The (Mis?)Adventures of a Perpetual Job-Hunter/Job-Hater

So my miracle didn’t come. The internship is a complete disappointment. Indeed, it’s refreshing to write, but there’s something really off about the environment. The editor is fantastic, but she’s just about the only person I enjoy. I’m so utterly disappointed… and I feel like an utter disappointment

I give up now. I think I’m at the point where I just need to find a job that is bearable… a  job that I can commit to, which doesn’t necessarily entail falling in love with it. Legal publishing DEFINITELY ISN’T the industry for me, and I’ve accepted that… but that’s just about the only thing I’m sure of at this troubling standstill. Yet again, it’s back to the drawing board for the perpetual job-hunter/job-hater… it’s getting old. Really old.

Even though I genuinely meant to, I haven’t blogged in the last little because I was just too busy trying to survive what I’d like to call “the three days of darkness”… and let me tell you, it was a tall order. This Monday-Wednesday schedule is absolutely killing me. I’m physcially manifesting my job-related misery, people.  Yes, misery… I went there and called it that, I called it what it is. I did warn you that my “like” for this job would probably wane, and it has… at an accelerated rate that even I didn’t predict. Please don’t be disappointed in me.

The physical symptoms of this misery include ghastly paleness, shivering, prolonged dizziness. It’s sickening. Technically I’m supposed to work from 7 am to 6:30 pm, but I could only survive until 5:15-ish the past two days (strageically leaving just 15 minutes after my supervisor left for the day to ensure that I didn’t run into her in the lobby). The only reason I deviated from that plan of action today is because there’s an editor here who’s scheduled to work until 6. Kill me now. Kill us both, I guess! This is un-freakin-bearable.

You know what, though? I have no one to blame but myself… and the physical ailments I’m experiencing? Well, I’m getting my just deserts, I guess. Why? Because I knew what I was getting myself into. I had a job identical to this one just 6 six months ago… there was a reason why I left… because I loathed it. I loathed the dry material, I loathed the absence of opportunities for growth, I loathed the redundance, I loathed the silence, I loathed EVERYTHING except two co-workers who kept me sane. The only difference here is that the department doesn’t seem to be saturated with sycophants who are actually rewarded for their shameless sycophantism. At the same time, though, everyone is so closed-off, I just could be missing something. So why the hell did I come back to this?!? Bad habits die hard, I guess.

This internship… I have high hopes for this internship. This internship needs to save my life. It NEEDS to get me on a career path that I’ll be content to traverse… it needs to get me a job that I love, one that doesn’t make me feel like ripping my hair out with every minute that passes by. I nearly sob aloud at the sight of every new stack of proofs that arrives on my desk for me to mark up. I’m downright sick of this. Seriously, though, I have no one to blame but myself. I’ve invested (wasted is probably the more accurate word to use) way too much time acquiring experience in an industry that doesn’t interest me whatsoever. Now that I’ve decided to invest my time and effort more fruitfully, I’m hoping for a miracle here… I’m hoping this internship  gets me out of the cycle of job-related misery… because I’m truly beginning to lose hope.

Okay, what initially started off as the usual end-of-the-workweek relief has graduated to full-blown dread of the thought of ushering in a brand new workweek at the new job. I can’t believe I said I was actually starting to “like” it. I don’t quite despise it, which is still a step above my previous jobs, but this is where it starts. It’s all downhill from here.

I’m just not loving the fact that my superiors have these pre-conceived notions about me. I come with previous editorial experience at two of the company’s biggest competitors, which shared the same editorial processes, for the most part, so there are definitely things that can be skipped in my training. However, that doesn’t warrant pretty much doing away with my training altogether. In my first two weeks, my supervisor has sat down with me to teach me about the editorial processes they follow for a total of 30 minutes, LITERALLY. Also, in my intervew I explicitly mentioned that I’d never edited a book (only looseleafs and newsletters), and already I’ve been assigned a behemoth of a book with very little guidance. The thought of working on it tomorrow is making me want to poke my eyes out a little. It’s so incredibly boring, too, which doesn’t help. I’m sure the subject of intellectual property would be interesting to study as a law student, but it certainly isn’t interesting in the context I’m encountering it. I have to finish editing this book by the end of December… it’s all really ridiculous… I honestly don’t know how I’ll do it. I hate new jobs that force you to ask a billion questions, you know ? Don’t get me wrong, I’d be fine with asking questions for clarification, but the problem lies in the fact that I don’t quite know what questions to ask since I haven’t been adequately trained yet – I don’t even have the proper knowledge to ask coherent questions. Seriously, sometimes I want to ask my supervisor something, and I’ll practice formulating the question in my head, and it turns out to be something that sounds so embarrassingly dumb that I end up not asking the question. Anyway, I now realize that I’m going to have to buck up and ask numerous dumb questions in order to finish editing the book. Ugh.

On top of it all, I really SUCK at editing material that I find boring. Yeah, I really wasn’t the scrupulous editor I should’ve been at my last job as an editor. It’s just that when I’m reading something boring, I’m not engaged enough to care about whether or not I’ve caught all errors… I really just want to skim everything and be done with the pages in front of me as soon as possible.

I’m really not a good editor in this context. I’m just too darn bored to care. This is yet another reason why I know this job isn’t for me… I’m not very good at it. And what kind of self-fulfillment can come out of a job that I can’t be proud of doing well?

Sigh, I wish this weekend wouldn’t end.

First off, the new job is okay. After my last nightmare of a job, it’s such a huge relief to have a boss who doesn’t breathe down my neck. It’s an eerily quiet, anti-social environment for the most part, but such is life when you work in legal publishing. I knew what to expect before starting. My co-workers seem nice and good-humoured enough, so hopefully I get to run into them more often in the halls or library to strike up more conversation (how ironic, yes, striking up conversation in a library – again, such is life when you work in legal publishing).

Anyway, I’ve already got some work to do, which is good… I guess. To be honest, I was hoping to cruise for the first few days or so reading lame training material, but because I’ve got moderate editorial experience under my belt, they’ve decided to put me to work already. It’s not fun work, but it never is in legal publishing. I can’t stop thinking about the work I have to complete for the magazine – it’s so much more interesting… today all I kept thinking about was making calls to verify some details in a few articles I’ve been assigned to fact-check. I was really distracted. I wish they would just pay me! I’d be elated if they said they could pay me minimum wage to work for them… sigh, maybe one day.

Anywho, these updates are going somewhere today – for once, I have a point, haha. Reflecting on my varied work experience, which consists of paid and unpaid positions and ranges from God-awful to “meh” to, now that I’m working for the magazine, warm, fuzzy-feeling-eliciting, I’ve realized that it has definitely given me a better appreciation for the value of a dollar. I know someone who’s a pretty ridiculous character, quite happily leeching off of others to pay for her gym membership, satisfy her penchant for name brands, buy things she shouldn’t, rack up enormous debt in their names so that she can spoil herself, etc., etc., etc. She doesn’t pay rent, people. She’s been unemployed for several years and lacks any job skills (or people skills, for that matter!). She’s 30-something and virtually the only thing she can put on her resume is her short-lived experience working at a fair, for Christ’s sake. You would think that someone who takes, takes, takes from wonderful people who give, give, give would do what she could to show her appreciation. But no, she doesn’t even help out at home in any adequately quantifiable way… and she’s completely unapologetic about being thoroughly USELESS  to her family that’s selflessly and painstakingly helping her out. She’s pretty crappy in my books, so these days I’m not surprised when I hear about something effin’ stupid that she does.

But the other day, my husband and I gave her daughter a monetary gift for her birthday. Sure, it wasn’t huge or anything, but I hadn’t worked in weeks and we had to be modest because of our situation. It wasn’t a paltry amount either, though, so I expected a polite “thanks” in return. But when her daughter gave her nasty mom the money and told her it was from us, nasty mom just looked down at it and said nothing… not a word. Nor did she tell her daughter to thank us. She looked down at the money like it was infected. I could see it on her nasty face: she was thinking, “CHEAP”. It wasn’t even HER gift! And still she passed judgment! I’m baffled by how she feels entitled to pass judgment with NOTHING that she’s EARNED SELF-SUFFICIENTLY to her name.

Funny that someone who’s too useless to generate an income would think that, huh? Apparently people who are “too good” to work honestly for a dollar are are still “too good” for monetary gifts/free money.

Maybe if the dumb b!tch actually WORKED a damn day in her life, had a boss who made her want to crawl into a hole and scream, had a job like my husband’s that made her body ache every day, had to settle for all of these not-so-wonderful things for the sake of DOING WHAT’S RIGHT… maybe then she wouldn’t scoff at our gift. She simply hasn’t evolved enough to understand just what kind of bullsh!t and sacrifice goes into making an honest dollar. And the fact that she revels in her ignorance enrages me – a 30-something ADULT who lacks this insight is a sorry waste of human life! ARGH!

I’m glad I’ll never be like her. Without a doubt, she’s the biggest idiot I have the misfortune of knowing.

My interview this morning went well, and while they strongly hinted that I could expect an offer soon enough, I’m about 90% sure that it’s not the right opportunity to jump into after a painful year and a half of job dissatisfaction. My goal is to never again put myself in the same situation I extricated myself from only a week ago, and I’m afraid that accepting this job would contradict that goal entirely. I know I’m not interested in editing the content I’d be immersed in during my tenure there, which is why I left both of my previous jobs. The time to be selective is now, but unfortunately my mom doesn’t understand the logic behind this…

At 11pm last night, I applied for a magazine internship that I’m dying to secure, and lo and behold, I was miraculously contacted this morning regarding my application and invited for an interview scheduled for Tuesday morning. I’m really hoping to get this one, folks… really hoping. I’ve been fantasizing all day about getting hired on full-time after my internship expires and finally experiencing what it’s like to have a job that I actually enjoy… I’m probably being overly optimistic, but being jobless can do that to a girl, strangely enough. I think it’s because I’m no longer shackled to a job that I have to force myself, with great difficulty, to accept (sort of like forcing yourself to swallow Buckley’s without gagging) - when I worked for Awkward/A$$hole boss, that forced acceptance ended up permeating/polluting my outlook on the future, hindering me from recognizing that I could indeed do more than just passively accepting my situation.

So now that I’m taking accountability for my career path, I’m willing to be an unpaid, full-time intern at a reputable magazine for a couple of months to acquire some much needed and incredibly valuable experience while working part-time. It makes perfect sense to me… and to my husband – God bless him for being so darn supportive. But it doesn’t make that much sense to my mom… I could see the disapproval in the look on her face when I told her. And I’m sure it doesn’t make sense to several others who are aware of this plan (they are, however, a tad more sensitive than my mom and therefore avoid manifesting less than nuanced reactions when I discuss it, haha!). But simply working to generate an income hasn’t gotten me anywhere fruitful so far. I think it’s about time that I change my strategy and let what I love to do guide my job search… even if that means working for free for a little while.

The bottom line: if you are okay with what you want to do, that’s all that should matter. Readers, this sounds like such a trite statement, such fluffy advice that we all roll our eyes at, but it’s advice that we don’t fully take to heart when we should. I’ve felt the need to justify my decisions to people in this past week, but I can’t let my hyper-sensitivity to what others think prevent me from doing something I’m over-the-moon excited about. Would it make sense if I did?