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

So, naturally, being the firm believer in education that I am, I’m considering returning to school so that I can transition into the right career for me. I’m so conflicted, though, since I’m a broke-a$$ joke as it is – what, with my low-level editorial job and all – and shelling out thousands of dollars for tuition and other school-related expenses would be a major setback. I want to live a grown-up life with my husband – I’d like us to travel, buy a house, have children in the near future, etc. All of these grown-up things require grown-up money, unfortunately, so as much as I’d like to be a student again… I feel like my time has passed. And it sucks because I was at my most content, my most self-fulfilled, my most intellectually challenged and stimulated as a student… despite the fact that grad school was so incredibly overwhelming and definitely beat the hell out of me with all of the harrowing demands on my intellect, my resilience, my writing skills, and my time management skills, it was an experience that made me better.

Being a perpetual student should be a lucrative endeavour. Life would be grand. So grand.

… but they occurred to me at work, so they deserve to be featured on this blog.

-I wore mismatched socks today, along with pants that are on the slightly-too-short-for-cold-weather side… you know, the kind of pants that you can pull off in the summer, paired with cute ballet flats… and NOT with the low-cut sneakers I quickly threw on this morning, which exposed said mismatched socks. In the professional appearance category, how much of a point deduction do you think the mismatched socks/sorta too short pants/low-cut sneakers combo got me? I’d say I suffered a pretty big point deduction. Pretty big. I should also mention that my right sock, in perfect congruence with my sorta too short pants, was a little too small and kept rolling down my heel… exposing said heel now and then during my stride.

-I went to the bathroom 9 times today. 9. Yup. (You’ll have to read a previous blog post of mine to get the full back story on my “bathroom breaks”.)

-I literally said a prayer this morning asking God to prevent me from experiencing the nauseating dizziness that I had to endure during the first two days of the “three days of darkness”. My prayer was semi-answered: I only experienced minimal, fleeting diziness today. I am grateful.

-I must be the worst “new girl” ever: it’s only week 3 for me at the new job and already I left an hour and 45 minutes earlier than I was supposed to. TWICE. That’s a record… even for me.

-On my way to the car after my work day was finally and mercifully over, I heard someone’s footsteps frantically quickening behind me in the dark parking lot… I thought the owner of the ominous footsteps was going to stab me. Of course, she was only hurrying to her car to get the hell out of there. Duh. Clearly, I am a wussy.

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.

It’s a sentiment that feels so strange for me to express. True, this feeling may wane fairly soon, but it’s still pretty remarkable considering the fact that I’ve never truly liked any of the jobs I’ve had in the past at any point during my tenure in the positions. So it’s an incredibly foreign and refreshing thing to me, this job-liking.

It’s about time, though… especially after the hell I endured in my last job. The job-liking stratum of the working world is definitely a nice place to be! But I must admit that I don’t love my job… or even like it a lot. Nor do I feel like I’m maximizing my potential. So while I’ve finally found a job that doesn’t compel me to fantasize about leaving the office for lunch break and never returning, it’s not the elusive self-fulfilling career that I set out to find at the beginning of this blogging adventure. Let’s hope the internship gets me closer to finding it. I’m really excited to start. And I’m also relieved that I’ll get to do it without being completely destitute: my proposed Monday to Wendesday schedule at my job was approved, and I get to retain full-time hours until the end of the year. I’ll have to move to “freelancer” status in the new year, though, since they’ll have to hire someone else to fill the typical contract position (i.e., with the conventional Monday to Friday schedule). But that’s cool. I always wanted to work as a freelancer because of the freedom it entails. The amount of work assigned to me won’t be guaranteed, which would obviously impact my pay… but I’d get to choose my hours, decide when to go in to the office, and complete certain tasks at home. It’ll be good.

Who knew I’d actually like a job for once? It’s shocking!

I was plagued by the most disgusting dizziness today. It started at about 9:30 am and lasted the entire work day. I think a lot of people who have desk jobs suffer from this ailment now and then, but I’m convinced that working in legal publishing increases the frequency of my dizziness episodes. Marking up and being hunched over hundreds of pages for hours on end, all the while trying to decipher legalese that employs a bunch of misplaced and, in my opinion, unnecessary commas that impede comprehension (I’m definitely a fan of the comma, as you all can tell by now, but even I’ll admit that my curvy little friend can make too many appearances) really does aggravate my desk-job-rooted proneness to dizziness. Ugh. Such. A. Bad. Day.

Anyway, another dizzying situation is the scheduling issue I’ve been having with regard to the internship. The editor at the magazine emailed me on Monday to let me know that after more thought, she realized that she could not accommodate my new job schedule. But she’d be more than happy to take me on as an intern as soon as my availability opens up. So, because I decided that I can’t let this opportunity slip away, I approached my supervisor and asked her if I could still stay on with the company and work Monday to Wednesday (so that I can dedicate all of Thursday and Friday to the internship). She was happy to work with this proposed schedule, but unfortunately I’m still waiting for official approval from the Big Kahuna. So, I’ll have to wait and see what happens… but I’ve made a choice – I’m going to do this internship even if my work schedule doesn’t get approved. If I don’t, then what was the Big Stand that I took when I quit my previous job for???

I’ve realized that sometimes all it really boils down to is a choice. Sometimes it’s not about dizzying yourself by keeping your options open, trying to juggle a couple of opportunities and then waiting to see which one ends up working out. Sometimes it’s about streamlining… eliminating the non-essentials… choosing to do what you truly want to do, thereby creating a simple trajectory to follow, even if the risks of that simple path are obviously high (therefore rendering that simple path not so simple after all!) and you’re not sure where you’ll end up at the end of it all. Those  types of choices are particularly difficult to make… a choice is a full-fledged commitment, and it’s absolutely terrifying to commit to something that’s so uncertain. But making these choices is contingent on a leap of faith that’s the starting point for the fruition of truly remarkable things.

…

I’ll work my way up to “remarkable”. Right now, I’ll settle for trying to ”do something that I actually want to do”. But then again, some might even call that remarkable, no?