Notes on a Quest....

The Great Job Hunt Life Cycle...and Plan B

Greetings again from a cold and rainy Boston area.  Yes, it is late July.  And yes, the weather reminds me of the love child that might result if Portland, Oregon somehow coupled with San Francisco.  Rainy, overcast, temps in the 60's and occasional fog punctuated by the rare sunny day in between storms.

I don't mind it.  If my quest for jobs was taking place in the sweltering humidity that is characteristic of the East Coast during this time of year, I may very well have driven straight to Cambridge and aimed my car right into the river (is it the Charles?) that runs alongside the Memorial Parkway next to Harvard (Hahvaaad...god forbid we pronounce the "r"). 

That way the loan company, to whom I owe payments on the car, would no longer really have anything to threaten me with (i.e. - pay us $150 now or we take the car) AND I would have the added bonus of cooling off or drowning.  And then the Great Job Hunt would be over.  Anyway, what I'm blathering on about here is that I hate hot weather.  Especially humid, hot weather.  UNLESS, I'm in New Orleans for Jazz Fest OR on a rooftop in NYC on a sultry summer evening.  Other than that, I hate summers in the east.  And I hate the winters.  That only leaves two seasons.

Right.  But this post is really about the Great Job Hunt.  So Big Media passed on me this last time.  We covered that I believe in my last post.  Money is also getting desperately low.  I had hoped (expected?) to be employed by now.  I get nervous when I don't work, so after 2 months of looking, I'm a bit of a wreck.  And yes, I'm still living with my friends.

The lifecycle of the whole thing seems to go like this:

1) Initial contact by a recruiter

2) Recruiter talking to me on my pay as you go phone and chewing up precious, pre-paid minutes asking me if I have skills clearly not listed on my resume.

3) Sometimes the occasional recruiter calls who has a job that seems like it's in my target area

4) Set up of initial phone interview...wait two days min. for this to take place

5) Wait for a response after the initial contact for the follow-up technical interview...wait another 3 days to a week

6) Do the technical interview and pray you don't freeze up answering questions because of nerves

7) Wait another 3 days to a week...see if they call you in for the face to face

8) Do the face to face.  Find out 8 people are vying for the position.  Pay your own expenses to travel to the interview, spend the night if need be and get back home...2 days

9) Find out someone else got the job another week later.

10) Rinse and repeat.

So I'm currently in the process of interviewing for two jobs.  One in Long Island, NY and one here.  The one here would involve a good salary and world travel.  Plus, career advancement.  The one in Long Island is also a decent salary, no travel and career advancement...just ina  different way.  The one here would probably be the better pick...if I get it.  I still have two interviews with them to go.  And meanwhile, I've had to resurrect a dead hard drive tonight in order to get all my old code samples off of it and prepare them to be sent to the guy who interviewed me the other day for the Long Island job.  So he can determine if we can do another interview.

I swear, though, if this round doesn't work out, I don't think I can subject my friends to another month of job hunting.  I may just borrow money and head west.  I have it planned out.  It's my Plan B.  One should ALWAYS have a Plan B.  And this one looms large.  Anyone up for a road trip?

But maybe I'll get one of these jobs.  Perhaps this key is to not get excited about the jobs and convince myself I won't suceed.  Then if I do, I'll be surprised.  Plus, isn't that just how the Universe works.  Contrary to one's expectations, hopes and beliefs?

In-between times...

I don't know if I have any readers anymore.  I don't know how I would, actually. I abandoned this project like, a year and a half ago.  And now I'm picking it up again out of the blue.  But hey, this blog is less for others and more for myself.  If someone gets some sort of cathertic Schadenfreude from my strange peripatetic wanderings, dislocations, and vagrancies; well then all the better.  

So, I'm somewhere outside of Boston now.  Having left the Small New England Village that held me captive for so long.  Having finished grad school also, more or less.  By that I mean to defend my thesis in the Fall so I can drag out my health insurance coverage over the summer.  But I do owe the University $500 so I can reinstate in good standing for the Fall and my money situation, as usual, is woefully sad.  I'm in an in-between time, you see.  I often mull over this excerpt from Roethke's poem "The Lost Son" when I think about my "in-between times", which are many:

It was beginning winter,
An in-between time,
The landscape still partly brown:
The bones of weeds kept swinging in the wind,
Above the blue snow. 

It was beginning winter,
The light moved slowly over the frozen field,
Over the dry seed-crowns,
The beautiful surviving bones
Swinging in the wind. 

Light traveled over the wide field;
Stayed.
The weeds stopped swinging.
The mind moved, not alone,
Through the clear air, in the silence. 

Was it light?
Was it light within?
Was it light within light?
Stillness becoming alive,
Yet still? 
A lively understandable spirit
Once entertained you.
It will come again.
Be still.
Wait. 

When looking for this poem, I found that others also dwell on the fact that our very nature as human beings causes us to be cyclical.  In other words, progress is a hard won prize.  Only after repeating ourselves do we learn enough on each repition to maybe move forward a little at a time.  Yes, thus the Syshiphian nature of so much of our existence.  Wow.  

I'm living with friends, as I mentioned in my last post.  Very, very generous friends who I am forever indebted to for allowing me to stay in their home while looking for a job. I am also sometimes afraid that they must be scandalized by me.  They have two beautiful and very young children.  So they have settled into the suburban lifestyle so many parents adopt in order to provide a stable and healthy home.  Me? I'm single and, frankly, I've reached a point in life where I'm embracing the whole "quirky alone" thing as an identity.  I don't run around fantasizing about being in a relationship or having kids becuase, well, I actually like the freedom that comes with being on my own.  What I really need is a job.  Still, I worry that when they trundle off to bed at 11pm every night, they secretly roll their eyes up knowing deep inside that I will be quietly planted on the couch until 4am.  Surfing the internet, half watchig TV, writing, coding, reading, and nipping at the tequilla Ive stored in their liquor cabinet.  

I've always had terrible insomnia.  I take about three Unisomes at night, but I don't often fall asleep until 3:30 - 4:30am.  But I worry that they worry about my polar opposite lifestyle.  That they don't understand.  That it might drive a wedge between us.  I know...I'm paranoid.  The thing is, I do as much as I can to ensure the friendship doesn't suffer from this arrangement as I know they do too.  It's a delicate balance of knowing when to help out (ie. cooking dinner for everyone when the parents are working so they don't have to deal with that task), and when NOT to help out (like when the parents want to jump in and feed their kids because it's fun for them, etc).  So many things in Suburbia for me to get my head around.  

Lately, I've been trying to make sure Im off exploring Boston when they are home to ensure I'm not too underfoot.  And I've been seeing some great parts of Boston.  I still feel more connected to NYC, but I can see why others really love this part of the world too.  More on that later.  I'm working up to that post which should come in the near future.

Oh! And the job thing.  Big Media called me back down to NYC for an interview.  It would be a huge promotion if I get this contract.  It would be a software optimization role involving development and configuration.  And more money.  And living in NYC.  And, and, and....  The list really goes on.  I want this BAD, people.  BAD.

So far I did great on the first interview two days ago,  but now it's a waiting game.  Are my skills the right ones for the job or will one of the other six candidates have better chops?

I need good wishes everyone!  Positive fucking thoughts over here!!!!!  Ok?  Oh I forgot, I probably dont even have an audience anymore...  

Yup.

Some people run off and start new blogs...but not me...

No, I just run off...for, like, over a year.  Sorry about that folks.  i just wasn't in the mood to blog while finishing out my last year trapped in the small village where I was.  It got to the point where I simply crossed days off my calendar until I could leave.  Note to self:  that whole isolated writer's life thing that others seem to enjoy so damned much?  Not for me.  Not at all.  I prefer the city to the country.  That's an affirmative.

So, in short, I was too depressed to write while living in the super, small and depressing New England village located far away from anywhere.

So what have I ended up doing with my life?  Through no choice of my own, the answer thus far is: precious little.  Currently I'm camped out for the start of my second month as a homeless and jobless MFA'er.  But I am trying to use the time to look for jobs during the day, cook meals for the family I'm living with (as they are working parents) and to generally try to stay out of the way.  

The good news is I may actually have yet another gig with Big Media in NYC.  If that works out, then I can finally head south and leave this New England business to those who actually enjoy living up here!

Now, I have to run off and figure out what to cook and put on the table for the family as they'll be home soon!

Neighbors...

Apparently, I do live in a strange apartment building.  One of my next door neighbors is someone I like to refer to as "Stop and Shop Deb".  She works at the local Stop and Shop grocery store.  And she doesn't like it when I play music during the day.  She responds to my Wilco and Postal Servce and assorted jazz by slowly and rhythmically pounding on my wall.  And I turn it down.

The other next door neighbors I never see.  Plus, they have a baby.  Who I never hear.  Dean, who is seriously bipolar and subject to mood swings every ten minutes, lives upstairs from me.  He is a musician and actually entertaining to hang out with...as long as I keep in mind the mood swings.  Next to the baby couple, two doors down from me,  lives Walter.

Walter is interesting.  And cute!  As well as anxious and neurotic, a brilliant, brilliant pianist and seriously smart with an acid wit.  He's from Argentina and he's German and Jewish.  Yes, we're friends, but I'm workin' it folks!

Anyway, he now drops by my apartment once a day.  We sit and drink pomegranate juice and talk about how we wish we were in NYC.  Although, I think I've introduced him to a pretty good core of my friends (since there are only two people in his dept. and he's had a tough time meeting people while holding down two teaching jobs).  So he's been having a pretty good time with being social again and my friends love him.  So far, so good.

So, even though the whole living in a small village was looking dour at first, I'm starting to warm up to things.  And feeling better about being here for the summer (as well as the next two years).

Moving experiences....

So yes, I moved into my Harlem place on thurs night (with my two suitcases I've been living out of for two months now).  The next morning, I woke early, packed a small bag and went to work (a long and stressful day).  I then went with a friend to Northampton to move EVERYTHING out of my large 1 bdrm into storage.  And then to find a place to store my car.

Anyway, lots to tell but it's one am and I just returned to NYC.  Many emails await me and I have to roll into work in seven hours.  Soon I will answer correspondence and update you all on the riveting details of packing boxes.

Until then.

Moving...

I can't tell you how happy I am today.  This morning, I woke early, packed my clothes back into the suitcase I've been living out of for two months now and my boss and I got a car service from Coney Island into work.  Why? 

Because tonight I move into my new place.  The large apartment on Riverside Park.  The one where I'll have two rooms all for me.  The one with an organic garden.  The one with views of the river.  The place that will be home to me for the next five months.

Anyway, that's all I can say for now.  My blogging has been limited.  Work has been busy for one thing, and for another I don't want to update my blog via my boss' connection.  Anyway, tomorrow I head up to western Massachusetts to move everything out of my apartment and into storage.  Then my life will begin again.

Again, here are the pics. The rooms have been cleaned and now all that remains are the beds and AC units in each window. Plus, my roommate is off to Puerto Rico for a month, so the whole place is mine for awhile. I need that right now. Here's the guest room/library/reading room:

And the larger room where my bed/stuff would be. IKEA, here I come.

New couch, foreign land, common ground

I am now in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn (on Coney Island).  Little Odessa.  My boss and her husband, both in their fifties and two or the smartest people I have ever met, have kindly taken me in.  I feel like a refugee.  But I feel guilty saying this as I realize their rather intense journey that brought them here to America.  From Odessa where my boss used to teach calculus to the Russian Naval Academy and her husband was a pro tennis player.  They moved here twelve years ago, via Italy, of course (the usual route for Jew leaving Ukraine/Russia), and landed here.  And they, like me, love NYC. 

Brighton Beach is like a foriegn country.  I don't understand any of the signs which are in Russian.  I don't hear any English spoken.  However, she does have next door neighbors from Sicily, Italy and they have those abeeUUtifUL accentas, you know (insert exaggerated hand gesture here to get my point across passionately)?

I have strolled the boardwalk.  Walked along the canal.  I've been to T & I Food Emporium (the first Russian store here) and marved at the two vast levels of food you may not be able to get anywhere other han Slavic countries.

And we have been watching the war together on TV.  We have discussed it.  They wanted so badly to explain Israel to me and I equally want to understand it.  We have talked and talked and talked.  Out of this has emgerged, on both our parts, new understandings of our backgrounds, our histories, and what's happening now.  So much to say, but I am on my boss' computer and she will be home soon.

On Thurs, I move to a new place.

My own place. It will be in Harlem and it will have my own guestroom.  Please, to all my friends out there, come visit.  More (and in greater detail) soon.

On the subject of headbutting...

So yesterday, as you all know, was the World Cup Final.  By far, the best accounting of it has been (oddly enough) at Limey's World Cup Blog. By Alfina the Vague. Not by Limey, naturally.  Because Limey ran off one day from the internet without even a goodbye or an explanation to anyone.  He also ran off, apparently, with $10 in a PayPal ccont that had been set up to collect bets on the World Cup.  Which was placed there by the lone bettor, Alfina the Vague herself.  So what did she do?  Go to Little Italy in her blogland of Zembla?  No, she went to the corner store, bought herself some beer and drank it with her dog Egon while liveblogging on the site we were all supposed to use for the joys of the World Cup action.  Go Vague!

I swear I was trying to decide between Italy and Spain when Limey initially set it all up.  But I never got around to sending my money in.  Boy, at least once in my life my laziness paid off.

So I went and watched the Cup in the East Village with a co-worker, my friend Sean and Juan showed up for the last part of the game.  There were hundreds of us crammed into a large Irish bar watching it on huge, plasma TVs.  It was fun.

As we walked over to little Italy to watch the celebration, Juan started talking about himself and his many problems, as usual.  Except this time he was doing it in front of my co-worker. My co-worker who I really like (who later "had to go" suddenly).

Juan's revolving door "boyfriend" is a crack head alcoholic with a couple of million in the bank from some investing he once did in real estate.  So he has lots of money and a huge problem with addiciton. Really, it's a charming relationship.  One of which I'm positively sick of hearing about.  Because Juan, as much as I love the boy, is the most co-dependent doormat I have ever met in my entire life.  If chaos comes knocking at his door, he opens it, invites it in and makes it feel positively comfortable occupying his life.  Since I'm someone who likes to stick up for myself and stand my ground AND as someone who HATES scammers and cheaters and liars, you can imagine how much I love Juan's guy Doug The Asshole.

Anyway, Doug The Asshole had promised to get himself into rehab (yeah right) and Juan took him down to lower Manhattan to check him in somewhere.  But Doug started a fight with Juan while riding the subway and somehow it ended with Doug checking himself into the Chelsea Hotel and buying himself a large bottle of vodka.  Such a sweet tale of romance it is.  Similar to Sid and Nancy.

Except Juan left him there and joined us for World cup.  Sean's date met us later and we all went to eat.  And then for drinks.  Juan talked on and on about his issues all night.  Among the issues, is one that worried me even more.  KJ has still not paid rent.  And his little 21 year old boyfriend is still gracing the apt with his presence.  I've started to really hate Mark.  He never cleans, never cooks, never shops. Never offers to help with anything. 

Anyway, my temper was running short yesterday.  It was one am.  I was exhausted from dealing with Juan's endless stories about Doug (make a frickin' choice to leave him!), the worries about losing the apt. because of KJ (who Juan didn't bother to screen) and my growing irritation with Marc.  Maybe I wouldn't be so irritated if I wasn't paying $350 to KJ for the privelge of sleeping on the couch.  In addition to the nice things I do which is cook, clean and buy household items. And instead of lingering about all day, I stay out of everyone's eay as much as possible so they can use the living room without me being around.  I try and work late and come home after they are all asleep.  So this is another thing eating away at me.

So last night, when Juan and I got home, my threshold of tolerance was chipped away to almost nothing.  And there was Marc, sitting on MY couch merrily typing away on his laptop in front of the cable TV in the living room.  I don't know why, but I pulled a Zidane.  I lost it. 

"Get the fuck off of my couch and go hang out with your boyfriend. Because even though HE doesn't pay the rent around here, I still have to pay him for the very space YOU are occupying at this very moment. Goodbye."

I stood there and glared at him.  He looked positively frightened (who wouldn't be after that kind of ambush) and scurried away into KJ's room.  I began cleaning the kitchen as it slowly dawned on me I had just done a Really Bad Thing.  I had officially Rocked the Boat when in NO POSITION politically to do so.  It's not my fault Juan can't grow a pair.  But scammers really piss me off.  Marc and KJ are no exceptions right now.

Kj came storming into the kitchen. 

"What did you just say to Marc?!!!!"  And I told him. 

"Fuck YOU Oedipa!" he shouted and stormed out of the kitchen (which I was still cleaning and which he has never cleaned). 

Juan came in.  "What just happened?" he asked.  I told him. We both stood in silence staring at the floor.

"Shit, I'm sorry.  I'll leave," I told him.  "This is bad."   But we both knew I had nowhere to go. 

"No, no" he said, "don't leave. Just let's go apologize to KJ and get over this hump." 

So I swallowed my pride (what the hell else was I going to do given the fact Juan can't stand HIS ground and stop any further conflict?) and we went to KJ and knocked on his door. 

"I don't want to fucking talk to you!" he yelled.  Yes, very mature.  But we persisted. 

And KJ opened the door and stood there (he's quite tall and built, btw) staring me down while I stammered some stupid apology and just told him I'm tired and PMSing (some men love to blame everything on this...).  He sort of accepted it. 

Then I did go on to say, "But you did originally tell us Marc was only going to be here for a weekend. It's been a month and a half now." 

"THAT'S between Juan and me!" and he looks at Juan, "Isn't it." Juan looked scared and didn't respond.  KJ slams the door.  Goddammit Juan.  Kick the assholes out.  In another month and a half, the law will be on their side even if they don't pay rent. 

Anyway, the whole being homeless thing has officially lost it's urban, gritty appeal.  Juan gave me a Xanax and sent me to bed (well, to the couch).  The couch.  Goddamned Swedish couch from IKEA.  And that Xanax stuff is a crzy way to calm yourself down.  It made me unconcious.  Maybe that was for the best.

I woke up briefly this am to KJ slamming the front door as he left for work.  Lovely.  PAY YOUR RENT DUDE.

I just hate assholes.  I will move for 10 days to Brighton Beach just as soon as my boss returns from her business trip in Seattl to live n her basement.  That will be Thurs or something. Then I can move into my place at the end of the month.  AFTER I GET PAID.  It relaly comes back to this stupid, stupid check.  Why does every client, company and person insist on making me wait for money or else have to lose my student loan package?  Why????? I ask. Anyway, Until Thurs, I'm working late.  All the time.

It makes me wonder.  What DID the Italian guy say to Zindane?  I think he gave him a nipple twist, but what did he really say?  I can relate to Zidane. In my dreams last night, I dreamt of headbutting everyone. Right, square in the chest.  And laughing as they fell in pain to the pitch.

Good thing I'm for non-violence.  Thanks for letting me kvetch, dear blog readers.

New Photos...

I've added a new photo album of a few shots of the nearby Smith College campus, Emily Dickinson's house and shots of my going away dinner from July. 

New job....new home....

Yes.  I got the job.  Now my new home is in Harlem in Manhattan, NYC.  I'm on Amsterdam at 130th Street.  Come by and visit me sometime.  I love it here.....   Things are almost going too well....  I start work on Monday so I have today and tomorrow and the weekend to play and write and explore.

More later...