In which I have nothing to do.

School’s out. I’m still unemployed. Aside from having to apply to three positions per week and recording them on my official Job Search Log – well, that and the occasional gig – I have literally nothing to do.

Is it cool? Yes. Is it weird? Also yes. I feel like I’m getting away with something that’ll cost me later, know what I mean?

I got a fucking C in one of my classes. Final grade. No, I am not shitting you. I’m not stupid; those CCNA test questions are written with malice.

In other news, my ex sent me a text today to let me know that “signed papers” will be arriving at end of the week in the mail. Which means I need to find a lawyer to read them for me, which sucks because I’m poor, but at least it looks like I’ll finally get my name back after an entire decade of having to explain that “Mook rhymes with book” all the goddamned time.

In which I defend my degree-lessness. And whine.

I have six years of higher education to my credit, but no degree.

Although my grades at MHCC were only just above average, when I left MIU my GPA was comfortably over 3.5, and last term at WWCC I made the president’s list.

I’ve taken musical performance classes, operatic training, music history, vocal pedagogy, music theory, sight singing and ear training, basic piano, basic rhythm, and music composition. I’ve taken physics overviews, world history, classical Greek literature, composition, poetry, and in-depth courses on the American Transcendentalists. I’ve taken courses on Linux, Windows clients and servers, security standards and protocols, and am in the process of completing CCNA 1 – 4. There are probably hundreds of other courses I would be interested in taking for their own sakes, whether they’re related to music, English, or networking or not.

I like school and historically earn above-average grades. I like to learn and I like to think. What I don’t like is the year or more of stupid pre-reqs that one must pay for in order to qualify for a degree. Continue reading Higher Education →

In which there’s a free-form ramble on the topic of writing. This is a zero draft with only basic editing.

People keep telling me to write, that I should write, that I should “be a writer,” and I do write. I write hundreds of thousands of words every year, but the secret I know is that I’ve read great writers and I’m not one.

I loathe my own mediocrity, I suppose, though I grok the math of the curve and accept my position here in the middle with everyone else. It’s cool here, it’s groovy and chummy; we can’t all be the cream in this pail of milk, the world just isn’t made that way, it’s made of gradations and variations and grades and levels, and if I’m to be allowed to be very good at something then it follows that I must also be not good at something else, those are just the rules. If I’m going to be average, why can’t I do it in an office somewhere, an office with a big fat OC3 pipe to the Internet and a 401k and phones that don’t ring very often? Why do I have to write?

Like I’m not writing? I am writing. I write all the time! You’re looking at nine years of writing right here, and it’s not brilliant: I know brilliant. I eat brilliant for breakfast. I’ve read a hundred pounds of brilliant books and what I do here, my noodling, sure, it’s good in places, really good in others, I’ll give you that, but if you want to read a writer, a real writer, someone who shines, a proper real life honest-to-God writer, well, I have a list for you. In the world there are paragraphs that change the way your brain works, chapters that make you weep, phrases exquisite and ephemeral and surgical like the light in a Caravaggio.

That is not what I’m doing around here.

Just thinking about “being a writer” makes me think of the writers I’ve read, and let me tell you something, buddy: there are the brilliant, yes, but then too there are the rest: a whole big bunch these days that are crappy banal crap. So many people devour so many words each day that embarrassingly common strings of them are just available for sale any old place, just as cheap and poorly-made as any cheap poorly-made imported t-shirt with the thin fabric and the crooked seams and a flaw in every single one of the damn lot of five thousand.

My point is this: even though they sell, no one wants to make those cheap fucking t-shirts because the work sucks!

You can get bad writing all over the place, and be just as pissed as I am when I snuggle in, expectant and open, to read, only to discover that I won’t be enjoying it. If I were a writer, if I were writing I would be only slightly better than that. I love to read, I love it perfectly and without reservation: how could I stand myself to sully it with a torrent of words only barely lyrical? What is the fucking point of that, I ask you!

I do write. I’m writing right now! What you’re actually asking me to do is monetize it, turn it into a job, and do the best I can at a volume of labor that forces me, enforces me, to work at my own median level, which is the very median of all possible writing, the mean, the middle, the mediocre, and I can’t figure out why I should do to the world something like that.

Sometimes, though, sometimes: sometimes I do approach something lyrical with these words here. I’m such a late bloomer, though. Now that I’ve glimpsed it and named it and scritched it under its chin do you suppose it will take me another thirty years to tame it?

In which I share a little revelation I had last night.

While chatting with Mel over IM, I made an offhand comment containing that famous axiom from 80’s flick War Games: “The only winning move is not to play.”

And then I realized how very much I believe that.

If I find myself in a situation I do not like and that I think I can’t change, I just… stop playing. Quit. Move on.

This is why I didn’t finish my undergrad at MIU, and my only reason ever for quitting jobs or leaving relationships. Most of the time, the axiom protects me: if you’re married to someone you have nothing in common with, you can play for the rest of your life and never do anything but lose. Clearly, not playing is the only winning move. But sometimes, a more sticktoitive attitude would probably have served me better: it was hardly brilliant to drop out of college during my senior year just to make a political point that no one heard.

Is it possible that my very-low bullshit tolerance was fostered by a movie?

Eh, probably not. But maybe! I remember feeling such relief when Joshua realized that some shit was too stupid to waste one’s time (and/or processor cycles) on.

Today I live in a spare bedroom and can fit everything I own into the bed of a small pickup. I just plain don’t do or have what everyone else does. Is this because I’m a quitter, or because I simply have a different agenda than my peers?

The only person I know who has less property than I do is Corby; if his stuff is packed into his jeep he can actually see over it. (I should follow his example and get a tent and a 4WD vehicle, better to camp on your lawn with.) Everyone else, even my spiritually-inclined friends and my migrant father, have accumulations of belongings that indicate, to some degree, their stature. They own houses, furniture, Cuisinarts. They have deeds and titles and certificates. Most of them had a much higher bullshit tolerance than I ever did: they finished school, at least. Is that what enabled them to accumulate so much property? Or would they have done so anyway?

Even my father has a home full of objects, it just happens to be on wheels.

I can’t figure out what this means. I have no interest in buying a house and filling it with stuff. I remember really wanting to, once, but that desire is gone now, burned up. I don’t want to find a lover and build a life together anymore, either. It’s as if my brief stint as a married person absolutely finished any karma I had in those areas…

Oh. Hmm. Maybe I’ll be a renunciate in my next life. That’d be cool.

I wanted so terribly much to fall in love and get married. It was my primary goal as long as I can remember. I wanted to have the coolest house in the world. When someone finally proposed, I felt as if my life had finally done what it was supposed to!

Except being married and keeping house for yourself sucks. I didn’t like it. It’s like chaining yourself to the earth. Every new item that you acquire makes your soul heavier. I couldn’t find the desire to go into debt buying stuff to make my house nicer than functional. Who would that benefit?

But I have wonderful, inquisitive, spiritual friends who live in houses with spouses and possessions and it doesn’t fuck them up.

I don’t feel suited to the regular world any more, but at least I can pass. That’s something to be grateful for, yes?

In which Wednesday is hump day, and it totally feels like it.

Yesterday, I did a bunch of exercises. Then I walked all over town. Today my glutes hurt.

Last night, I went to GoHo (aka The Golden Horse) with Kit & Cat and had a marvelous time. They invited me backpacking with them sometime this summer, but only if I agree to carry the liquor.

Today I started reading American Gods for the One Book, One Twitter read-a-long.

I packed my lunch into a bento box because I miss the whole cute bento lunch thing:

Just now, I received a lovely and polite email from Integratechs informing me that they hired someone else. I was the runner-up, apparently. (Or maybe I wasn’t and they just say that to everybody. Either way, being second-best is hardly a consolation when you’ve been out of work for half a year.)

Tonight, I intend to eat a burrito (aka Cinco de Mayo) and then go to open mic at Barnaby’s with TonyG (aka the Wolf) and Toni (aka Betty), where I intend to drink SEVERAL cocktails because I don’t have a goddamned JOB, people.

Tomorrow I’m going to think. A lot. About things. Here’s a list:

• Should I move away? If so, where to?
• Should I go back to school?
• Why am I now the second choice rather than the first when I’m trying to get a job? Am I underqualified? Too old? Something else?
• Is Walla Walla kicking me out again?
• What about keeping one’s 87-year-old grandmother company? I’m single and childless, and she likes having me around. Isn’t that good enough? There’s a time-honored spinster tradition I wish to ruminate upon.
• What do I want? I mean, really?
• Does this mean I can’t see Amma this summer? Will I seriously have to wait until November to see Her?

I’m accustomed to being able to afford to see Mother every summer. I’m accustomed to having something to do. I’m accustomed to getting hired when I interview. I’m missing my old friends, the people with which I have actual history that goes back farther than a few months. I’m accustomed to knowing what to do next.

In other words, I feel poor, lazy, unemployable, lonely, and sad. Which sucks. Wait, I just got a text… Jules is gonna come get me! We’re going to eat Mexican food and drink margaritas and I shall endeavor to feel fortunate… at least until I feel drunk, that is. Excuse me now, please, while I put on some clothes.

In which I make an admission. And then we move on, people! Nothing to see here!

Okay, so, like, yeah: last week was an embarrassing series of over-indulgences. I overate, I partied all night (booze ain’t diet food, and neither was that nacho cheese served at afterhours), and yes, I smoked cigarettes too. (Not a lot, but even one is too many. Those fucking things.) I didn’t do my Friday exercises, and I think I did maybe twenty minutes of cardio the whole week.

I haven’t weighed yet today, but there’s no way I shed two pounds, not with that Chinese vegetarian M-1 platter debacle. And those chocolates! Oh, and the Pepsi I decided I couldn’t live without. And the late night snacks. Argh!

Today begins a new week, though. A week in which I’m back on the diet, exercise, and non-smoking wagon of Self Love. This is a lovely, shiny new week. A week of awesome!

This post has been brought to you by the letter SHAME and the number CONFESSION.

In which unemployment is beginning to take its toll.

I stayed up well past two, watching Torchwood on Netflix. (I still love you, Ianto!) Then I slept for about twelve hours.

Not straight through, though. I actually woke up at ten and thought about getting up, but I didn’t. I just laid there until I went back to sleep. About three times.

Why? Because I don’t really have anything to do. A girl can only consume so much media, and it hardly seems imperative to get up and watch TV shows or read a book or study when there’s simply no deadline for anything.

There are things I can do, of course. I could get crackin’ on the Clean The Junk Out Of The Attic project (I bagged up an assload of old clothes but have as yet not figured out where to take them, and there’s always the old computer equipment to dispose of) or do laundry or study for my CCNA or meditate or work out or get drunk.

But I don’t have to, so I don’t.

This morning (where ‘morning’ equals late afternoon) I rolled out of bed onto the floor, did some gentle stretching yoga, and listened to some Eastern house (DJ Cheb i Sabbah‘s Krishna Lila, actually) for awhile. Then I went downstairs and had a cardamom latte while I made a batch of black olive hummus. A bit later, my brother came over and he and I nommed some Falafel Madness together while chatting with G’ma.

Now it’s dark again already and I’ve barely finished my coffee. I’d like to do something other than sit around in my (very comfortable, tricked out, OMG I pretty much never have to leave this room) bedroom, but I’m unemployed and feel guilty about spending money on things like cocktails or meals out even though I’m getting unemployment benefits and it’s not like I don’t have any money.

~+~+~
I had an interview on Thursday afternoon. It lasted nearly an hour, the people (cute HR girl and cute geek guy) were great, and I feel perfectly qualified for the position in a rural power co-op’s small Internet division.

The position is a typical ISP mix of support, dispatch, billing, sales, and on-call time. Their delivery modality is wireless, which I don’t know a bunch about but I can certainly learn it. I’d have to climb the occasional ladder and be on the occasional roof, but dispatch time would only be about 20% of the job. The fun stuff like email and web hosting is outsourced, which is a little sad, and I’d have to lose the frivolous manicure in order to make cable and haul equipment, but I’d have actual responsibility and I’d get to learn a whole new technology and its equipment and I think it would be a nearly ideal fit for my experience.

Which doesn’t explain why I’m so utterly freaked about it.

I am, in equal parts, afraid they’ll offer me the job, and afraid they won’t.

I’ve gotten lazy and soft. My last few thousand hours of employment have required me to do little more than show up (and when I was very lucky I got to think real hard for a few minutes). I’ve gotten used to sitting on my ass at a desk. I haven’t been on call or done an actual customer premise dispatch in years. I haven’t put a plug end on a CAT-5 cable for a long time. I mean, although it’s been awhile I’ve done all this stuff and I’m a perfect match for their job description.

I just don’t know if I want it, and that just makes me question the whole inside of my silly head. Why wouldn’t I want a perfect job?

If they don’t offer me the job, I’ll freak that it’s because I’m a girl who showed up for a job she knew entailed actual non-desk work with a crazy manicure (my nails are currently gold with red airbrushed designs on them) or because I’m too old (!!!) to be climbing ladders in rural areas or because I unwittingly fucked up in the interview or because I’m actually not as hireable as I believe I am.

I know the Universe prefers that I decide what I want, but I honestly can’t figure out if I want this job or not. It’s here in Walla Walla (not in Dayton, where the rest of the company is), it’s a small department (which keeps politics to a minimum), I wouldn’t have to do first tier tech support (they outsource that), and I’d get to learn a whole new delivery technology! It’s true I’m not stoked about the sales and billing aspects, but every ISP job I’ve ever had – ten years’ worth – entailed a little of both, it’s just the nature of the beast and it’s hardly onerous. Of course I have some nervousness about having to drive around an area I don’t know, but it’s not like it’s hard to drive somewhere. It’s not like I don’t have GPS on my fucking phone, either, and while I don’t love driving it’s hardly a deal breaker.

I must be being lazy, which tells me I need to get my ass kicked a little, which tells me this job would probably be great for me because I don’t even have it yet and it’s challenging me already. I can’t remember the last time I had a really good brain stretch at work! And autonomy! Responsibility! Root on actual deployed, mission-critical boxen!

I think this is where my weirdness lies: I think I’m having a location crisis. If they offer me the job, I’ll need to commit to a life in Walla Walla. If they don’t, I’ll have to move because I have already applied for literally every single job I’m qualified for around here, and I’ll have to do it doubting my hireability because when you don’t get hired for a job you’re perfectly suited for, you freak out. You just do.

I’ve been weird about living in Walla Walla for awhile now (I intended it to be a temporary move when I came here), but here’s the kicker: I didn’t immediately gear up to leave when I became unemployed. I had daydreams about moving away, but I don’t actually want to live anywhere but right here or New York City. And moving to New York is a non-trivial undertaking: I’d need a bunch of money and a place to land, and what about my dog? I could move to Portland or Seattle, or a few places in California where I have relatives, or even Colorado where there appears to be a lot of tech work, but I don’t really like any of those places. (Not like I like New York.) And I’m actually starting to have a life here, and friends, and the band’s already got some festivals booked for next summer, and c’mon – my rent and utilities are $150 a month. Which, in my tax bracket, is the only reason I get to take such awesome vacations every year.

I think I was expecting that there’d be no work here; that Walla Walla was going to kick me out like it did the last time; that the decision was going to be made for me. I think I thought I was going to lie around collecting unemployment for a few months and then have go somewhere else. The big push! Sort through your shit, make plans, scramble, freak out! Change! Stress! Excitement! And look, I have to do this, I’m reacting – not acting! Nothing’s my fault if it doesn’t turn out! Whee!

But, while I am a total weirdo, at least I’m not dishonest about it: I haven’t taken a single step toward moving away. The only remote job I applied for was in Seattle, and I was terrifically overqualified for it. I was waiting to have to move away. Which must be a case of the grass is always greener, right?

The existence of a job I didn’t expect has broken my brain. Tell me what I dork I am, please, mmm’kay?

In which I decide that in a perfect world I’d be a professional student. And then I complain.

Following are the things I have considered studying – in the past two weeks alone – if only I had the required time and/or money:

Astronomy. There’s a cool online course I want to take; it costs a couple hundred bucks and starts in a month or two. Why? Because all of my astronomy has come from reading hard sci-fi.

French. I hate that I have only one language. I hate that I only get about half of Eddie Izzard’s standup when he suddenly and inexplicably switches to French. Yes, Spanish would be a more functional choice considering where I live, but I actually know more French.

Piano. Because I should be writing original material and my nails are too long to play guitar.

Opera. Because it’s been twenty years since my last classical voice lesson and I think it would be fun. And hard. And fun! And it’s mostly in Italian and German!

Networking. Not because I feel compelled to study networking for its own sake, but because I keep thinking I should get my CCNA or MCSE or something in order to widen my employment opportunities (read: maek moar munny).

History. Wouldn’t it be great to take a history-of-the-world class again? Just for the hell of it?

I just wanna know things.

The things that are easy to know I simply look up. The things that are slightly more complex I learn from people in regular daily interactions. The things I really want to know, however, are more complex than ten minutes of face time and require some sort of formal structure.

Enter my nemesises nemesii: time and money.

I just want to learn. I don’t learn on a daily basis any more. How crap is that?

Some people solved the stay-in-school-forever thing by becoming professors. That had been a plan of mine at one point – before I got distracted by poverty, two re-locations, and a disastrous marriage – I was going to get my PhD in Lit (or history! or philosophy! or music! who cares!) and eventually teach just so I could stay in university forever.

Now I owe so much on my compounded student loans I couldn’t in good conscience ever go back to school again; I doubt I’ll ever fully pay off what I already owe, and I’d certainly be unlikely to live long enough to pay off another twenty to sixty grand additionally.

[BEGIN RANT] In all seriousness, they never should have loaned me all that money in the first place! Holy shit! How the hell is any 18-year-old supposed to figure out how not to live on credit when all they do is teach you that it’s okay to live on credit? I moved out at 17, got my own place, signed my name a few places, and ended up with a bunch of what was effectively free stuff: free classes, free books, free room and board, free mad money. All I had to do was go to class! Yeah!

Well, five years later I couldn’t answer my phone because of the collections calls. Who gives an 18-year-old with no income student loans and credit cards?

I’ve been out of school for a long time and I still owe over forty grand for student loans. It pisses me off that it was so easy to get so much money when I was too young to understand that it would stick with me forever. [/END RANT]

Yeah, so, maybe I’ll buy a keyboard and take some piano lessons.

Or maybe I’ll take the SAO Short Course.

Or maybe I’ll just buckle down and throw money at books and tests until I have a piece of paper that says I can subnet in my head and pull CAT5 from switch to workstation.

[BEGIN RE-RANT] Actually, I forgot: I was scholarship material. Oregon State offered me a partial scholarship in opera but for some reason I didn’t take it and went to my local community college instead.

I might actually regret not going to Oregon State, now that I think about it. I wonder what would have been different if I’d gone to college at a state school on an opera scholarship?[/END RE-RANT]

In other words: if I had ample resources, I’d be doing something other than what I’m doing. Money, as little as I regard it in my day-to-day life, actually owns me. I am money’s bitch.

I live in an attic because of money. I work a day job because of money. My entire life actually revolves around money – obtaining it, hoarding it, spending it – and I don’t even like the stuff. I’m lying in this bed I made, this bed of debt. (Note to self: never ever ever get married again ever ever EVER.)

You know what’s fucked up, my babies? That I am old enough to say – and genuinely mean – the following:

YOU WILL NEVER REGRET THE THINGS YOU DID.
YOU’LL REGRET THE THINGS YOU DIDN’T DO.

Just you wait. You too will wake up forty-something one day, and believe me: your dick will fall off. THAT’S how weird it is.