start as you mean to go on…pink hair and burning scalps

Last week I mentioned that I plan to do 7 days of NEW things.

Well, last night I did.

I bleached and dyed the front of my head pink.

The CONS

Yes, I’m a few months away from 30 and I have done a “teenage” thing.

And I’m getting used to people staring.

My husband thinks I’m a lunatic and I will not be getting any jobs (because they’ve been hounding me, right?) any time soon.

It hurt my head really bad

The PROS

I’ve always wanted to do this

I’m easily recognizable

I can try different avenues of jobs

I have a different look!

So, here in detail is what I did to my head and why it might not be such a great idea to follow my footsteps if you’re old enough to have to memorize your SSN, Loan account numbers and your credit card number.

unemployment monday – when I grow up….

 

 

 

 

Waking up at three in the afternoon after not being able to sleep until three thirty in the morning is a problem.

Lethargy, despair, and a cup of coffee greet most of the unemployed in the morning –  myself included.

I’ve noticed that the job boards are playing the same songs.  There hasn’t been any real change in the posting  and the so-called additions of jobs are usually in fields that are so specific (with all employers begging for experience) that even if I wanted to apply I wouldn’t get the job.

I don’t have the experience and I’m likely to never get it at the rate we’re going. But that’s OK, I don’t exactly want to be a registered nurse (I don’t think I can stick people with needles).

So, scouring the job boards, applying for jobs that interest me plus any jobs that I think I can get is what compromises most of my days.

I’m not getting any bites.

A friend of mine said that I should set my goal for companies that I want to work for. All the companies I want to work for are either not hiring or I’ve applied to them and they’re simply not hiring me. This friend also hit upon something I should think about, what is it that I want to do.

Well, that’s the problem. I’m not sure. I keep waiting for the answer to hit me and then I just delay it saying ‘well when I grow up’.

I’m already grown up. There is no more waiting.

As a kid I wanted to be everything.

I wanted to a cop. A teacher. An Ad Exec. A dancer. A singer. An Actress. A writer (I’m still struggling with this one). A book store owner. A bartender. A QVC model (please don’t ask). A baker.

I think you get the point.

As I got older, I realized that I just wanted to be successful and I wanted to be that ever elusive thing called happy. I never wanted to be rich but I did want to be comfortable.  I wanted to be interested in my job and I wanted to work in a place that fosters its people.

That’s all I really want. To do something that is interesting and that I’ll be happy in. As long as I can be creative, as long as the environment is warm and easy-going and as long as the work means something then sign me up.

As we all know, how companies hire is a straight up mystery to me. I’m qualified, intelligent and college educated. I have everything they want and yet I have nothing.

So, I might not know what I want to be when I grow up but I do know that I am good at jobs. All I want is a chance.

And also, the location of where my small spoons keep disappearing to.

unemployment Monday … there’s a hole in my soul

I don’t believe that humans, as a species, are lazy. We wouldn’t have come this far if we were totally and completely apathetic, in fact we probably would’ve evolved into some sort of lichen if we were really all that lazy.

As for individuals? Well, yeah. I believe individuals can be anything they want to be but that they don’t necessarily reflect on the species as a whole.  However, that’s a rant for another day.

This unemployment Monday I got to thinking about the value of work. I’ve been feeling pretty damn low lately. I’ve been wracking my brains to try to pinpoint the actual reason why (you would think it would be obvious to me but there are other things going on in my life that I can never be so sure). I’ve been lethargic and pinwheeling between moments of brilliant creative thinking and hopelessness. In short, I guess I’m a little blue. The reason why, the big bright neon reason why, is simply that I am not working; I am not receiving validation as a person in society.

Work is a necessity. Office work, while suffocating and soul sucking at times, is just as important as farming used to be two hundred years ago. We are all cogs in a machine but we are all rewarded cogs. I’m not just talking about the monetary tag attached to work but the actual feeling of satisfaction after completing a job well done and contributing to the overall bottom line.

I do not get the same sense of accomplishment when I do my laundry, it’s close, but it’s not the same.

Humans like to feel like they have done something; that they have made their mark in the world somehow.

It’s an adrenaline rush but it’s not the same as finishing a project that took you two weeks and stressed you out so badly that you started to lose sleep and snap at those close to you.

There are others out there that will argue with me and say that keeping house and maintaining it instills the same feeling.

You wouldn’t be arguing. I agree. There’s a sense of accomplishment but to me, read “to me”, it’s not the same.  It’s arbitrary, I suppose, but society dictates that every member of the society that is over a certain age should be working to further the society.

Sitting at home searching for positions while I’m waiting for the coffee to drip doesn’t do much to fill the hole for me. Frankly, I’m not really furthering anything other than my electric and shopping bills.

When an unemployed person goes out and meets people that she/he doesn’t really know, it begins to wear on them that they have to keep answering the question of “what do you do” with a self-conscious smile, a bitter chuckle and a “I’m unemployed”.

It begins to make me feel like I’m less of a person.

I don’t particularly have a career but I’m good at jobs.  I hate waking up and I might curse having to work within confines but it makes me feel like a productive member of society.

Then I feel sad as if I haven’t contributed anything to anyone.

That feeling you get at work is an intangible feeling. Some will it accomplishment or ambition; I, frankly, don’t know what to call it but I do know that I’m missing it.

Hell, there’s only so many times you can sit on your couch eating Havarti and Pepperoni and watching a very bad Hallmark Channel film.

i’m back, baby!

I was out of commission for a few days due to a head cold that hovered dangerously close to bronchitis.

However, with the use of magic pills and brews I am back, baby!

Seriously though, if I drank any more tea England would have started to colonize me.

So, what did I miss while I was away? Anything exciting happen over Labor Day weekend? Any recipes or great foods eaten? Major life changes?

I spent a lot of time sleeping and thinking. There were a lot of things on my mind between hazy drug-induced sleepy times but the one that I wanted to bounce back with is pet peeves.

I imagine that some of them aren’t pet peeves so much as things that just annoy the crap out of me but that aren’t quite irrational hatred (which we’ll get into that another time).

1. Internet Spelling Errors – such as; ” OMG, did u c ….” I had to stop there because I was annoying myself. OK, I get that short hand is expedient when texting or chatting but when you’re sending an email or replying to a post please for the love of all that is sacred, please please try to spell like a normal human being. I know that the NYC school systems aren’t that great, but surely words such as You, See, Great, Their v There v They’re, Where, Were were covered in school at some point. If not in school then in a magazine or book or something. Listen, I’m not the grammar police, but it irks me to no end when a simple sentence can’t be read because there are extra characters or missing letters.  There is a spell check, use it!

2. Street Fighting with weapons – I think I may actually be an 88-year-old man. Which is scary because that means I’m older than my grandpa.  I sort of want to sit back and reminiscence about the good old days when “men were men and fought with honor and fists”.  I’m actually shaking my head at that sentence.

Without going into a history of fighting or why people feel the need for weapons when they are fighting an ordinary person (this is not Roadhouse people! I can understand wanting to use a pool cue on someone as awesome as Dalton*. I mean, that might be the only way to survive), I would like to simply state that is a pet peeve of mine when people start a fist fight and the next thing you know they’ve got a knife or a gun.

No! Bad! *uses spray bottle* Bad! Listen, if you’re gonna start a fight with fists. End it with fists. This isn’t the Wild West, no need to bring a S&W into this. This also isn’t West Side Story (although, any fight that begins with choreographed dancing is OK in my book) and there’s no need for switch blades.

Just, listen, if you’re dumb enough to start a fight then just use what you were born with. Hands, Fists, Teeth, Knuckles and Nails.  Don’t bring a weapon. It’s not fair and it’s often fatal. You can survive a punch to the face. You can’t survive a gunshot to the head.
3. Games that on X-Box but not PS3 – Diablo III, Fable, the first Mass Effect.

 

 

* I will leave you with a picture of Dalton. For all those youngun’s who have no idea what Road House is.

See, you wouldn’t want to fight him. Not without Mark Dacascos.

unemployment mondays. pajamas and whining

NYC Unemployment Rate as of July 2012: 10.2

Days Spent in my pajamas since July 2012:  23+

There is very little that is glamorous about being unemployed. Unless you’re rich. Then you’re having an extremely different experience than the one that I’m having and to that I say, “good for you, you lucky son of a bitch”.

For me, who is decidedly not rich, unemployment is something that I never thought that I would have to suffer through. As a kid, back in the day when the economy wasn’t so weird, I always thought that I would have a corner office by the time I was in my early thirties while living in an awesome large Manhattan apartment. I thought that I would be able to hop around if I didn’t like my chosen career.  Clearly I was watching too much television.

I’m a writer; I’m probably a couple of years away from being a failed writer. Writing doesn’t pay the bills though.

I’m nearly 30. I neither have a corner office nor do I live in Manhattan. Which is ok. I discovered that the kind of office environment that I thrive in is not the one I envisioned when I was 12 and desperate to be an adult. In fact those jobs are extremely hard to come by, because no one wants to leave a fun and creative environment.

I also don’t have a book deal.

I would say that I feel bad for the graduates that just got out of school but I’m not that altruistic because at the end of the day it’s between me and them. I have about 7 years of office experience doing everything from answering phones to coordinating events.

That and a dollar can get me a small cup of street coffee.

The experience, the know-how and the awesome personality? I have all those. What I don’t have is a job because guess what, I’m competing with hundreds if not thousands of people for one job.  I mean, I’m good, but I’m not that good.

So, I wake up at a very late time, sit in my pajamas while I wait for my stomach meds to kick in and my coffee to brew and I scour the same internet sites for several hours hoping and praying that today I’ll go up against less people. Or, maybe, just maybe, they’ll be an awesome job out there that I am qualified for.

If nothing else, at least a job that I’m qualified for.

I check my email like a crazy person for emails from companies; I check my SPAM (why am I getting things in Russian?) and I check my phone manically. Nothing. Zip. Zero. Nil. Nada. Goose Egg. The operative word here is “crazy” because the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.  The results are the same. Nothing. Zip. Zero.

This concludes Monday’s unemployment rant.

Pardon me while I check my gmail.