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

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?

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.

I wrote yesterday’s post with some relative clarity, I thought… but today the potential employer called to let me know that they’re proceeding in the recruitment process since yesterday’s interview went well. They will be contacting my references, and their final decision will be made by the end of next week. My gut feeling tells me that an offer of employment is pending.

And that gut feeling is accompanied by a feeling of disappointment, I guess I can call it. I’m not being ungrateful… this is a stupid, stupid initial reaction from an unemployed bum, I know… of course I’m pleased that I have another prospect, especially since I quit last week without anything to fall back on. While I’m glad that I can return to the work force almost immediately after leaving my last job quite spontaneously, I’m also a little disappointed because I have a feeling I know what my pragmatism will guide me to do. Sure, it’s an uninteresting job that pays an almost laughable salary… but it’s a job that pays… and even though I was intially unfazed by the unpaid aspect of an incredibly exciting magazine internship, I feel my pragmatism enveloping my idealism again, telling me that I can’t turn down an actual job… because I just can’t.

Ugh, it’s so unbelievably frustrating to be yoked to this kind of pragmatism. Even after all these posts that seem to trace an evolution (however slow and winding) in my approach to finding the right career for me, here I am, taking two steps back, thinking about settling for something that I already know will not make me content.

Oh, what am I doing.

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?

During the last 26 minutes or so of my lunch break this afternoon, I sat in my car and almost convinced myself to give in to the overwhelming urge not to return to the office after my glorious one-hour respite was over. I wanted so very badly to be fearless, to let my thirst for sanity dictate my course of action for once, to drive out of the gloomy parking lot and cross the threshold into happy, sunny freedom. But at 1:54pm, I knew I couldn’t retreat. I have bills to pay, I thought… four dogs to feed… gas to buy… a husband to consult before making significant, perhaps ludicrous decisions of the sort and to whom, along with the rest of my family, I’d have to justify the spur-of-the-moment action that would have such final, irrevocable consequences. So better judgment took a hold of me despite the fact that my insides were practically screaming for me to get the hell out of there. And by 1:56pm, the gut-wrenching longing to leave my God-awful job was quieted by overriding Reason – in an eerily robotic (and highly disappointing) manner, I was already walking back into the building that houses so much of my misery.

It’s absolutely terrifying, this Reason, isn’t it? Because oftentimes what Reason can force us to do isn’t truly reasonable. Is it reasonable to stay in an environment that actually makes me hate myself more and more with each passing day because it nurtures my habitual participation in the murder of my own brain? Is it reasonable to feign politeness (however obviously forced it is) toward my belittling, control-obsessed boss? Is it reasonable to continue doing a job that I didn’t even sign up for upon my initial hiring, and one that I still haven’t been properly trained to do, four freakin’ months later? Is it reasonable for me to accept being severely underpaid in proportion to my education, capabilities, and job experience? Of course, not, no… and yet the ritualizing of all these somehow “reasonable” things tricks me into thinking otherwise.

This, though, is the most terrifying thing about the trickster, Reason…

My brother-in-law’s father passed away just a couple of weeks ago both unexpectedly and before his time… life is fleeting. We’re all on this earth on finite terms, which should galvanize our thirst for relishing each day fully so that not a single day is wasted if it is the last… this job, though, essentially makes me scoff at that important (perhaps even most important) realization – it makes me wish each day would end sooner. Would Time just hurry up so that I can get out of here, I say to myself constantly while staring vacantly at my computer screen. And if something is so unbearable that it makes us want each blessing of a day to expire faster, causes us to try and make ourselves numb during work hours just so that we can sit still, and teaches us to ultimately appreciate life less… then we have to let it go.

But many of us don’t. I’m one of the many. So why in the world do we do this to ourselves? Because we have to, is the resounding answer, I’m sure. But there it is again, what we believe to be Reason telling us to accept something wholly unreasonable. We don’t have to… we don’t have to do anything. And yet even as I write those words, I still don’t believe them 100%. You know how I know that? Because I know that I’ll wake up tomorrow morning and get ready for work, hop in my car and drive (all the while dreading the start of my work day), and carry out the same ol’ foolish ritual all over again.