03.24.03 - 6:32 p.m.
So.
A bit of an unplanned hiatus.
Recharge, I guess.
I'm still unemployed, sadly, so I don't even really have an excuse. I've been trying to think of something witty, poignant, demanding, creative, or at least believable, but really, I can't think of anything.
Some part of me has wanted to say something really deep--really award-worthy, or at least, notice-worthy--and then when I couldn't, it made it harder to come back.
And then I wanted to be funny--snort-worthy, if you will--but that wasn't coming either.
Best guess--unemployment is getting me down. I mean, dowwwwwn. Money's becoming tight enough that if the condo doesn't close on Thursday (oh, please please please knock wood for me!) we can't make the next mortgage payment. My credit card is maxed out, and I've NEVER done that, in fifteen years of credit management. I'm contemplating selling my car--my beautiful Blue Bug--as soon as I can get it fixed. And my grocery budget has been chopped in half, to $50 a week for the two of us.
But it's really not even that. The condo will sell. And I don't need my credit card for a while anyway. And I'm almost even looking forward to being car-free--Portland's a bike friendly city if there ever was one, and we're almost to the end of the rain for this year. And hey, I've been wanting to lose weight.
Really? It's seriously just the unemployment thing. It's that no one wants me. In my good moments--and they do occur, I'm still a few steps from wallowing in the Self Pity Downward Spiral of Doom--I'm confident that somewhere, sometime, will see my resume, and the lights of heaven will open up and gleam down and the angels will sing and I will get a job.
(Even if I don't want it. Right now? Don't care. Anything.)
More, it's a re-evaluation of my worthiness. And a sort of confusion therein.
Here's the thing about unemployment. Everyone asks you, what do you *want* to do? What do you really want to do? No, really? In your heart of hearts, what do you want to do????
Dude, if I knew? Wouldn't be bugging you! If I knew in my heart of hearts what I wanted to do, damn the consequences, if I had a career path all mapped out and ready to go, I'd be introducing myself that way. "Hi, I'm Blue, and do you have any gutter cleaning needs? Because I really really want to clean your gutters!"
So instead, I'm the fantasy employee. What do you want? Because, baby, I'll be whatever you need, and I'll tell you that's what I've wanted to be all along.
Underwriter? Ooohhh, that gets me hot. Programmer? Bring it on, baby! Fucking data entry? These be magic fingers, sugah!
I'm a big fat employment whore who still can't get a job.
And what really makes me question it all is that I had a huge ego before this. Dudes, I'm one qualified motha. I have a ton of experience in a bunch of different jobs, I have an MBA from one of the hardest business schools in the country, and I'm smart. I'm freakin' smart people. I am. And if any employer would talk to me, they'd know it too.
But you know what I think the secret is? I'm a sham. A fake. It's all one big fat whopping lie. That experience? Hell, it's just a bunch of action words on a resume. That MBA? Let me be the FIRST to burst THAT bubble--after going through three years of that crap, I know exactly how easy it is to skate through business school at what is supposedly the hardest one, so don't believe anyone who thinks an MBA qualifies them to do fuck-all. Especially Harvard or Yale, who don't work as hard as we did. Seriously. You can, and I am proof, come out of business school with no additional knowledge whatsoever.
I'm still smart, but smart doesn't matter a whit if no one will meet with me.
So there, in a mixed-up jumbled way, is what's going on in my head. I swerve between the confidence and iron will high of "It's just a matter of time!" and the soul-decimating low of "You'll never get anything that interests you anyway, and you'll always be settling, because you're not really qualified to do anything that would interest you anyway, not that you know what that is, you lazy lost soul."
I wish there was a conclusion--a pretty ribbon that wraps it up and finishes this little diatribe against the whims of voluntary unemployment--but there isn't. There's the dangling particple of jobless me, aimless me, hopeless me. And no happy ending, moral learned, resolute face toward the future.
Damnit.
