this time, rather than when I did. [...]

(I said I was willing to face whatever developed because of this action—that if I had to get a job on part-time basis, okay. [...]

You finally began to realize that I wanted you to leave the job (long pause at 9:55), but the negative attitudes that had built up attached themselves to the new projects—something I did not foresee. [...] (Pause for a cigarette.) I am a part of you, then, the part that always hated your job, and can scarce[ly] forgive you for keeping it so long. [...]

(10:00.) I see the spontaneity of your sketches, so good, many of them done at the job, kicking your heels up at the job—the spontaneity in direct opposition to the work demanded of you there.

[...] (Pause.) I was always against any jobs that would divert you as long as you were not in dire need, in which case I was willing to suspend my judgment.

[...] So to me you have no right to have a job.

[...] Once the part-time job continued and kept continuing however, once you had a job steadily, then he felt that others compared you, not with other artists but with other ordinary men who had jobs. [...]

[...] He wanted you to state your position, and say “I am an artist” to her and to the world, but he deeply feared that you considered that attitude irresponsible, frivolous, not practical; and worse, that you felt it negated the sacrifice you made by keeping the job for so long. [...]

[...] He did not want to lay extra burdens on you, but he came to resent everything that was provided by a job.

Though you have left the job, the habit of repression is still strong. [...]

[...] There is a supermarket three blocks away where she would have gotten a job that would have lasted seven months. At the end of this time you would have had a job in an advertising firm. [...]

(Nor did I understand what was happening, beyond the obvious fact that she was coming to hate the job. I was doing some samples for a business venture with a relative that offered a chance of rather handsome monetary rewards if successful; our agreement was that Jane would hold a temporary job in the meantime.

[...] Your ego’s job is to help you trade your true abilities for your daily bread.

A job which prevents you from using these abilities is at best a compromise and at worst a soul-stunting experience. [...]

(During that session Seth gave Don Wilbur a little information concerning a job change he was contemplating. [...] Don never did see about the job he was thinking of, in December, because his present employment kept him too busy during the winter months. [...]

(Don Wilbur’s parents are against his changing jobs. [...] He did say that Don would leave his present job because it offered no opportunities for advancement, and that he would try three other positions before he settled into one he really liked. [...]

(Last week, the first week in March 1966, Don Wilbur began making the rounds in Elmira in his quest for a better job. [...]

I will say that you are afraid to move (job). [...]

([Rachel:] “My job. [...]

—you must have the feeling that you are free to quit the job and the faith that other positions will be available to you. [...]

[...] It depends upon whether you insist upon a job of prestige or a job that will give you enough money to pay your bills. You are insisting upon a job of prestige. [...]

([Brad:] “It is just that after so many job rejections I have begun to feel that maybe they are right; if my last prospect, a good one, does not come through, I cannot help but feeling that it is truly the end. [...]

[...] I have told my contact at Corning that I will take any job there that is available. [...]

[...] She has kept her job through the years while you have not. [...]

[...] They cannot understand, either of them, how you could leave your job, their own sense of worth is so bound in possessions. [...] For you to leave your job and have a new car is doubly mysterious. [...]

One, the fact that you left your job, and two, the fact that you have a new car. [...]

[...] Of course I left the job at Artistic last February, but didn’t tell Loren and Betts this officially until phone conversations after the June flood. [...]

[...] If you can get possessions while not having a worthwhile job, then they must work that much harder for more possessions, to prove their way correct, and yours lacking. [...]

[...] Jane described how she had become very frightened in Florida over the job situation, and that I had been forced to get a job anyhow even though I had told her most emphatically that I didn’t intend to do this. [When we went to Florida it had been agreed upon that she would hold a job while I tried out some painting ideas. [...]

(Two additional points now recalled: When she began talking about Florida, Jane told me “I got scared in Florida”; she was also sure I would leave her when the job situation got so bad and things didn’t work out as we’d hoped they would. [I remember her telling me this in Marathon, when I returned to the trailer after driving out to get a job painting signs.]

(10:15.) The job of trying to make the world better seems impossible, for it appears that you have no power, and any small private beneficial actions that you can (underlined) take seem so puny in contrast to this generalized ideal that you dismiss them sardonically, and so you do not try to use your power constructively. You do not begin with your own life, with your own job, or with your own associates. [...]

[...] There, on your jobs and in your associations, are the places where you intersect with the world. [...]

[...] Seth returned almost at once, after I said that I wasn’t interested in solving our problems by simply changing jobs for more money – the problem was that I wanted time to paint, etc., and time for Jane to write.)

I am not speaking of the physical challenges of other jobs. [...]

[...] You both felt that since you were the one who had the part-time job, Ruburt would accept the physical symptoms of your predicament, and you felt this was just.