I think I might be losing my mind.
Not really. I'm being dramatic.
But seriously, I'm slowly learning that no job = days spent cleaning up after a puppy who enjoys torturing the cat. That means that my days are filled with poop, pee, "meooooooow", "ruff ruff grrrr", and "RENJI! LEAVE THE CAT ALONE!" Throw in some Law and Order: SVU and Investigation Discovery and BOOM, that's my day. I may or may not have lost my marbles earlier because I actually stepped in puppy poop after having taken said puppy outside. Puppy heard words come out of Mama's mouth that he had never heard before.
I've only been out of work since Friday, but life on the outside is already getting to me.
I'm gettin' twitchy, guys.
Guy.
Who even reads this?
I've applied to several jobs, both full time and part time. I'm not above working a shift; I'm a Southern girl and know the value of hard work and doing what it takes to provide for a family (even if the family is a husband, a cat, and a puppy). My family comes from humble means, and being raised in the Bible belt has taught me to have faith in God's ultimate plan.
That said, nothing is easy. Questions are asked and plans are doubted; it's hard having faith and taking a step backward. Remembering that you've always got something to fall back on is your salvation.
Always learning.
Here's a Jenna Marbles video for reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_JgqPl52hA
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Saturday, January 4, 2014
Make it so, Number One...
Hi all...
I have tried blogging before and made it through all of one entry, so this is still relatively new territory for me, which is sad because I have a fancy-looking piece of paper and thousands in school loans that say I spent 5 years learning how to be a professional writer. Oops.
I have decided to start blogging for the same reason anyone starts writing: some big event has happened in my life, and I feel the express need to relay it in some way. It is not a secret that most authors who have amounted to anything were on the cookoo side of the Coco Puffs; Edgar Allan Poe was a depressed alcoholic, Emily Dickinson was probably anti-social if not depressed, and Walt Whitman liked to write poetry about making love to nature. There is no solid evidence to support this claim, but as a writer I can vouch that without literature or their creation of it, things would have ended much worse for all of those writers. Writing is an outlet for anxiety. I'm not admitting to psychosis or addiction, but I have been known to let stress stay bottled up inside, growing and expanding like foam in a shaken-up Coke bottle, until it finally explodes in an outpouring of emotion, leaving me to fizzle in a sad puddle on my couch. Writing my experiences, I have found, keeps the Coke in the bottle, so to say.
The experience in question is post-grad job hunting. I'm taking a step back here, as I graduated seven months ago and have since gotten a job. So what's the point? Why did this blog take seven months to get written? Because once I got my job, I forgot what it was like to hunt. I had forgotten the feeling of disappointment, of discouragement, of downright anger when faced with not being able to find a job in my field.
As I mentioned earlier, my degree is in Writing. We are told in high school and throughout college that if we persist and persevere through school, that we will be rewarded with a job; but not just any job: our dream job. You want to be an astronaut? You got it! Want to write political pieces for the BBC's website? Go for it! You want to teach history to seventeen year olds? Be our guest.
What they--"they" being college administration, the government, "the man"--don't tell you is that you not only have to finish school to get these jobs, but you must finish with good--excuse me, EXCELLENT--grades, the right internship, the best contacts, and another degree...and probably a doctorate just to be on the safe side.
My degree's full name is "Bachelor of Arts: English with concentration in writing and publication." I got a minor in Theatre just for kicks and giggles. I read a lot of great literature and wrote a lot of good papers and essays, and I even got to act in a production of "Lost in Yonkers." I had a wonderful time studying English in college; but darned if I didn't know how the system worked. I knew about the EXCELLENT grades stipulation, and was generally okay with not meeting it, but when it came time to pick an internship, did I go to a newspaper and learn how to write columns? No. Did I go to an ad agency and learn how to write proposals? Nope. I went to a radio station and learned how to talk. Do I regret it? No...mostly. I regret it in the sense that I have no professional experience in my field. I regret that, after everything was said and done, I didn't get a job there. But do I regret the friends I made and the fun I had while working there? No. Will I apply again, given the chance? Yes.
Getting back on track to job hunting: when I graduated, I immediately applied at the radio station. When that fell through, I applied at several stores at the mall, mostly because I had never applied for a grown-up job in my life and didn't want to go back to working at the grocery store that had bought me gas for three years. I tried sending my resume and some samples of my work to an editor at a local magazine, but she never responded. I went to a job fair and got lots of interviews for companies wanting me to sell insurance for them. It wasn't until I found a company on LinkedIn looking for someone to fill the position of an international services representative. "What is that?" I thought. I hit the APPLY button, mostly because the word "international" had me by the jaw; maybe I thought I would be able to travel abroad with this job...maybe.
Luckily enough, they called me for an interview. I had no idea how the interview went at the time, and I honestly wasn't even certain that this was the right job for me. But they called me for a second interview and told me even more about the job and about the benefits and I was even more intrigued. Then they called me and offered me a full-time job--my first ever--and I obviously said yes. No more grocery store, no more job hunting, no more feeling inadequate and disappointed in myself. I now had a job to go along with my degree; kind of a validation for all my hard work and a "HA!" in the face of the government that would soon be demanding payment for the effort it had put into paying for my education.
This would be a terrible blog if I ended it here, because the above isn't the point of this whole shebang.
Two months and a week after getting my new full-time job, I was laid off. This company, God bless its soul, was only a baby. It's hard to get a business off the ground, no matter the resources you're provided with out the gate. I was promised that I wasn't being let go because of my performance, but because I had the least experience. The news was heartbreaking on many levels: to me because I was losing my job, but also to the people who were sent to do the laying off. Two of my bosses were there along with someone from HR; they didn't want to be there, and the regret hovered around their heads like mist over moors. They were concerned about me and how I would manage without the job; I assured them I would be fine, because if anything, under pressure I am solid as a rock. I wouldn't cry like my body seemed to want to, and I thanked them for how good they had been to me. The looks they gave me, despite my rock-like-ness, suggested something else: either I was displaying some other emotion that I couldn't control on my face, or they were remembering what I was trying not to at that moment: I am a newlywed. Three days before starting this job, I married my best friend. While he has a job, my job helped with bills and my loans that hang over our heads like horseflies in the summertime. They knew this, and they hated the situation almost as much as I did. Through it all, I understood completely; I'm nothing if not logical. It still sucked.
So this is the event that sparked this blog. I've been laid off and am back on the hunt. This blog will serve as a chronicle of my hunt, while I stay positive about the prospects; if I learned anything from the last time I was on the hunt, it was that if I'm negative about everything (the job market, the government, my education, myself...), nothing good will come of it. So, in conclusion of my first "Stay Peppy" blog, I leave you with a reminder to stay peppy from the wonderful Audrey Hepburn:
"Nothing is impossible; the world itself says 'I'm possible.'"
I have tried blogging before and made it through all of one entry, so this is still relatively new territory for me, which is sad because I have a fancy-looking piece of paper and thousands in school loans that say I spent 5 years learning how to be a professional writer. Oops.
I have decided to start blogging for the same reason anyone starts writing: some big event has happened in my life, and I feel the express need to relay it in some way. It is not a secret that most authors who have amounted to anything were on the cookoo side of the Coco Puffs; Edgar Allan Poe was a depressed alcoholic, Emily Dickinson was probably anti-social if not depressed, and Walt Whitman liked to write poetry about making love to nature. There is no solid evidence to support this claim, but as a writer I can vouch that without literature or their creation of it, things would have ended much worse for all of those writers. Writing is an outlet for anxiety. I'm not admitting to psychosis or addiction, but I have been known to let stress stay bottled up inside, growing and expanding like foam in a shaken-up Coke bottle, until it finally explodes in an outpouring of emotion, leaving me to fizzle in a sad puddle on my couch. Writing my experiences, I have found, keeps the Coke in the bottle, so to say.
The experience in question is post-grad job hunting. I'm taking a step back here, as I graduated seven months ago and have since gotten a job. So what's the point? Why did this blog take seven months to get written? Because once I got my job, I forgot what it was like to hunt. I had forgotten the feeling of disappointment, of discouragement, of downright anger when faced with not being able to find a job in my field.
As I mentioned earlier, my degree is in Writing. We are told in high school and throughout college that if we persist and persevere through school, that we will be rewarded with a job; but not just any job: our dream job. You want to be an astronaut? You got it! Want to write political pieces for the BBC's website? Go for it! You want to teach history to seventeen year olds? Be our guest.
What they--"they" being college administration, the government, "the man"--don't tell you is that you not only have to finish school to get these jobs, but you must finish with good--excuse me, EXCELLENT--grades, the right internship, the best contacts, and another degree...and probably a doctorate just to be on the safe side.
My degree's full name is "Bachelor of Arts: English with concentration in writing and publication." I got a minor in Theatre just for kicks and giggles. I read a lot of great literature and wrote a lot of good papers and essays, and I even got to act in a production of "Lost in Yonkers." I had a wonderful time studying English in college; but darned if I didn't know how the system worked. I knew about the EXCELLENT grades stipulation, and was generally okay with not meeting it, but when it came time to pick an internship, did I go to a newspaper and learn how to write columns? No. Did I go to an ad agency and learn how to write proposals? Nope. I went to a radio station and learned how to talk. Do I regret it? No...mostly. I regret it in the sense that I have no professional experience in my field. I regret that, after everything was said and done, I didn't get a job there. But do I regret the friends I made and the fun I had while working there? No. Will I apply again, given the chance? Yes.
Getting back on track to job hunting: when I graduated, I immediately applied at the radio station. When that fell through, I applied at several stores at the mall, mostly because I had never applied for a grown-up job in my life and didn't want to go back to working at the grocery store that had bought me gas for three years. I tried sending my resume and some samples of my work to an editor at a local magazine, but she never responded. I went to a job fair and got lots of interviews for companies wanting me to sell insurance for them. It wasn't until I found a company on LinkedIn looking for someone to fill the position of an international services representative. "What is that?" I thought. I hit the APPLY button, mostly because the word "international" had me by the jaw; maybe I thought I would be able to travel abroad with this job...maybe.
Luckily enough, they called me for an interview. I had no idea how the interview went at the time, and I honestly wasn't even certain that this was the right job for me. But they called me for a second interview and told me even more about the job and about the benefits and I was even more intrigued. Then they called me and offered me a full-time job--my first ever--and I obviously said yes. No more grocery store, no more job hunting, no more feeling inadequate and disappointed in myself. I now had a job to go along with my degree; kind of a validation for all my hard work and a "HA!" in the face of the government that would soon be demanding payment for the effort it had put into paying for my education.
This would be a terrible blog if I ended it here, because the above isn't the point of this whole shebang.
Two months and a week after getting my new full-time job, I was laid off. This company, God bless its soul, was only a baby. It's hard to get a business off the ground, no matter the resources you're provided with out the gate. I was promised that I wasn't being let go because of my performance, but because I had the least experience. The news was heartbreaking on many levels: to me because I was losing my job, but also to the people who were sent to do the laying off. Two of my bosses were there along with someone from HR; they didn't want to be there, and the regret hovered around their heads like mist over moors. They were concerned about me and how I would manage without the job; I assured them I would be fine, because if anything, under pressure I am solid as a rock. I wouldn't cry like my body seemed to want to, and I thanked them for how good they had been to me. The looks they gave me, despite my rock-like-ness, suggested something else: either I was displaying some other emotion that I couldn't control on my face, or they were remembering what I was trying not to at that moment: I am a newlywed. Three days before starting this job, I married my best friend. While he has a job, my job helped with bills and my loans that hang over our heads like horseflies in the summertime. They knew this, and they hated the situation almost as much as I did. Through it all, I understood completely; I'm nothing if not logical. It still sucked.
So this is the event that sparked this blog. I've been laid off and am back on the hunt. This blog will serve as a chronicle of my hunt, while I stay positive about the prospects; if I learned anything from the last time I was on the hunt, it was that if I'm negative about everything (the job market, the government, my education, myself...), nothing good will come of it. So, in conclusion of my first "Stay Peppy" blog, I leave you with a reminder to stay peppy from the wonderful Audrey Hepburn:
"Nothing is impossible; the world itself says 'I'm possible.'"
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