Thursday, August 10, 2006

Confession

Looking for jobs blows. It's downright depressing. I started off gung ho in the search process two months ago, happy to finally be in a situation where employment was an option, but in a matter of weeks I found myself sometimes bedridden. Dreading the number of cover letters I'd have to revise for whatever random jobs of the given day. Sick of my own story.

Whereas the English major presented itself as a flexible degree because it taught "critical thinking," the job search has left me wishing I had specialized in something specific like dentistry. Dentistry = teeth. English = words. Words are in everything; every specialization. Teeth are only in your mouth and are supposed to behave a certain way. When they don't, you fix it and it's pretty black and white. Words have no specific behavior. They bend, jump, drag, and constantly change their meaning. These behaviors affect every moment/interaction of our lives. I've seen firsthand how different languages and their syntax, pronouns, and word choice, inform the behaviors of various cultures, but where does that get me in the job world? Where is the space in my resume for this?

My newest low is a wrapped beach towel around the torso in place of shorts and underwear. Why dress, right? It's only to the mailbox, but...

I think this is all in response to a friend recently asking what the job search was like. It may be exciting at first, but it quickly becomes dull and utterly uninspiring. All I can be is myself and pretty much no one is interested in that because they want me to suck their ass and conform to what they want me to be.

These have been hard weeks.

However,

I love San Diego and yesterday was a good day for the seratonin levels. On a whim I decided to contact Habitat for Humanity and go help them out on a project all day, which was awesome. I used to do Habitat every Saturday in high school and liked it (especially since I was doing it with friends) so I thought I'd give that a shot since my attempt at volunteering at the animal shelter didn't work out. I had forgotten that it was a Christian affiliated organization until the truck pulled up with a quote strewn across the side of it saying something like, "God's love in action," or "Working by the love of God," or "For the love of God." And then, of course, we began the day with a prayer. I was like, snort and roll of the eyes but whatever. I also had forgotten that I went through those motions for 12 years, morning, noon, and afternoon. They had us praying all the freaking time so it was an odd flashback. The Christian part of Habitat was relatively minimal though...thank god.

I was semi-flattered that the leader guy picked me to operate what was essentially this gigantic industrial chainsaw on wheels for digging trenches. It was sort of ridiculous at the same time that he picked me only because I was literally pushing on the handles like I was a fucking Olympic gymnast on the parallel bars to try and get the thing to turn...alas, I managed. But between that and the pickaxe, I look/feel like a tetanus victim. So if I'm sitting here saying, "digging trenches was awesome!" you might be able to better imagine the quality of my normal days of looking for a job.

But it was a jumpstart. It was a motivator. It made the day go by faster, I learned something, and spent the day with people that were pretty nice. It made me get up today and at least get in the car and out of the apt. So today I finally went through Little Italy and stopped down at Chicano Park and topped it off with a trip to the grocery store where Little Italy inspired me to buy some salami. A fuckload of it too, which was sort of unintentional. In Germany I could justify it by "not knowing the metric system" but the truth is I've always been afraid of the deli counter because I have no fucking clue what a quarter of a lb. vs. a half lb. looks like. Kind of like when people give you directions and say "in 300 ft. you'll go right." I act like I know what they're talking about, but I'm really standing there like, " ? "

Basically I guess it was important to have two fuck all days where I spent little time on the computer, thinking about jobs.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous6:59 PM

    Omgtwsf! Is that an approved abbreviation? If not, it should be. In truth, I really hate all those dumb expressions (such as *lmao*). Hate it even more when someone says, "LOL!!" and you know damn well that it wasn't that funny to begin with.

    And I'm totally with you on that 300 feet thing. Whenever I have to give someone directions, it's like, "Take 71-N to Kenwood Rd. Turn right, and go approximately 2-7 miles. Then turn right onto Cherokee."

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