When I started this blog in mid-December, I hoped it would last a week. Or less.
Instead, it went a little more than two months. Not a long stretch measured against, say, the Academy Awards show on Monday (I think Slumdog Millionaire just won for Best Wrap Party Buffet).
But today I say, with some sadness but more relief than anything, that this blog's original purpose is moot. I've found a job, full-time, with a desk and duties and coffee breaks and everything.
Writing this blog has been fun, and even a little cathartic, because the alternative would've involved crying and scotch. And I've never written it while I was in sweats, just because that felt like a forefeiture of my determination to act as if I was still an employed writer, who just wasn't getting any money for it.
It also led to some decent opportunities for exposure, and a TV appearance, and some comments that were encouraging even if they may have come from other unemployed people, or relatives.
But that still doesn't give me a reason for its continued existence, which was contained in a title that is technically still accurate (now and forever more, I will be laid off at one point in my life) but misleading.
So some time to ponder seems appropriate. Maybe it'll turn into a "working again" blog for a time, or ultimately I'll just talk about what coffee creamer I used this morning and mention that I'm tired of it raining, though living in Northern California at the moment, this is like a Baghdad housewife saying it's too quiet.
Still, I'm not pulling the plug here and now. This is a good forum, at least a few people read it, and the name is too good to abandon.
Then again, if I put it on eBay....
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Waiting
I've long been sympathetic to people who wait for a living. Just the name, "waiter." Think about it. What could be less fun than waiting, for a living?
Of course, the term waiter is even dying out. Maybe because it's not really accurate -- at many restaurants, actually, the "waiter" is the person who wouldn't mind some more fizzy sugar water to wash down the salt sticks.
Or, the connotation is too strong. You think waiter, you think person who may be able to do 15 percentages of bills in his head, and can do percentages of spittle in water glasses on later visits if your percentage falls short of 15 percent. This makes you leave 20 percent, or even 22 if you're eating with someone who "used to be a waiter."
At the moment, I could be considered a waiter, for a living, of a different kind. This waiting is even less fun.
This waiting is the kind where you've gone on interviews, sent out resumes, even done some follow-up stuff, and....
And....
And....
Repeat.
There's no good solution to this. You hit refresh on the e-mail endlessly, see something in your inbox, then find out that you that despite the bodyslammed economy, Rolex watches and Gucci purses of indeterminate origin are still totally for sale.
Your phone rings, and you answer, and a parent asks, "So? Any jobs yet?"
They care, they really do. And part of it may be that they fear that if said jobs don't pop up soon, I may move back in with them.
But neither the spam-smelling e-mail nor the distracting parent phone calls get to the goal, which is work. And yet if I'm going to get to the fabled land of Employment again, I must brave the road stop of penis-enlargement come-ons and the roadside dinosaur of talking to my mom about snow at her house.
In the meantime, waiting. And writing here. And those off-ramps of distraction.
Of course, the term waiter is even dying out. Maybe because it's not really accurate -- at many restaurants, actually, the "waiter" is the person who wouldn't mind some more fizzy sugar water to wash down the salt sticks.
Or, the connotation is too strong. You think waiter, you think person who may be able to do 15 percentages of bills in his head, and can do percentages of spittle in water glasses on later visits if your percentage falls short of 15 percent. This makes you leave 20 percent, or even 22 if you're eating with someone who "used to be a waiter."
At the moment, I could be considered a waiter, for a living, of a different kind. This waiting is even less fun.
This waiting is the kind where you've gone on interviews, sent out resumes, even done some follow-up stuff, and....
And....
And....
Repeat.
There's no good solution to this. You hit refresh on the e-mail endlessly, see something in your inbox, then find out that you that despite the bodyslammed economy, Rolex watches and Gucci purses of indeterminate origin are still totally for sale.
Your phone rings, and you answer, and a parent asks, "So? Any jobs yet?"
They care, they really do. And part of it may be that they fear that if said jobs don't pop up soon, I may move back in with them.
But neither the spam-smelling e-mail nor the distracting parent phone calls get to the goal, which is work. And yet if I'm going to get to the fabled land of Employment again, I must brave the road stop of penis-enlargement come-ons and the roadside dinosaur of talking to my mom about snow at her house.
In the meantime, waiting. And writing here. And those off-ramps of distraction.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Visiting old haunts
About two months into unemployment, you think less about the job that left you behind.
But you never stop thinking about it entirely, for the simple reason that if you think about working, your most recent memory of it comes to mind, and in this case that would be the job that punted you out on the street.
In this situation, it's not unlike a girlfriend you had a bad breakup with, and you're still single.
Psychiatrists have all kinds of theories about the psychology of loss, and how we should deal with it. One they recommend is not to fixate or indulge in whatever is gone, but rather accept it.
With a girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever, this is pretty easy. Stop driving by their house, delete the phone number from your contacts, slam the gift coffee mug they gave with their face on it into a billion or so pieces.
I've discovered, though, that the old job, well, not so easy. Reason being, if you're a writer, and you want to get a writing job, most places hiring will want to see what you've written before.
Since I worked for a Web site, that means going back to said site, and digging up my best work to send along.
This analogy is easy to understand. If this were an ex-girlfriend, for example, it would be like asking a new woman on a date, and she asks,"Got any samples of past sweet character?"
And so you had to go to your ex's place and ask for the ticket stub to the concert of the band she loved, the $120 sweater you bought on a whim for her, and the snot-infested tissue papers from when you were nursemaid while she had a killer cold.
Just going to the ex's place would fill you with a hundred feelings, and probably put a bitter taste in your mouth, if she was the dumper (as a job that laid you off could be described.)
Even worse, every time you tried for a new date, you had to go there again. Yes, I know I should just save the best stuff I'd written for that site somewhere, but in my delusionally optimistic way, I always think when I retrieve these stories from the site that this is the last time.
Now I realize, on a week in which many people are thinking of affairs of the heart, this might be a downer. So I'll leave off with this: A new girlfriend appears to be in sight.
What that means happens with the ex, I dunno.
But you never stop thinking about it entirely, for the simple reason that if you think about working, your most recent memory of it comes to mind, and in this case that would be the job that punted you out on the street.
In this situation, it's not unlike a girlfriend you had a bad breakup with, and you're still single.
Psychiatrists have all kinds of theories about the psychology of loss, and how we should deal with it. One they recommend is not to fixate or indulge in whatever is gone, but rather accept it.
With a girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever, this is pretty easy. Stop driving by their house, delete the phone number from your contacts, slam the gift coffee mug they gave with their face on it into a billion or so pieces.
I've discovered, though, that the old job, well, not so easy. Reason being, if you're a writer, and you want to get a writing job, most places hiring will want to see what you've written before.
Since I worked for a Web site, that means going back to said site, and digging up my best work to send along.
This analogy is easy to understand. If this were an ex-girlfriend, for example, it would be like asking a new woman on a date, and she asks,"Got any samples of past sweet character?"
And so you had to go to your ex's place and ask for the ticket stub to the concert of the band she loved, the $120 sweater you bought on a whim for her, and the snot-infested tissue papers from when you were nursemaid while she had a killer cold.
Just going to the ex's place would fill you with a hundred feelings, and probably put a bitter taste in your mouth, if she was the dumper (as a job that laid you off could be described.)
Even worse, every time you tried for a new date, you had to go there again. Yes, I know I should just save the best stuff I'd written for that site somewhere, but in my delusionally optimistic way, I always think when I retrieve these stories from the site that this is the last time.
Now I realize, on a week in which many people are thinking of affairs of the heart, this might be a downer. So I'll leave off with this: A new girlfriend appears to be in sight.
What that means happens with the ex, I dunno.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)