It has occured to me as I sit here playing mindless hours of Cubis in an attempt to not have to face the daunting task of finding a job, that I should at least, perhaps, make an attempt to not allow my brain to continue to jell into a soggy mess. Although I do seem to have lost any knack for wanting to type out the mundane thoughts that are less and less frequently passing through my brain.
I think back to when I started typing online and find it hard to believe that I had So much to say back then. When these things had yet to morph into the blogs that we know today and were still considered ‘diaries’, I was new at my job and had so little contact with real human beings that I was updating twice and sometimes even three times a day. I’m glad that those are still hanging out there in the ether, but I find that, just like old pictures, I can’t seem to bring myself to go back and read them.
I don’t know if I’m just remembering myself as fairly well-written and kind of funny back then and don’t feel that I am living up to my ‘potential’(?) or if those times are just so far gone and I can know make anything seem melancholy and yet so much better than now. (Sometimes I really wish that I was a decent writer and could parlay this into some form of career. I think I have a reasonable amount of material.)
We always joked about how I/we would write the life story of The Company, because, as is the case with most oddities in life, reality is stranger than fiction. We could definitely pass it off as ‘all of this is fiction and any similarities to things real is strictly coincidental’, because honestly, it all seemed so very crazy.
So, let’s see.
I haven’t updated here since September 16th. (Feign suprise that it’s been that long.) And, interestingly enough, I was lamenting the state of the state and looking for jobs. As of October 29th, I became unemployed for the first time in twenty years. Well, not Really, Technically unemployed. It was passed along as a ‘furlough’. Which is a fancy way of saying, “We’re trying to get you out of here without having to pay out your unused vacation time.”
So, my nightmares (when I bother to even think about that place) consist of Bossie-poo requesting the pleasure of my company, me being appalled and him dancing with joy, because he can then sever ties and stop me from collecting unemployment because he Offered me my old position back and I chose not to accept it.
Both Suzanne and I (and Juh-lie and an accounting person) were let go, while someone that I rarely bothered to write about, because she is an enigma, was kept. We can go around and around about the reasons why someone who was brought in by the Mentor and then let go six months before she was brought back was kept over a fraction-owner of the company and someone who actually Worked there. (Me and Suzanne, respectively.) I would say it definitely hinged on influence from the Mentor (who is gone, but not really), her fraction less money than I was making salary, but mostly because she came back as a highly effective game-player, capable of being the best Yes-Girl the company has seen: Making sure that she didn’t leave until two minutes after Bossie-poo, always claiming to take on projects (but not actually producing anything), and consistenly being the one to Never Question the stupid shit that increasingly came out of Bossie-poo’s mouth.
/shrug
Kudos to her.
As much as I would like to have a job at this point (and, quite honestly, that is questionable), I have No desire to be in that totally toxic environment any longer.
That part, I believe, (as well as the increasing notion that, truly, I Don’t Like to Work) is what is hindering my job search and making it so easy to find fault with just about everything that I find out there in the world.
I’d like to report that there really are a Ton of jobs out there. Now that I’ve gotten someone motivated to actually look (and the new year has brought the opening of budgets), I am shocking by the Thousands of job opportunities available. No, not all of them are for me, but there really isn’t much of an excuse for the unemployment rate to be as high as it is.
Job searching has changed dramatically from the last time I had to search, which, realistically was twenty years ago. This, also, has impeded the intensity of my searching. Because I am have the most ridiculous low self-esteem issues regarding what I Can do (self-defeating prophecy? hmm.) and the terror of actually having to Interview for something, which, again, I haven’t had to do for twenty years.
Twenty years is a Really Long Time.
Considering that the last few jobs I’ve had I didn’t really even have to interview for makes it even more difficult to figure out where to go from here.
Had lunch with Hip-Girl on Tuesday and was shocked and awed at the monstrosity that is that local Food Behemoth company. Good friends will call you out on your bullshit, so she was quick to echo the fact that I can come up with a million excuses for not applying to one company or another. So the next day I applied for not one, but Two jobs. (Unfortunately, this also allowed me to get all high and mighty and do Nothing yesterday. Bad habits…) Rationale that you can’t come up with excuses why not to take a job if you don’t actually have any offers, let alone interviews. I think it would also help if I could figure out what I want to do when I grow up. It’s hard to try to get out of a perceived employment rut when all you fall back upon is that you can only do what you’ve always done. I’m pretty good at coming up with things that I’d like to do/might be good at, but I’m not sure that there are actual careers out there that exemplify that, let alone being able ot pay what I seem to think that I need to exist. (However, I have finally(?) gotten out of the mindset that I can’t work here or there or do this or that because I don’t want to drive so far, etc., etc. Who’s to say that I won’t make twice what I was making and could therefore afford to put the urchins in before school care in order to make that ’9-5′ that I seem to think is what the real world expects?
I’m great at self-defeatest attitudes, but it’s kind of exciting to try to come up with reasons why I Can do things or why a new opportunity would actually be a Good thing as opposed to something that I would fail at. Interesting case study in…myself.
I kind of keep getting off on tangents, but as long as this thing, which I couldn’t find the words to type, is getting totally out of control, I do want to address the fact of not knowing what to search for as far as jobs are concerned. I seem to be fixated on the whole Human Resources genre which has, inexplicably, turned into “Talent Acquistion and Management”. (Don’t believe me? Do a job search and just see all of the job titles out there related.) When the hell did this bullshit become prevalent? (And why are there so damned many HR positions available?) Talent? Really? Are we all so superficial and in need of our own reality show that instead of ‘employees’ we must now be referred to as “talent”?? Do I get a tropy and/or ribbon just for applying now so that I don’t get my feelings hurt?
Ah…The rant. She is not dead!
Ok.
I think that this typing thing is a good thing. My ideas have not dried up. I am still capable of typing and therefore keeping bottled in stupidity bottled in is…stupid? And…nothing has changed. Excellent. 
I have tried all day to stop myself from working out (getting frustrated that, after two months of working out religiously five times a week, there is No change to the state of the state.) and must either decide to blow it off entirely (and with vigor!) or get my ass moving.
I shall return Monday.
ak
