I Don't Believe in Luck

I found a sequin on the floor. That may seem random, but in my mind, it's a little eerie. Let's go waaaay back to the 1900's, when I was in high school. There were some rough times, and I did a lot of praying as well as some tinkering in wicca, and a lot of things I prayed for came true (though, as usual with life, not in quite the ways I expected). I did not live in a house full of glitter and confetti. My mom hated the stuff, and so my tendency to find a piece of metallic confetti in some random shape in between a prayer and something life-changing happening was unexpected. I have a sister, but she's not really the glitter and confetti type either.

I have a job interview in just over an hour, my first job interview in three and a half years. Life has done a lot of shitting on me in the past five or ten years, so no confetti and little luck. It's hard times all around. My family decided that since 13 is supposed to be an unlucky number and we're among the unluckiest people we know, all that unluck would cancel itself out and this could be an okay year.

The first resume I sent out this year, one in the field I want to get into, got me an e-mail asking for an interview two days after I sent it. I found a sequin, recognizably from one of my daughter's shirts, on the kitchen floor not fifteen minutes ago.

Logic says that shirt went through the kitchen yesterday on its way between the dryer and her bedroom, but I don't care, I'm taking it! Random sign from the glitter angels! Confidence!

I'm so sick with nerves that I only slept an hour and a half last night. I'll tell you guys how it goes.

Job Hunting

Okay, so maybe I'm not hunting for a job, per se. I am hunting for a Career, with a big C. I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts, and despite the insistence of one friend that I should try McDonald's, I have not done so. Not for pride, though I have plenty of that, but because the last time I applied to a McDonald's, I was overqualified. In fact, I couldn't find a job anywhere because I was overqualified and undereducated, and that's part of why I went to college. Just a theory here, but I bet the addition of a degree didn't solve the overqualified issue in the fast food arena.

Apply for management, you say.

Been there, done that. Arby's took one look at my B.F.A. in Graphic Design and asked why in hell I wanted to be their manager. I smoothly replied that I'd like to work as a freelance Graphic Designer, not full time, because Graphic Designers are known to burn out. I took their million-page Are you management material? quiz, and they hired someone else. In fact, I took the same kind of quiz for Wal-Mart. It told me I passed, but of the three times I've applied there, it's never panned out. So I'm not unemployed because I'm picky or a snob, in case you were wondering.

I've asked people I know if they know anyone, and only one person excitedly said yes. They then sent me a link via Facebook to Monster.com and said cheerfully that they'd gotten their job through Monster, and they'd even had moving expenses paid for. Sounds pretty sweet, right? They get a brownie point for trying. I've been a member of Monster.com for many, many moons. Never gotten so much as a nibble.

I've been scouring job boards. Koda and Talent Zoo most recently, but jobs in the Graphic Design field want 3-5 years of experience (or, in one case, 35 years of experience. Whether that was a typo or not, I didn't qualify). There are internships, but most are unpaid and are looking for undergrads, which I'm not.

This is totally a bitching post, you know that, right?

Meh, yeah, I know. Sorry about that, it's just dominating everything else in my mind. I need to get my online portfolio set up, but it's so overwhelming that I can't seem to get started. That's the problem with being a perfectionist. I have a strong sense of If you can't be the best, then you may as well be the worst that I'm constantly fighting.

So hopefully this will end well for me. I've got about a month to find a "job" and a place to live, and find some way to pay off the hundreds of dollars I owe the utilities that make them refuse to turn on utilities for me at all until I've fully paid. The university is paying for my gas, water, and electricity right now, and since only water comes with the place, they're pretty butthurt that I never put the others in my name. Hopefully they can just take it out of my financial aid, and not turn the utilities off.

So this one time, at the cheese factory, we made balloons out of the latex-free gloves and played ball with them because the production line was stopped. Working the night shift has its perks. And now you can go away happy.