Hello everyone. I’m not dead yet!
My website died briefly, which probably occurred long after everyone gave up hope that I would ever update this blog ever again. For those of you who were still hanging on to hope: I ran out of money and couldn’t pay the bills. For those of you who are wondering how you are reading this if I couldn’t pay the bills, let me tell you: I paid the bills anyway. And I only accrued like $150 in overdraft charges. That’s not so bad, right?
Since my last interview in Chicago, I have had two sequential interviews in New York, both for the same position. That’s right. I’m such an expert at interviews now that they’re asking me to come back for encores. They are not, however, paying for my flights, so I hope that this is the last one they ask me to before offering me a job (And I hope that they offer me a job instead of rejecting me, or I will have burned up my family’s frequent flyer miles for naught.). If you remember my categories for jobs that I laid out long, long ago, this job falls into Category II: jobs I would not be totally miserable doing and might actually end up liking, but which have nothing to do with Arts Administration, which is the field I thought eight months ago that I would never want to leave but which is now the field I am considering never going back to. (The definition for “Category II” has become somewhat more convoluted in the past couple of weeks. But this reflects my thinking on jobs. Category I: Jobs that I would have liked to have had in March. Category II: Jobs I will gladly take now. Category III: Still retail and foodservice.)
I am not going to lie: the past couple of months have had some really dark weeks. I had been doing an exceptional job of keeping on top of bills, paperwork, hygiene, job applications, and social commitments until about mid-July, when I suddenly started experiencing seven-and-a-half months of unemployment depression in a period of three weeks. There were days where all I ate was gummi bears, where I never saw the sun because I kept the curtains closed and never stepped outside, and where I didn’t move from the couch, not even to change the channel from the second consecutive day of NCIS marathons on the USA Network. I’ve seen every episode of that show now. Dark times, my friends, dark times.
Now, by which I specifically mean the past two and a half weeks, I’ve been feeling a lot more balanced. Which is not to say not depressed at all, but the proper amount of depressed: this means that, yes, I spend a lot of time on the couch, but I’m also happy when someone calls me to ask me to go do something with them—when I am depressed, I literally become indignant when my phone rings. (Because if you tried calling me, and you weren’t a potential employer, I would shout in my brain: “HOW DARE YOU INTERRUPT MY WELL-DESERVED PETULANCE?” I can’t decide why I react to perfectly friendly phone calls that way, but I do.). I’ve also started singing again—both of the groups I sing with were on sabbatical for the summer, but are now back in session—and that has helped me to feel a lot better as well. So I feel pretty good. I think I probably feel about as good as one can feel after eight and a half months of soul-munching unemployment. Which isn’t maybe fantastic, but it’s better than it could be.
Anyway. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but I really would like a job. I have a good feeling about the most recent set of interviews I had, but I should temper this assertion by saying that I had a good feeling about seven of the other interviews I had this year. And it may be appropriate to remind you that none of those interviews led to me being hired by anyone. So honestly, my optimism is quite as meaningless to me as the words “balanced diet” (That’s right, I had dessert pizza for breakfast yesterday. Suck it, nerds.). Contributing to this baseless optimism: the prospect of moving to a city with a proper public transit system (while I was there last time I was on a bus, and not only were there more than three other people on the bus with me, but there were so many people on the bus that some people had to stand! CAN YOU IMAGINE?!), and the prospect of once again having an income and being able to afford things like haircuts and produce. I mean, nothing is for sure, and I don’t have an offer, and I don’t even know when they will email me back to hire or reject me. And I should mention that I am fully expecting for them to cook up a very creative way to reject me. Hopefully they will get a form letter baked onto a cookie cake and send it to my parents’ house. It could also just be a letter. Either way, I am expecting it to happen this week, and I know it’s either going to be a job offer or it’s going to give me a good story. So I have a good feeling.
But that might just be the coffee and pie I had a couple of hours ago. So much coffee. So late at night. Also, I sang in the parking lot of a pancake shack, which always puts me in high spirits. FUNEMPLOYMENT.
Leave a comment