Hard Rain
When I woke up this morning, about 6:45, a light rain was falling and the world was wet and gray. A nice way to wake up, hearing the rain falling. As I puttered around making breakfast, patting the cats, reading the paper, getting the laundry started, checking my email, the rain fell harder, and for a while the world was cozy and domesticated. The cats weren't fighting, the washing machine was humming, and the rain was falling. It reminded me of childhood summer days in Florida, when the power went out because of rain or lightning affecting the power lines, and everyone was forced to do basically nothing. You had to lie down and rest, or play cards, or a board game, or try to read, if it was light enough. My mother would tidy up the house, restless. I would lie on my bed, usually with a book, but the rain would distract me into idleness, and I'd end up on my back, staring out the tiny little window with the glass pane raised, listening to the rain beat against the screen. You had to be quiet, you had to be calm, and let the weather pass. Somehow, these weren't deep thinking times. They were just quiet, and nice, and that was enough.
Congratulate me
I received notification today that I've been accepted into the
MS in Technical Commnications program at NC State University. After consideration, this is the best degree option for me. I'm really thrilled and excited to start making plans for classes and getting going!
Nerve Attack
I have a second interview today at lunchtime, with a law office regarding a marketing position, and I'm about to faint from my nerves going haywire. I haven't been this nervous about a job interview in at least five years, I think. I'm sure this has a lot to do with wondering if I'm truly qualified to meet the challenges of this position. Working for this firm would be a make-it-or-go-home proposition within a highly competitive, entrepreneurial environment. The principal reminds me a great deal of a former boss who also ran a highly competitive, entrepreneurial enterprise. You could do well, or you could sink like a stone. It was very hard and very rewarding. For quite a while, until the economy soured, I was on a one-way trajectory upward. Then along the way my father died, the economy soured, and things started sliding towards 9/11. After 9/11, I was holding my breath for a very long six months before I lost my job. I suppose we've all been battling back since then. It's incredibly energizing, and
frightening, to think that engine is starting up again. What with a new position on the horizon (I feel good about this opportunity, but there is another and there will be others, if this doesn't pan out - I'm confident of that) and school coming up, I feel like I'm on a new road. I can't see what's ahead, but I've gotten into third gear now. Time for convergence. If only my damned butterflies would calm down!
Personal Destiny
Picasso said that all art begins as personal destiny. Not destiny in the sense of “destined to be great” or “destined to be famous,” or even “destined to be rich,” but in the sense of being compelled to create the art in the first place from someplace deep inside you. Joseph Brodsky described the same sense, the same duty, when he said that writers are at first compelled to sainthood, then self-betterment; failing that, they find that the pen gets a lot more accomplished than the soul does. I can only nod my head in mute amazement in response, because I can’t seem to better myself, but I can damn sure write about the process. The confusion, the desire, the failure. The deep, intense realization that I am most likely going to fail to achieve what I have set out to accomplish: complete freedom of voice.
The News & Observer featured a story about a writer over the weekend that has been accepted into the same MFA in Creative Writing program at State that I’m trying to get into. After enjoying the article, the fear and panic set in. Imagine: all the real writers have received glowing, congratulatory, welcoming letters of acceptance, and I’m waiting with the rejects to receive the academic version of the dog bone, scribbled hastily one evening by English department graduate students over beer and poker one night. “Let’s see, shall we let them down easy? Nah, screw that . . . ” My writing sample is on somebody’s desk, covered in thick red lines. Scrawled at the top: “Perhaps you should stick with marketing writing in the future.” Or worse: “Have you considered a nice business management degree?” My heartfelt personal statement, which I thought swung like hell and sounded like jazz when read aloud, laughed over at staff meetings of the graduate admissions committee. Damn.
My mind has always worked overtime whenever there is doom and gloom to be had. Even the slightest chance of doom and gloom? Leave it to Michelle to conjure it. When I was a child living in Florida, and there were water spouts, lightning, and floods, I could always easily imagine the horrid aftermath: bodies strewn in parts amid the wreckage, bits and pieces of lives mixed up together into a new story nobody recognized. My mother called it my “overactive imagination” and used to make me chant prayers for its subsidence (St. Luke, hopeless cases! or the all-purpose, one-solution-fits-all-tragedies decades of the rosary). It’s a horrible gift, made more vivid with my bouts of insomnia. I can remember a time even earlier, it must have been after my Great-Grandfather Kennedy’s funeral, when I dreamed I was dead, in a coffin: no senses, no sound, no sight, no way out. My mother must have thought she was really being punished for getting pregnant with me out of wedlock! Get pregnant before marriage, give birth to a child who won’t sleep! A four-year old freak who sees dead people! And let's not even go into sixth grade when we were studying Lincoln's assassination in history, and I dreamed of being hung with a hood over my face. I think I woke up the entire trailer park with screaming that night.
For every bone, a wag of the tail
I received my second dogbone from my round of interviews last week. In recruiting talk, a dogbone letter is the "thanks but no thanks" or "don't call us, we'll call you" response you send to a candidate whom you interviewed, but did not extend an offer. Both of them came from the jobs I was overqualified for; while not a surprise, I
was surprised to find out they still hurt. They are still defeating and depressing. But, for every negative, there must be a positive. An equal and opposite reaction that pulls me back out of the mud. So I,
Sisyphus, did send out two more resumes today. Hope springs eternal. Tomorrow is another day. The sun will come out . . . well, you get the idea.
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back?
A most marvelous thing has happened to me this week: job interviews! They are bittersweet, because on the one hand, someone actually wants to speak to me, but, on the other hand, some of them are for jobs that don't pay what I'm making now. One step forward, but it feels like I'm already sliding backward.
I'm at an awkward point in my marketing career, three and one-half years in: I don't have enough experience to get a middle-management level job, but not quite enough (apparently) to make the salary I need to make. What I'm seeing in advertised marketing jobs are those that require a lot of experience, people management (in marketing), or are basically entry-level, with smaller companies trying to get the most marketing person they can get without paying for it. It ain't unique, but it sure doesn't make me feel any better, to be stuck in the middle.
They don't really need me . . .
they just keep me hanging on. I'm trying to hang on, but the job search is really draining. Technically, I've been searching for a full year for a new position. Yeah, I know, there are hundreds of people like me, and I'm sure my misery helps them gain some perspective on this whole employment situation, as much as their plight gives me some. So far, for every new interview (and there have been damned few of those), I've managed to muster enthusiasm and excitement for the interview, been positive, and have felt that every interview I've given has gone well. However, none of them have garnered me a job. I've applied for every marketing position I qualify for, several stretches that I think I could do, and a large handful of ones I'me overqualified for. I've gone out on a limb, redressed my qualifications in a tailored resume, and written knock-'em-dead cover letters. It's not getting me anywhere, and the clock is now ticking on my current job, louder and louder. The company I work for is undergoing consolidation of its two facilities; the location here in NC will be closed, most likely by December 31st if construction estimates are accurate. It doesn't take long to throw up production boxes for manufacturing - they're square and it's just a matter of securing the foundation, pouring concrete, and setting up all the systems. The office space won't take much longer; ground-breaking is one week from today. I've been told (verbally) that my job is guaranteed until the building closes, and told (via written communication) that after June 1st, if they hire someone to take my place down in SC, all bets are off, but I'll be expected to train my replacement. Considering I don't do very much right now, training someone should be a snap . . . and see, that's the closest I can get to humor today.
I also haven't heard from NCSU, and you know the clock is ticking on that. I'm dreading waking up and seeing the names of the first Creative Writing students in the damned newspaper, sans mine. I even dreamed about it the other night, except that my fears were a flood that refused to water the plain below. I wasn't drowning, just treading water.
I have a contingency plan, which is trying to secure a Sallie Mae loan to get into the Web Developer program at the Computer Training Unit. But it's not much of one. I feel old, unskilled, and useless. How does one re-make one's self? How do you pick a new goal, when you can't manage to make the last one come to fruition? Telling myself it's not my fault doesn't help one whit. Pardon my language, but fuck.
Michael Ignatieff has it
We need the
advice.
Abstract Expressionism
I finished the Art and Ideas Phaidon book on Van Gogh last night. The last chapter considers the impact of Van Gogh on art and culture since his death. The book was incredibly insightful; a quick read, but packed with power. I really felt the chronological connections between the paintings and the example illustrations were dead on. It is very difficult to explain the emotional impact of art, even harder to explain the impact of the artist's emotions, study, and headspace on the work itself, but Judy Sund did it.
Althought I had been looking at so many of Van Gogh's paintings, none have inspired me to write, so far. In this final chapter of the book, the explanation of Van Gogh's impact on abstract expressionism, an art period that has really inspired me a great deal, hit me very hard. Everything crystallized when I saw the illustration of Vassily Kandinsky's Composition V. It was if a key had been turned in a lock, a door was opened, and the Eureka! moment shone forth. Immediately upon viewing this picture again (I've seen it several times before, but Kandinsky was an artist I never quite got until now), words started to sound in my head. The poem that is appearing is (surprise surprise) very abstract. I'm not even sure I know what I'm writing about. It may be a very long poem, something I've never managed to do before.
My thanks, gentlemen.
As the scale drops
I absolutely had to buy clothes yesterday; my favorite pants were literally falling off me at the ballpark Friday night. Everytime I walked, I had to hold on to them to keep them from sliding off. The elastic was shot, too, so it was an interesting challenge. I have also been having a problem with the most recent pairs of trousers I had bought; their elastic is holding up but they are becoming noticably baggy. So I picked up the next smaller size in the clothing store and took them to the fitting room and . . . (drumroll please) . . . they were still too big! So I went down to a 16, which fit. Hallelujah . . . another few months and I'm moving out of fat clothes forever! I must say, that's about the best motivational moment I've had all year. The new pants are more tailored, since I'll need dressier clothes for interviews and (please God! let it be soon!) a new work environment that doesn't feature adhesive residues, ink fumes and dust.
In other wonderful news, my sister and her husband got the house they made an offer on, and it's gorgeous. It also has a pool, so we're thinking of becoming the most annoying houseguests in the world. (Ha, just kidding, Chris).
