January 2009 Archives

I think the entry I wrote last night is a case, in itself, for not writing while tired.  “Zipquack?”  Honestly.

I didn’t even mention specific details about my two interviews, such as: the one for the local job is next Tuesday morning and I have already purchased a new tie for it.  Also, I should find out sometime early next week if I am still a candidate for the opera job.  So things are looking up in that respect.

I am not excited about the next three days, when I have three operas and two church services to sing.  I will be happy when they are all finished, though, because I will have Mo’ Money.  And that is important.  But I will be grumpy while they are happening.  Obviously I should not complain that I have these little bits of work still happening, because at least I am making a small amount of money.  Part of me knows this; this is the same part of me that is looking, really hard for a job.

But that’s only part of me.  The rest of me DOES NOT WANT TO BE FETTERED BY PETTY EMPLOYMENT.  This is the same part of me that thought pizza rolls would be an affordable, nutritious recession meal (well, maybe affordable and recession, but not nutritious or meal).  This sounds like something I should talk to a therapist about.  Too bad my health insurance runs out tomorrow.  Maybe I should start eating more vegetables as a preventative measure.

Shit, vegetables don’t come in bite-size frozen pastry pouches.

…Yet.  I think I may have just invented the snack for the twenty-first century. PATENT PENDING!

I have not written here in four days.  If this were my job and I didn’t do it for four days, and I didn’t give anyone any notice, I would probably (both ironically and appropriately) be fired.   Oops, my bad.

On Monday, I actually got two job interviews.  One was a phone interview for a great job with an opera company out-of-town, the other is for the theatre management position I’ve been stoked about since I got laid off.  The phone interview has happened already, and I think it went pretty well—although the person who was interviewing me was British, so it was a little hard to tell what she was thinking (those sneaky Brits!).

NO THE JOB IS NOT IN LONDON.  I wish it were though.  I am going to start applying for jobs overseas—excellent idea.  Maybe Wendy can get me a job managing an opera company in Cameroon.

Other than that, my life has been pretty one-dimensional.  Aside from the opera that I am performing in this weekend, which will earn me a little bit of money, I have been thoroughly enjoying watching Blagojevich’s hair on the news. I am heartened to know that even people whose last names would make excellent Scrabble words are not immune to unemployment.  It makes me very glad I decided not to change my last name to something embarrassing, like “Zipquack,” just for the triple word score.  It wouldn’t have done me any good after all.

Things could be better—I could have a six pack, rippling pectorals, and a degree in marketing—but all in all, the unemployed life is treating me well.  I will not feel this way after the end of next month, when I will no longer be able to pay my bills, but I am hoping by then that my hair will be long enough to cut and sell to a high-end wigmaker.

actually wait thats a good idea and I could save on haircuts too dont tell my stylist LOL k bye

I was reading through AskJeeves.com’s (supremely unhelpful) answers to the question “What is the best way to cope with my crippling self-doubt?” and I realized that I’ve probably hit a new low.  This is actually the third new low in 24 hours.  The first two involved binge eating: one was an entire family-sized box of Cheez-Its, which if you will recall I started yesterday at breakfast; and what was supposed to be my three-week supply of yogurt because it was on sale for fifty cents a thing.  And now here I am, yogurtless, crackerless, and full of the marked-down pizza rolls I had for dinner.

Do you remember when “eating my feelings” meant low-fat cottage cheese and gourmet French jam?  I do.

Things are quiet on the job front.  I want to say that this is the Calm Before the Storm, but it’s probably just the Calm Before the Calm Storm, where it’s so calm it causes the roofs of the houses of the unemployed to get blown away.  The good news is, enough people’s roofs get blown off and there is a job for everyone in the roofing industry.  Career idea for the day: become apprentice roofer.

(This blog is RIFE with symbolism.  RIFE, I SAY!)

Even the news today has not been much about the economy, though I haven’t quite felt like sifting through all of the online newspapers I’ve started reading.  I am starting to doubt the legitimacy of some of the local news stations around here, though.  I was watching a 9:00 news cast, and the first fifteen minutes of the broadcast was about the following three things: 

1. We got less than a half inch of snow here today.  No ice.  No damage. No traffic problems because it was a Sunday.  Somehow, this was still the #1 story.
2. George Clooney is making a movie here and like 8,000 want to be in it.
3. A lot of people in town have been smelling something weird lately and no one is sure what it is, but the news station called the local gas company, who said that it wasn’t gas and probably wasn’t dangerous.

This last one: was it honestly a story on a TV news broadcast?  It sounds like a lame story that I would tell Kylene at lunch about something that happened at work on one of her days off.  Honestly.  A weird smell about which we have no details?  And which will in any case have no impact on anyone's life?  Not interesting.  Especially not considering that acrid smells are daily fact for ANYONE who rides the MetroLink or MetroBus.  Unidentifiable offensive odors practically come out of the machine with your ticket.  I should start carrying Axe Body Spray in my man-bag.

Maybe I will write this television station and ask them to do a news story on GETTING ME A JOB.  Or really anything in all caps.  GETTING ME A JOB.  THE ECONOMIC CRISIS WE ARE IN HERE, IN CASE YOU HADN’T NOTICED.  SEXY DR. GUPTA. HEARTWARMING PET STORIES.  THE OBAMA GIRLS.  MY CRIPPLING SELF-DOUBT.  All of these would be interesting fodder for television news broadcasts (with the possible exception of my crippling self doubt specifically—whereas, a more general story about crippling self-doubt would probably be informative and helpful).

Career idea #2: apprentice broadcast news editorship.

Will the good ideas ever end?

Usually I try to give myself the weekends off from feeling unemployed, but sometimes I can’t stop thinking about the fact that I am not generating any income, even if it is on a day that I normally wouldn’t generate any income.  Which in my case, is only Saturday.

So this Saturday morning, I rolled out of bed, and as I stumbled over to my desk for my (a. pathetic, b. self-loathing, c. awesome, d. all of the above) breakfast of Cheez-Its and Diet Dr. Pepper, I asked myself a question:  how can I possibly hope to have lots of money with no job?

Answer:  ENTER EVERY INTERNET SWEEPSTAKES I CAN.  Why didn’t I think of it before?!

Sometimes, my best bad ideas come to me when I am half-awake.  And yes, I know this isn't going to seem like a good idea in six hours.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go sing in a shopping mall for money.

I just called the U.S. Census Bureau to apply for a job as a census taker.  The conversation went a little something like this:

“Hello, U.S. Census Bureau,” an older man’s voice answers the phone.  He seems cheerful for someone who has a government job.

“Yes, hi, I’d like to apply for a job as a census taker?  I got this number from the website.”

“Okay.”

Then there is an awkward pause.  Is there a secret password I am supposed to know?  For a brief moment, we play chicken until finally, he cracks.  “I’ll need your name, please.”

I give him the name—first and last—spelling both first and last.

“It sounds like your name should be spelled -I-N, not -E-N.”

“Yeah…well…I’m pretty sure it’s -E-N.”

As the conversation progresses, he gives me information such as, “This is when your appointment is.”

I say, “My appointment for what?  For skills testing?”

He says, “Yeah, I guess.  It’s at the library, is that okay?”  Then he gives me some information on what is going to happen—things I need to bring and what kind of paperwork I will have to fill out.  I can hear lots and lots of people talking in the background, as well phones ringing, at least three of them, without being answered. He says, “I think that’s it.  Yeah, I am pretty sure that is it.  I don’t think I’m forgetting anything.  What was I going to say?”

He sounded frazzled, so I thought I would put him at ease by making conversation.  “It sounds like it’s pretty busy over there.  I guess you guys are getting a lot of phone calls.”

“Yeah,” he said.  “We have almost four thousand messages to return.”  I don’t think he was exaggerating.

“Well, one of them is mine, so you can scratch me off the list!” I exclaim cheerfully.  Because obviously they’re keeping a list, right?  Right?

“Yeah, okay, we’ll try.  So, I have to answer the other phone now.  Okay, so, yeah.  So, bye.”

…I have an appointment, though, so I’ll probably be able to get the job, right?  RIGHT?

Today someone I don’t know gave me $50 and told me to pay it forward, like Haley Joel Osment.  I totally will.  Probably not monetarily.  But I will do something nice for someone soon, something that is of equal or greater value.

I can’t say that I’m terribly surprised by the fact that my alma mater raised its tuition again for next year, but I think it might have been nice for the tuition to be frozen, like it is at Missouri’s state schools.  Interesting, but not surprising, juxtaposition from the news this evening.

I got an interview, or at least the promise of setting an interview up, at the latest job that I applied for.  It’s nice to have some good news!  I mean, they did tell me that they’re not looking to hire any new staff at this time, yes, but it’s still nice that they want to see me. Plus, who knows, I could charm their pants off and get offered a job.  Anything is possible.  Well, some things are possible, assuming I get a haircut before the interview.  I’m starting to look a little shaggy.

Aside from this breaking story, it has been business as usual here: looking for jobs, not finding jobs, becoming frustrated and terrified, xanax, a nap.  Today at lunch I may have come up with a million-dollar idea that can potentially save the world and the American Education System: word-of-the-day toilet paper (patent pending!). It looks like this British vendor may have beaten me to it (it also comes in Sudoku).  I am not quite sure how I feel about writing on toilet paper before use—seems unhygienic—so maybe mine, which will be simply read-n-wipe, is a better model anyway. I have so much thinking to do.  And so much time on my hands.

I should invest this $50 in life-changing personal tissue products, I think.  Yes.  There is no better way to pay it forward than for me to keep America’s bums clean and minds sharp.

Some quick thoughts before I head off to my rehearsal this evening:

1. Today was obviously a really historic and emotional day for most Americans (myself included), but it is hard to be entirely excited right now while I am worried about how I will pay my bills in March (February is in the bag: thank you, tax return!).  Whatever Barack has up his sleeve, I hope he makes it happen soon.  In the meantime, all I can do is look (really hard) for opportunities.
2. I need to stop googling “Sexy Dr. Gupta.”  It’s becoming unhealthy.

Reasons I would be perfect for this job (thanks Brian and Jazzy!):

1. I am already keeping a blog.  Obviously.
2. I have never been anywhere exotic and therefore would be blogging about it with wide-eyed, childlike wonder.
3. I have an interesting name.  A name that suggests tropical mystery.
4. I am available to start immediately.  And I would be very, very grateful for the income.
5. I am not a nutter, nor am I a nuder.

Reasons I may not be perfect for it:

1. I don’t look good in a bathing suit.
2. I would spend the entire time on Facebook.
3. I would probably use the majority of the money to buy a really expensive and impractical hybrid car.
4. I don’t have a webcam to submit an application, and now is not the time for frivolous purchases (although, theoretically, I could write this off on my taxes, I think).
5. I don’t even really like swimming.

On Saturday, I stumbled into my living room and turned on the television.  I hadn’t showered, possibly in two or three days, and I hadn’t shaved in even longer.  I was in my boxers, because obviously I didn’t need pants (it was only half past noon, hours away from pants o’clock.).  On the coffee table, an open box of Cheez-its, a box of tissues, with used tissues strewn about at random from the day before.  Also evident is a recent Diet Coke massacre: empty and half-empty bottles of the stuff are on every available drink-putting surface, including my now six-year-old iBook, which was on the floor in front of the couch.  I covered myself up with an old comforter that I had been using to keep warm, which came from Target right before my freshman year of college.  It, like every article of clothing that I own, is covered in cat hair.

As if this scene weren’t already desperate enough, Phenomenon (you know, the contrived 90’s movie about a farmer-turned genius, starring John Travolta) was on, and I was completely transfixed.  I caught myself getting misty when he finally gets to sleep with Kyra Sedgwick’s character, and even mistier when he later had to explain to her children that he was dying.  “Everything is on its way to somewhere,” he said, before drawing an unsatisfying metaphor about the apple he had been eating.

This is what my life has become.  It is fifty percent awesome and fifty percent pitiful, but since I’m trying to stay optimistic here, I will say that it is halfway awesome.

In other news, I have another lead on a job (it’s Category I, if you remember me arbitrarily categorizing the kinds of jobs that I am applying for).  Things seem to be going pretty well in this arena: my employment rate is steady, and leads are up by 100% from last week!  (Yes yes, my employment rate is steadily zero, and I have a total of only two leads on jobs, but we have to put a positive spin on things.)

Actually, I did get a part time job acting sick for med school students.  No, this is not a joke, like that time I applied to be a Private Investigator (My business cards might have read: Sebastian Danger, Part-Time Undercover Arts Investigator).  This is real, and I am totally doing it.  I already had my orientation.  I already filled out the paperwork.  This is really happening.  And you know what?  They pay me extra if the student has to examine my genitals.  So to recap: I got a part time job potentially getting people I don’t know to prod my junk.  Jesus God, I am starting to appreciate your sense of irony.

Also, I am going to apply to be a Census Taker.  Because I think it would give me some interesting stories.  And the lowest starting pay is more than I was making per hour at my old job (ridiculous, right?). 

Baked goods aside, today’s work has been pretty fruitless.  I have started reading the Wall Street Journal online, because I am hoping that being informed about business and financial news will somehow better inform my job-getting.  I have also (obviously) been keeping up with the local news, and unfortunately the job situation looks pretty grim across the board.  I look forward to the day when I can read the news and see words like “boom” and “upturn” and not “crisis” or “recession.”  I would even settle for made-up terms, like “hiring melt” or “moneygive.”

Sometimes I am fine, and not having a job is like being on vacation, and other times I am like, “Oh fuck I am so fucked.”

I am doing well in terms of staying positive, but I am doing poorly in terms of actually putting pants on after I get out of bed in the morning.  Mostly I sit at my computer and look for jobs or waste time in between obsessively checking employment sites, which even my cats find boring and depressing (and they have alarmingly low standards).  Today included lots of looking at pictures of cakes online, reading lots of news (most notable were stories of layoffs and furloughs and spending cuts in local and national employers (except for the Zoo.  Note to self: apply for zoo jobs tomorrow), the clap, Blagojevich, and something about Steve Jobs taking a sabbatical and accidentally forgetting to name me as his successor), and a healthy bit of Facebook.

Goal for tomorrow: start my day between 8:00 and 9:00AM, have a cup of coffee, and do not take a four-hour nap in the middle of the day.  I think this is doable, especially since I have a 10:00AM voice lesson.  Also, maybe I should do some laundry or something.  I think that if I get better at structuring my own time, I’ll be more successful when I actually do get a job.  Maybe I’ll get there on time once or twice.

Oh, and apply for a Census job.  It could be lucrative.

If there is one thing I learned from the last time I was unemployed, it’s that there are going to be days when I am intensely productive and days when it seems like I will never, ever find a job no matter how hard I try.

Today was one of the latter, until I found this.  Baked goods + one million dollars = my job.

Yesterday was probably the first (and hopefully the last) time that I felt like a genuine unemployed person.  I slept past noon, woke up realizing that I hadn’t brushed my teeth before bed the night before, and was too depressed and/or anxious to do much but play video games all day.  Which I did, with relish.  If Zelda were a job, I would officially no longer be eligible for unemployment benefits.

Today, though, was much more productive: I finished all of my unemployment paperwork, sent applications in to two more employers, and paid all my bills (with money I no longer have).  I also submitted my notarized separation agreement from my former job, which I probably wouldn’t have done because some of the terms of the agreement made me really uncomfortable, but I had to do it because I need the severance pay.  Yes, I am that desperate for money.

My job search is separated into three categories.  Category I jobs are jobs that I would love to have, that I would like to grow into a career, or which I think might be advantageous to a career that I might like to have for myself in the future.  The theater management position I applied for fits into this position.  Category II jobs are jobs that I will probably hate and complain about all the time, but they will pay the bills and I will be able not to think about them when I am not there earning money.  These jobs include: data entry, administrative assistance, answering phones, etc.  Category III jobs are my last resorts: retail, and then when I am desperate enough, food service.

The jobs I applied for today are in Category II.  Here is my count so far:  Category I, 1.  Category II, 3.  Category III, 1.  I think that’s a pretty good spread.

And then, of course, there are all of the jobs I applied for when I still had a job before.  But I am not counting those, even though I probably applied to over 20 of them.  Some of them in exotic locations, like Chicago.

Last night, after I came home from someone else buying me dinner (the thing about being unemployed is that everyone starts buying you food—it’s awesome, yes, but I will also accept cat litter and luxury hair care products, in case you’re looking to purchase things for me), my unemployment paperwork had arrived from the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations Division of Unemployment Security (henceforth referred to as The Unemployment Office).  Did you know that I am eligible for like $320 a week as long as I am making every effort to find a new job?  For six months?  I can almost totally live on that, probably.

Unemployment lesson 1: vote Democrat.  Better payoffs.

There does seem to be an unholy amount of paperwork to fill out, because obviously they want to make sure that I am not cheating the system and collecting money that doesn’t belong to me (because obviously, if I am going to hoodwink the government out of money, I am going to do it for what amounts to a weekly minimum wage paycheck.  Good call.  Because that will clearly pay for the service plan on the iPhone I can no longer afford.).  It’s annoying to have to fill all of this paperwork out, but I have done way more annoying things for money.  For instance, the last 18 months of my life.

The good news is that, even though the market is tough right now across the board, every few weeks there seems to be a job that pops up that would be perfect for me; I know this because I have actually been looking for another job since August.  One such job opened up this week, minutes before I became unemployed, actually.  It’s in theater management, it’s in town, and it looks like it is both totally doable and slightly challenging.  Which means I would be perfect for it.  So I’ve submitted my resume—who knows, I might even get an interview, which might lead to a job.  Wouldn’t it suck if I had to start work before I could collect my first fat unemployment check?

At Kylene buying me lunch today, we were discussing possible plotlines for the sit-com we have decided to write based on her current job and my former (to be more specific, former former) job.  The conversation drifted to current events when Kylene started talking about the recent shooting at Pfizer, where no one was killed, but a contractor was shot in the foot.  “Do you have your notebook?” I asked her.  “Write that down!  Bumbling gunman invades work and shoots me in the foot!”

“Invades?” she scoffed.  “Come on, it’s not France.”

HA!  Touché, Kylene.

Anyway, thinking about that recent shooting made me sort of glad to be in the unemployment sector.  Not that people without jobs don’t also sometimes get their feet shot at, but because when people are unhappy and stressed out at work, they can do terrible things to one another.  And I’m glad I’m not unhappy and stressed out at work; instead, I’m much happier (albeit slightly more stressed out) from the comfort of my home.  My biggest crime over the next few weeks is probably going to be typing while moody (my moodiness levels are estimated to be twice the legal limit).  And the only people who are going to suffer through that are my cats.  And they’re not, strictly speaking, people.

On the evening of January 5^th, 2009, I sat down in front of my computer and remembered something funny I had thought of early that morning, during that time when I was falling asleep and pretty much everything I think of is funny.  I decided to make it a reality—to spend a measly ten bucks on a domain name that probably no one would want and which is probably too long to remember.  But it made me laugh—really really hard.

The next day, I unexpectedly found myself unemployed.  And I say “unexpectedly” to let you know that, although in some ways I was quite prepared for it, it was still a bit of a surprise.  I also say that to let you fully appreciate the irony in me buying a website entitled www.incaseyouhadntnoticedweareinaneconomiccrisishere.com on the eve of me becoming unemployed because of said economic crisis.  You should also probably appreciate the irony in the fact that that $10 probably could feed me and my cats for three or four whole days (now you are probably appreciating the irony that children in Africa can survive on a tenth as much—but that’s the subject for another blog.).

So, I’m here, I’m jobless, and I’m planning on telling you all about it.  I can’t promise it’s going to be interesting—if I recall correctly, being unemployed usually involves a lot of printing your resume and sending e-mails and watching Ellen and playing video games—and I can’t promise that I will be able to keep it up forever (after all, being unemployed usually ends in, well, employment).  I can’t even promise that what I am going to write will be in any way related to unemployment, or that it’s going to be so insightful and socially and politically charged that Barack Obama makes me his Unemployment Czar (though I am still in the running for Mario Kart Czar).  I do promise to at least write something daily, though, even if it’s just a funny story about something that I said at lunch.

…Not that I don’t have enough time on my hands to come up with something more creative than that.