The Tough Questions

The other day, I got a particularly horrible Dear John letter from a company I applied to work at. It was hella harsh. I would have much rather they would have knocked on my door then shot me in the foot. 

"Damn!" Lisha exclaimed after I read her the email. "That was... direct." That is a cute way of describing it. I'm not exaggerating when I say that this letter was the written equivalent of giving someone the middle finger. 

It is times like this where I am AGAIN reminded of Penis Man. I wonder about what happened to this guy quite often, especially during my job search. Years ago, I was listening to the news on the radio and the newscaster did a report on a man who had applied to hundreds of jobs and could not get a call back. So, in a desperate state of mind, he began to send in pictures of his junk with his resume. He was arrested for indecent exposure. Too bad I wasn't working in HR back then. That kind of on-your-feet thinking would have gotten him an interview from my company. 

Can I just ask one question: what are we doing? The nation is at war, the aliens are coming, the vegetables are giving folks explosive diarrhea. What are we doing? Applying for jobs? Looking for work? Trying to make a living? Shouldn't we be dancing in the street naked before a record breaking hurricane comes and wipes us out? Am I going to be surfing Indeed when the comet hits? I guess I will ponder these questions later as I edit my resume. 

Mop Drop

Today, I found a job that I think I would be a good fit for. I immediately went to LinkedIn to see if I had anyone in my networks that worked at this place. You know what they say: It's all in who you know. Imagine my dismay when I saw that the only person that I know who works there would be the one person that I am positive would give me a horrible recommendation. She's a girl that I got to know well in college: Mopsie. I call her this because one of my homeboys says that she has the personality of a mop. I don't know if I'd say that. What I will say is that she is very serious and straight-laced. I wouldn't say that she hates me because I think that would be a touch strong. However, she has always seemed a little irritated and exhausted by my very presence. I don't think she thinks I'm a serious person at all, and if she is anything like she was in college, she wouldn't dare recommend me to get hired and possibly make her look bad. Once, I went with her to a party and she gave me a stern talking to in her car, warning me not to embarrass her the way a mama warns her kid not to ask for candy in the grocery store before they go in.

I'd say I'd never done anything to her for her to have these feelings against me, but that's not entirely true. I once laughed out loud when she did something goofy and she glared at me. I could feel her committing the moment to memory for a time such as this. 

I'm also pretty sure she thinks I'm too much. In her defense, when she knew me, I was. Man, I was a ball of drama and emotions! Now I'm a ball of sleepiness and depression like everyone else my age. With that being said, I'd be great for this job! But I guess I will have to get it without Mopsie's blessing, which means competing against thousands of applicants nationwide. This is just more proof that God doesn't like ugly. This will teach me to laugh at an uptight nerd who will one day serve on the C-suite of a huge, successful company during a hiring slowdown. Lesson learned.

Warning Signs

When I was coming home from my doctor's appointment yesterday, I noticed that the streets were literally lined with tents where homeless people were living. Atlanta has always had a large homeless population, but this was beyond anything I'd seen in my decades living here. It was interesting because the big news from the beginning of the week was that the president wanted to move the homeless out of DC. When I was fresh out of college, the mayor at the time attempted to do the same thing here in Atlanta. He went as far as to close the city's biggest shelter, build the streetcar hub in a parking lot where a lot of the homeless slept, and allow the police to harass the homeless when they weren't even doing anything. Surprise, surprise, the operation didn't work. Apparently, you have nowhere to go when you have nowhere to go. P follows all the financial news. I don't know why, it is never good news. He says that we are entering a cycle where people are not going to be hiring or firing. He says that the sign of a healthy economy is the creation of new jobs and that little to no job creation is not a good sign. 

I say all that to say that this all reminds me of the way things were right before and during the recession when I first graduated from college. What a nightmare! No one I knew was working in their field unless they were in some kind of way working in medicine. A lot of my friends got advanced degrees to live off the loan money and have something to do. I was working at the mall part-time at a clothing store while studying for my GRE, which I took twice and did INCREDIBLY poorly on. My aunty had a great job, but I still recall money being very, very tight. We were eating cheap junk and had very little cash to spare. On top of this, I remember it being really hard to find legit work, and a lot of the posts for jobs were fake. I recall a co-worker getting a gig as an assistant for a day. She did all this work just to be sent a fake money order in the mail as payment. I had rummaged up change to take the bus to interviews for serious jobs, only to get there and be told that the jobs were really sales jobs, you know, the kind where you work like a dog, sell nothing, and make no money. It mean, it was horrible! 

I feel like something is coming down the pipes in this country, and I am concerned. I am too old and have no energy. There is no way I could make it through another recession. The unsettling part is that I don't think whatever is on the way is going to be a traditional recession. I think that it is also going to be accompanied by civil and social unrest. I can smell it in the milk. There are immigration protests everywhere, and officials are openly discussing women not having the right to vote. Prices are rising like you wouldn't believe. Now add homelessness, the fear of being homeless, and a decline in available work to that, and I sense a recipe for disaster. Oh, and don't forget to throw in a teaspoon of really aggressive climate change. 

I hate to be a Negative Nancy, but when I discuss this, it is more to discuss how I am fully aware that I don't have the grit to go through 2008 again. When you are younger, hardships feel like an uncomfortable cold that will soon pass. At this age, I fully know what is up. I watch the news every day, and I predict that whatever is on the way will be solved at some point, but the answer will not be as easy as blowing your nose. Either way, we should all probably stock up on Kleenex. 

10 Year Fears

I didn't go to my 10-year high school reunion. I ended up going to a high school outside of my district, gay boyfriend in toe, for a fresh start. What I got instead was a fresh hell. I won't go into too many deats. Let's just say it was horrible.

On the flip side, I had the time of my life in college. It was how I had wished that high school had been! I had fun. I was social. I had friends. People knew who I was. Yet, my 10-year reunion is later on this year, and I don't think that I will be going to that one either.

Thanks to the soul-imprisoning social network that is Facebook, you no longer need a reunion to keep up with your compadres. A large amount of my time in the morning is dedicated to going through my Facebook timeline and liking advance degree announcements, manicured hand engagement pics, wedding albums, and job promotion brags. And who can forget the exotic vacation imagery? I feel in my heart that attending my reunion will just make me even more envious and depressed. I would like to see my friends, but I feel like they all have gotten more beautiful with age. Meanwhile, I have gotten fatter when I was already fat to begin with!

I can't believe that it has already been ten years. Where has the time gone?! I have to look at my resume to remember, which is another post entirely. For now, these are my feelings on that: 😒.

I want to go to my reunion, but only if I'm gorgeous and making Arab money. That may sound stupid, but I feel close enough to you to tell you how I feel. We'll see how far I have progressed for my 20-year reunion.

Outfielders

A friend of mine called me the other night to let me know that she'd gotten a new job...that she couldn't tell me about. And not because it was some top-secret government position, but because she was ashamed of it. The job had nothing to do with her field and was not associated in any way with what she studied in college.
"Are you serious?" I asked her. And she was, because she didn't tell me what her new job is. All I know is that it is legal and that she isn't stripping or working in fast food.
Needless to say, I thought that her attitude towards her new gig was ridiculous. As long as she was getting a paycheck, who cared, right? WRONG! I ran into a childhood friend on the way home from work the other night and asked her what she is doing now. She said that she is working at Phillip's Arena, the arena where the Atlanta Hawks play. Man, she looked humiliated, like she had just told me her deepest, most embarrassing secret.
That night, I sat and thought about her and my other "secret job" having friend. What was up with people being ashamed of getting paid? I asked myself. But then I had to kick myself off of my soap box and remember that, just three years ago, I was willing to go homeless before I got a job outside of my field. Even sitting on top of a mountain of bills and eviction notices, I just couldn't go put in an application at Wendy's. No really, my feet would not move! I literally could not do it! The way I saw it, I had not paid my dues at a job that sucked out all of my positive energy, nor had my mom gone into Parent Plus Loan debt on my behalf for me to just end up giving out samples at the mall.
So, here is the lesson that I am learning that I would like to share with my fellow "outfielders", or those of us working outside of our chosen fields: not every job has to be permanent. Don't allow your in-between time gigs to define you. If I hadn't had been so proud, I could still be living comfortably in my shithole townhouse with money I could have earned as a CVS cashier. But I'm not, now knowing that a dollar is more important than my ego.
I know, I know, easier said than done. But just be warned, depending on how long you can go without quality food, you may be getting a "just for now" gig sooner than you think. It's okay. You are not alone. I know that this harsh truth is disappointing, but it is not the end of the world. Keep your head up outfielder! Fingers crossed, there is a less demeaning job around the corner.

Much Needed Job and Goal Inspiration

If you are anything like me, you have hoping and wishing and praying for something or someone to breathe life into your career. The exhaustion of not only looking for work but looking for something that won't make you miserable to go to everyday is overwhelming! So I thought that I would share some tips with you from James Rosseau, a Fortune 100 Exec and Christian hip-hop artist/producer, that inspired me.

1. Embrace your passion. Don’t discount your dreams. Return to that childlike fascination you once had and find a way to spend your work and life passionately.

2. Perform to progress versus perfection. Don’t become paralyzed by perfection or the pursuit of it. Instead, perform to progress toward your goals and dreams, celebrating each small step along the way.

3. Promote with purpose. Let people know who you are in a way that is personal and purposeful -- not a slick self-promoter. People recognize and reward those who stand confidently in their strengths authentically and purposefully.

4. Parlay your platform. Your ‘platform’ is the station in life you’ve achieved thus far. It is the sum total of all your efforts in honing your talents and skills. It may not be where you want to be yet, but it’s yours.

5. Put it into action. Keep your eyes and ear open to see when opportunity knocks. Be alert to it and be aware. Take action on the four steps that lead up to this as earnestly and as often as possible.

6. Practice philanthropy. Give. You can never go wrong giving, even when no one hears about it. So many of us have benefited from the gifts of others, and you’ll never know what your small, or even not-so-small, gift might mean to someone in need, be it a coworker, a friend, or even a boss.

Creatively Unemployed: Creating Your Own Sunlight

Today I spoke with Ebony, of my fellow creatives. She, like me, was freed from the shackles of her corporate job. However, her finances are telling her that she has to start applying for work ASAP. She said, as she surfs for jobs, her neck hurts. She gets sick about it!
I know what she means. She spoke with disdain about her old cubical- a space with no access to sunlight. The only offices with sunlight were for the big wigs, as if to say that if you didn't have an office, you weren't important enough to have access to the sun! It made me think of all the ills of my old job and the job I had recently applied for.
Not too long ago, I applied for an administrative assistant job. The pay would have been okay and it would have been part-time. I had been sick about it for weeks after my two interviews, wondering if I'd gotten it. Today, I got the generic email telling me that I hadn't. As I read it, I realized that I hadn't been sick hoping I'd get the job- I was sick because I subconsciously hoped I wouldn't!
Something about the restraints of middle management supervised jobs makes a creative person want to crawl under the table and cry! Those hours you are working towards something that is not yours could be spent doodling and saving the world!
Cheers to those of us that are taking charge of their sunlight allotment:)