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

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.

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?

The editor at the magazine had no qualms about working around my work schedule! I’m incredibly excited!!!! I’m so elated that I don’t have to give up this experience.

Man, I hope this leads to good things. I really, really hope that in a year I can say that I actually work – for wages – at a magazine. Maybe in 2.5 years I’ll somehow get an Assistant Editor gig… and I’d be happy to remain in that position until the 5-year mark - hopefully at that point I’ll be a full-fledged Editor.

I think I should take some magazine publishing courses… I really wish I hadn’t switched my Journalism major to English in the second year of my undergraduate career. I mean, I don’t regret the route I ended up taking. I wholeheartedly loved my undergrad courses in English and didn’t know for certain that I no longer wanted to pursue my PhD until after I finished my MA and was just a couple months away from beginning the PhD, so I had no clue it would all end up this way and that I’d eventually want to pursue a journalistic rather than academic career… but it’s not too late, right?

It’s never too late!

Can’t it all just work out for me for once? So the new job is fine, but it lost quite a bit of its lustre this afternoon when my supervisor told me that I can’t work early hours until my “newness” has diminished. She wants me to get more traning under my belt before I begin working without a supervisor in the office (the earliest a supervisor arrives in the morning is 7). The problem – IT’S A BIG PROBLEM – is that I’m supposed to intern from 2-5. I was supposed to work from 5-1, which would’ve worked perfectly with my internship hours, but now my plan that was neatly tied up with a pretty little bow has gone completely to hell.

I want to be a part of this magazine – seriously, I NEED this experience. Since Friday is a short work day at the company I work for, I can intern from 12:15 to 5, but the internship requires a two-day commitment. I’ve already emailed the editor of the magazine with all of the details re: the schedule debacle and told her I can come in for an hour Monday to Thursday (to discuss new developments and assignments that I can take home) AND dedicate all my spare time to completing tasks on my own time (I completed some fact-checking on my own this past week and it went really well!)… I just hope we can work something out.

What am I supposed to do, though? While I need to intern for the magazine to help me get on the career path that I want to be on, since I haven’t won the lottery yet, I also need this job. And for the first time in a very long time, I can say that my job is decent… and the company is more than decent. It’s a truly solid company, actually. Probably the best I’ve worked for in terms of taking care of employees. I’m on contract, but the chances of getting hired permanently are quite high… and once that happens, I could work the hours I want, receive awesome benefits (maternity leave top-up!), and eventually work from home FOREVER if I choose to do so.

At the end of the day, though, I don’t think it would be enough. Yes, I do think I would be able to learn to accept having a “meh” job at a good company. But it still wouldn’t be enough… I could never permanently quiet the nagging voice inside my head, which would constantly remind me that I’d be happier doing something else.

I just hope that nagging voice never leaves me – because so long as I’m armed with it, there will always be potential for my continued evolution. I don’t ever want to lose the ability to want better for myself when I know I can amount to so much more.