Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Various levels of fidelity

Oh, hello!

I am still unemployed. However, despite this uncertain, cloudy sensation of SO MUCH TIME PASSING, it has in reality only been 20 days. Thankfully, my freakouts have become intermittent as opposed to constant and gnawing. As of today, I've applied to 48 jobs. I have gotten no callbacks. If I wanted this kind of silent rejection, I would have gone into acting. Or been a real writer.

I've been doing my ever loving best to fill up my time in such a way that I don't feel like an utter dirtbag with no job. It helps that I have a part time job to fill up the hours on certain days. I've started an exercise program and I finally got around to getting rid of that old laptop that has been in my possession since 2007. I took a bike riding class last weekend and I have been practicing singing at the top of my lungs during the quiet afternoons in my apartment. The conversations I have with myself have progressed from scintillating to slightly disturbing and Facebook has become a tether to the working world. (You guys are just like me, always online but at least you are getting paid for it!) I'm all caught up on Orange is the New Black, Law and Order SVU, Kroll Show and Inside Amy Schumer. I've read like, four books and endless piles of magazines. I have enrolled in a thumb twiddle workshop and gave myself a part way decent pedicure. I take 6 supermarket trips during the week instead of my usual 3 and my emails to friends have become luxurious, self indulgent opuses that I usually get so embarrassed by that I end up deleting them and sending pared down versions with the bare minimum of "I'm doing just fine, yes. I am totally NOT daydreaming that I'll sprain my ankle but have no health insurance to fix it properly and walk with a limp the rest of my days, no. But yes, I'll totally take you up on your offer of dinner and lunch and drinks." (I honestly have the BEST friends ever.) I'm spending way too much time poring over job ads that say things like this:

"Comfortable in an agile environment of rapid iteration and experimentation, prototyping at various levels of fidelity."

as a requirement. And asking myself "AM I comfortable in an agile environment of rapid iteration? Should I put THAT on my resume?" I've been hanging out for hours with Jeff Buckley and Frank O'Hara and Wes Anderson, wondering if it is at all ironic that back in those not so long ago days when I was working 6 days a week, 13 hours a day, ALL I dreamed about was the ability to do exactly what I'm doing now which is a whole lot of bullshit nothing and doing it with abandon, accompanied by a cloying worry that I'll start talking to myself in public like Jasmine, only not as blonde and in a decidedly less designer homeless outfit.


Future me?


I'm tempering my free time with invented tasks of decluttering, organizing, writing, wining, channeling, planning, driving, walking and oh dear god I just need a job. I'm getting all Colonel Brandon up in here. "Give me a task or I shall go mad." My career is like Elinor, thrashing around on the bed of a really bad head cold.


Before he was the Governor, he was Colonel Brandon. Either way, he had jobs.

Look, all I'm saying is, please hire me. Is that too much to ask?

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