That thing that everyone's talking about.

[Boogus Epirus Aurelius]

I went job hunting today again.

A lot of companies on the radar accept their applications and resumes and cover letters online, but I’ve been trying to do as much in person as I possibly can. You know, don the suit coat and work yourself up on the car ride over and smile at the secretary and try not to stumble and mumble. Eye contact and ooze confidence. Look like you want the position.

I quit my stint in retail-land some time ago now and have been living off scraps. I had enough saved to live comfortably and to pay off monthly bills but my car’s starting to shudder and the tires on my bike have seen better years.

It forced me to actually stick to a real budget. Silver lining.

But this whole thing takes some getting used to. Corporate jive is a line of lingo just above my head and it’s difficult to keep up sometimes. Not that the positions I’m applying for are anything but entry level; undergraduate with a tiny handful of marketable traits. But it’s still daunting mainly because I’ve been told it would be. Head up, firm handshake, slow smile, project! Lie to your interviewer! No, tidying up titles of former positions on your resume isn’t lying, it’s marketing yourself!

Christ, and it’s hard enough to shake perceptions and tangled nerves without having  to smile through a mouthful of bullshit. But, this is what I signed up for. Once you walk out of one or two interviews, they’re all the same. The general spookiness is something to scare you and you realize it’s just someone behind a desk and if they play it up to anything more than that, fuck them, right? And if that still doesn’t work, just click into that cosmic perspective (you know, speck of dust kind of thing), but don’t linger too long. I have stories about people who do and they usually end up in similar ways.

Loosen the tie, the noose, and drive back to the university bar for a quick cap, something cheap.

The positions I’ve been slapping applications towards have all been copywriting or technical writing or something. I’ve been constantly trying to kick my way into another radio or local television station gig, but offers fall flat. You have to know a guy who knows a guy to have any footing it seems.

Feel accomplished and mildly content after all that with a pint of shit beer in one hand and a trio of weathered darts in the other. This place has it all. A ratty pool table with bubbled felt and an ancient electronic dartboard and these great dark wood booths with low red shaded lights over them with green cracked plastic cushions. Well stocked bar, on both sides. Always friendly. You can be the biggest non-socialite in the world and end up making a handful of new friends by bar close. Ones that’ll call you within the next few days too. Go figure.

There are a lot of ways to beat the system. Plenty of non-conventional paths and holes in walls but I haven’t seen any around me. Call me career driven and you’re full of it. It should all be as easy as saying “I will be _____. These are the steps. Number one...”. I could get behind that. Maybe having the resources to dedicate to a trade and just focusing on doing that one thing incredibly well. Something like building violins or cooking pasta or something. I’d like to be an expert in something, to be able to say that.

There’s this guy that plays bagpipes every once in a while on campus. You can barely catch glimpses of it in the morning as he’s walking around in the soccer field a few hundred yards away and it’s really eerie some mornings. Anyways, I bumped into him at the bar I mentioned earlier one night and I asked him about the bagpipes. What’s the story? Guy laughed and said he makes money playing them for churches and funerals and festivals around the area. Gets calls all the time. Gave me his card. He plays the flute and keyboard too for weddings. What a gig, right?

Back to it tomorrow! Stoked.

[YPrrrr]

If you do anything but writing for a living it will be a crime. Hope you find a job in it.

I also hate resumes and the interviews... I end up feeling like a sleeze by the end of the process... a used car salesman. I'm a nobody dressed up all pretty and lying out my ass which somehow proves my worth. Blah. Drives me crazy.

[??????]

resumes are so boring
so are cover letters
because i have a talent in making people feel pretty through writing, i often get interviews

its the interviews that progressively become much more harder for me
they often don't find me a suitable candidate because they mistake my persona as a slacker
i come off either too sneaky or very unwilling

the hardest one for all is the first couple of weeks
i can't really hide my emotions and i often get criticized and either get fired very shortly or i leave very early because i'm starting to notice tensions quickly foistering up

i kind of gave up job hunting
my friends became sympathetic and nurture me so there isn't a strong reason for me to get one at the moment