kitty lumpkins

I think I got myself a job.

One of the weirder things about accepting an offer is the bit where you’re supposed to withdraw your application with everyone else you’ve been interviewing with. Problem is, this runs counter to everything I’ve been doing for the last seven months, which is begging for any sort of arrangement, written or not, wherein I receive money for performing some labor. Wouldn’t even have to be legal.

Of course now it’s like I’m calling the shots. I mean, what? Who, seriously, who am I to say that I don’t want such-and-such job?

Mentioning that previous bit for some context. But so this morning I was writing my withdrawal-of-application letter to a certain organization when the hiring manager called me and said they weren’t hiring me. Which actually would have worked out great if not for the fact that she sounded extremely sympathetic and inwardly conflicted about the decision and stressed that it had been a very difficult call between myself and the person they did choose. So, way to go, me. Should have sent that letter earlier. Save everyone a ton of grief.

SLEEPY STARE

Being unemployed is pretty great. And by “pretty great,” I mean pretty terrible. I wake up around nine or ten in the morning, a couple hours after my de facto roommate has left for work. I make some eggs and eat it with bread, and then shower and shave. I like eggs. I like bread. I like showers. I even like shaving. Pretty great.

It’s after the morning routine that I try to guilt myself into looking for work. This is the worst part of my day. If I succeed here, I spend the next five or six hours writing cover letter after cover letter, making countless tweaks to my resume, and throwing each into the Yawning Maw of American Capitalism. I think for every fifteen application I send, I get one reply back after two weeks. This reply is usually, “Yeah, no.”

If, as is more likely, I fail the self-guilting process, then I go and play Skyrim while feeling guilty and terrible. By mid-afternoon I am wrought up with guilt, so much so that I am effectively anesthetized to embarrassment and have an overwhelming urge to apply to something, anything.¹ I shoot off an application after fifteen minutes of work, think, “Oh, that was easier than I thought. I’ll do another in half an hour.”

Then I go play Skyrim for a few hours until my de facto roommate comes back, at which time the workday is over and it just seems even more pointless than usual to throw more job applications at the Yawning Maw of American Capitalism, especially since, again, business hours are over.

So, yeah. Skyrim is fun.

I PREFER A STEALTHY, LONG RANGE APPROACH. WHAT ABOUT YOU?

Last week I had the immeasurable pleasure of going through the final round of interviews with a Seattle software consulting company called Avanade, which is great. They deal mostly (read: exclusively) with Microsoft -based coding and programs, which is great, even though I am a huge Apple fanboy and currently have little to no respect for the Windows platform.

So, good-ish news is, I received a phone call from them a few days ago, and they have promised me a verbal offer. I think this is a good sign. I suspect this means that I will get hired, probably. Which is great! Unless their paperwork doesn’t come through, which would not be great. But of course since this company is the opposite of not great (i.e. great), I don’t see that happening. Please.

AGAIN, A FEW MATTERS OF FOLLOW-UP ‘N SHIT

Yeah uh so there goes all of the summer and quite a bit of the autumn. That was fun! Let’s do that again.

They say no news is good news, but the fact is that there has been no news as of late because I am still goddamn unemployed. Ugh. Likely I am complaining way too much about this, and so a bit of of me is just all, “Yeah well there’s probably a reason for that HUH.” But anyway I am probably not going to work in the glamorous, sexy¹, and high risk, high reward world of software engineering anytime soon. I’ve always wanted to be a baker, though.

I’ve decided to pack up my things, then, my clothes and a book or two, and set off for sunny Washington State. I have a couple thousand dollars in savings, which I think will let me live for awhile as I couch surf. I think this means I am having a “homeless period.” Lack of permanent residence and all that. It’s very exciting. I am actually seriously hoping to get a job in a bakery, despite having known the terror that is the food service industry. I am willing to deal with terrible people as long as it means that I can look at a fresh loaf of bread every day.

GEWGAWS

I figure what better way to adequately express the joys of la vie boheme than to carry around a really goddamn expensive camera and put some goddamn pictures on the internet. Anyway I’ll be applying to jobs all day, which leaves little room for “fun.” So when I do go outside I’ll try it. Although anyone who’s ever done street photography knows it’s hard. Shooting a good photo is hard enough, but goddamn suddenly you’ve gotta be brave enough to stick a lens in someone’s face without permission. We’ll see. We’ll see.

All of which assumes that Flickr gets their game together! Because you see I made the terrible mistake of doing the Google sign-in thing that Flickr lets you do, then changing my mind and unlinking it. Except now I can’t log in. It says the Flickr account’s associated with a different Yahoo account than the one I’m using. Oh god. Yahoo. You ruin everything you touch. This is what I get for throwing $25 at them for a pro account. Goddammit.

GRAVEYARDS

This one’s been on the ol’ brain for awhile. Did I tell you about this one? I knew a girl in high school, but she died young. Brain tumor. I think I’ve mentioned it. She’d married just two months before, not even twenty years old. Earlier this summer I tried to track down her grave, and I’m not entirely sure why. Did I mention that too? I don’t think it was guilt or latent grief or anything, you know, because I barely knew her. We played in high school orchestra together, and that was about it. I was a violin, of course, because that’s the instrument that all Asian children play by legal mandate. I think she played viola, but don’t quote me on that. And I knew her husband. I remember him from second grade, gluing together the blades on my child-safe scissors. He was kind of an asshole then, though no doubt he got nicer. I didn’t find the grave, which is just as well, since I didn’t know what the hell I’d've said if I’d found it.