SHACKLED TO THE GALLOPING HORSES OF WOE
I didn’t really make this clear in my last post: when I was calling Anthony and ended up complaining about how lonely I am, what I’d meant to call about was how hopeless I feel about getting a job.
I know I have it relatively easy. I have not been cut off from my parents, I don’t have a family to feed, it’s just me and my anxiety talking here. I acknowledge that. I am also not like some of the people I have been hearing about, these 20-30 years-of-service-to-the-company-that-just-laid-them-off people. But sometimes I find I am in the same boat as these people, in this economy, and it scares me.
My problem is that nobody will pay me to go on travels, drink coffee, and blog about it. Right now that’s what I really want to do. And no one, as yet, is interested in my paintings or my drawings, to any degree of seriousness. Strike two. I have an agreeable employment history, a lovely little path which leads into moderately responsible office work — I could probably manage something on a small level if given half the change — but the truth is office work doesn’t really suit me. I liked it okay, don’t get me wrong — it’s nice to have weekends off and insurance and stuff — but it’s a bit like high school, and it’s a bit soul-draining. I had a hard time coming home to paint when I had the office job, particularly when I worked in classifieds and everyone told me how slimy and evil I was all day long. So I don’t know how aggressively I should pursue that, particularly since people in these office-bound temp agencies have career-flavored mantras; they are trying to find you placement that has advancement that will benefit your career. And that scares me, because I don’t want up that ladder. I want it to be something I can do while I get art going.
You can’t tell people this of course. You need to be very positive on the job you’re going for, because at the end of the day you NEED it. You really do. And while we’re at it, office work pays much better than retail, and you are treated slightly better in an office than you are on the sales floor ruled by a passive-aggressive power-hunger assistant manager. It’s nice to work somewhere where HR actually can do something if shit goes down, and having health benefits is something my weak-tooth-enameled, hypochondriatic, severely myopic self needs in this country, at least until we can have free health insurance for all. And paid vacation is nice for that travel-coffee-blog dreams. So suck it up and look there right?
So I thought. It’s vast tangled web of dead ends. Every cavern I shout into swallows my voice completely without hearing so much as an echo, which would at least tell me to get knotted. Editing jobs — jobs that reflect my degree — are few and far between, and it seems like they only go to people who have 5-7 years experience minimum, even for “entry level”. But I expected that. Meanwhile I feel like I’ve applied to every office admin position within a 50 mile radius, and there have been TONS, yet no dice. The smattering of other jobs I’ve gone for have not responded back. All the while I wonder how much of this time I should be spending fleshing out my illustration portfolio, if that’s what I eventually want to be doing anyway, and I am scouring old blogs and papers looking for anything I could call “writing samples”. I sent off for a mail carrier application, but the process will take so long I worry that by the time I send it in they will not need mail carriers in my area (a bit of a shame, since they apparently make a decent sum). And then yesterday I stumbled upon a job with a button-making company here in my neighborhood and oh my God I would love to make buttons. I would so love to work with cutting and setting machines and make tiny round things. I cannot even begin to tell you how happy this job would make me, it satisfy so many of my small qiurks and joys:
1. I love small things.
1a. I love lapel pins, not for wearing so much (though I have quite a few) but just their small little voice and existence.
2. I love to make things with my hands. (See countless posts about paintings, quilts, bags, etc.)
3. I love to make things fit. I think I have talked about this here before. I worked at Pier One for a long time and hated it except for working back stock — making things fit. I could make more things fit out on the shelves than any of my co-workers could, and when we had to reorganize everything back there I was usually the first one to volunteer. My first job at the Greeley store was actually to reorganize this giant shelf that held many of the smaller display shelves. To make the smaller shelves fit on the shelf-of-shelves. Then I went to work for the Tribune, where I had to make letters fit onto four lines of text 20 characters long. Then I became the legal notice goddess and do you know what I did? Every morning I drew up a big blank document and made everything fit onto a single 9×21.25″ page for Alan to print in the paper. It. Rocked. I loved that. So there’s no guarantee, but I’m betting this job involves getting a flat piece of something and then…yah ta da…making it fit onto the round button template.
So. Of course I sent my resume, immediately, and then took a small break to daydream about how freaking awesome that job could be. Walking or biking to work. Working with a smallish group of other people who go home and paint or write songs every day. Making neat stuff. Oh man.
But then of course now it’s been all of 27 hours and I’ve heard nothing, probably because the rest of Portland is also sitting around unemployed and looking for something cool that pays well, and undoubtedly someone in that vast collection of people is a professional button master, had a father who’s father was a button master before him, and obviously that guy’s a shoe in and here I am sitting in my apartment just hoping. And I am hoping so hard I am positively glowing, because I want this button job more than anything I’ve wanted in a long time yet cannot express this to anyone — particularly those who can give me the button job — because that’s a really great way to come off strange and creepy. A good way to not get the job at all. So I’m left to hope hope hope. Hope long and hard all the while that sickly feeling in my stomach reminds me that I need to keep looking for other things. Reminds me to remember about the other couple jobs I called Anthony about, saying ‘hope hard for this one!’ I can’t remember what they were, because they are completely eclipsed by the coolness that is the button job. But I guess that’s how it works.
MEANWHILE, HERE ARE SOME BITS THAT HAVE NO OTHER PLACE
It was a real dodgy landing in Dublin, the worst I have ever experienced. Jerking plane, the pilot had trouble staying level, and we kept loosing altitude in worrying ways. When we did touch the ground, everyone cheered and broke out into applause.
OH CILANTRO
You are not that tasty. Yet you are necessary, in very small amounts, to make my fish tacos orgasmic. Yet you are not sold in very small amounts, but rather in fist-fulls that would take me an entire year to get through, assuming you would stay fresh. And you wouldn’t, because even when I place you in a glass of water in the fridge, you wilt long before I can use you up. And I can’t use you up quickly, because I don’t cook with you much. Because I find you kind of metallic-tasting in large doses. Yet you are like basil, and really cannot be used dried. OH CILANTRO YOU VEX ME SO.
SOMETHING I NEVER KNEW
When you hit the toothed end of a hammer onto a roof, sometimes it sparks. Probably because of the nails.
