Job Search

Today I have nine jobs waiting for me to write cover letters for in my email queue. I hate writing cover letters. At least most are jobs I'm actually interested in. I always get so insecure about writing cover letters. They all seem like bullshit. Since I've rarely worked in traditional workplaces (and never had a full time job for more than 3 months in my entire adult life), the idea of writing a straight square cover letter always freaks me out. I'm always a little quirky because that's who I am and I don't want to sell a bill of goods to someplace I'll have to spend a significant amount of time. I have seen some good ones though and I'm going to give it the old bohemian try.

I'm going to the gym first to focus my mind. I'm only going to do 3 cover letters for the jobs today. I know I get burned out fast on things I'm not really interested in doing.

I hate this. I hate blind job sends. I hate it because it's never worked for me and I never receive any feedback so I keep changing my resume thinking it's the problem without really knowing. I've been freelance for 16 years and now that it's dried up it's made me question my basic value systems. It been good questioning with disturbing answers. Like, I know- KNOW- I cannot work in any corporate office environment. I don't want to use my life like that. I like money as much as the next girl, but is it really worth it to go to work everyday plotting my coworkers demise. It's really the conversation of it all. I hate the pedantic chitchat. If I could just show up, do my work (in however long it takes) and bounce then I'd be a happy clam.

But all the unspoken rules of conduct and conformity should have gotten beaten into me when I was still a kid. Instead, I got to wear whatever I wanted, speak my mind, manage my own time and people, and then go party with people I love and respect. I'm spoiled to the concept of work. Oh and did I mention they gave me a lot of money for it as well?

Oh, well. It's a new dawn. It's a new day. Let me go take out my frustrations on the elliptical machine and come back home and bang this out.

Dispondant

I guess I don't write because I don't feel like I have anything to say. I've started a storytelling night at my local bar, but still don't think what I have to say is important. It's a problem. I don't even have a story to tell next Monday, and it's my damn night. Arghh.

I feel like all of this is bullshit. What's the point of any of it? I'm feeling very doomsday machine about the entire existence. I guess that's what depression is, but the side effects of the anti depression meds sound like a hangover to me and drinking's much more fun.

I kinda want to tell a story about sex, but really? I can scant remember what that's even like. What about my childhood? Well if I'm drunk enough, which already says a lot about that story. I don't have any new stories to tell except what lives in my head. Not having much cash has limited my movements. FALSE. Freaking out about money and having the darkness living just over my head has limited my movements. This is NYC and I'm smart enough to find free shit.

What do I want to say? That I don't believe in the life I was bred to live. I think the whole system is going down in flames so why try to run a losing race? I can see through the illusion of a middle class ideal and what I interpret as the plastic boringness of it. It seems stupid to continue applying for jobs I don't want that I never hear back from anyway. The questioning of the choices I've made. Fighting hard to move forward and find my own way. All with $37 to my name.

I'm exhausted and feel like it's only going to get worse. I don't believe that all the time and it's not ingrained in my core. Yet the active part of me gets paralyzed and overwhelmed by it. I have no security anywhere. I have no job, my rent's always late, my family's moved from my childhood home, and the part that makes me mad to write- I'm single.

It makes me mad because I don't like to identify with the idea that a man would make any of that easier. [Yet see the sex comment above.]

I'm going to see Liza tonight and maybe her abject crazyness will inspire me to get over myself and stop the voice that tells me it's all worthless.

Happy post Kiddo, happy post.

I am so sick of not working

There's only so much boozing and vegging out I can do. I'm now DYING to got to work somewhere. I just sent out an invitation to my favorite podcast The Risk Show to be an intern. And I'm totally jazzed about it. I hope they accept. My new resume has filled me with confidence. Wish me luck.

Day One- No Drinking

Okay, so yesterday was really day one, but I didn't know it then. Last Friday I got a pimple on my neck. At first it just felt like a pimple, but then it started growing and hurting. It felt like it was growing legs into my neck. I’m very squeamish about my neck.

The pain became familiar to me because in the spring I’d had what I thought was a pimple, then a mosquito bite under my right boob. Then it got big and burst and was gross and I went to the doctor and he gave me the same antibiotics because I had a staph infection. I’d first felt the “bite” right after getting out of the pool and steam with my ladies on a Friday. By Wednesday I was at the doctors office. I couldn’t drink for a week and it was hell (and I didn’t quite make it… apparently I believe Coors light isn’t really an alcoholic beverage since it’s not one I partake of …ever.). I also didn’t swim as much this year.

So after the doctors yesterday, with a bandaged neck and on antibiotics, I decided to think about it differently. See, I’m up writing and not too drunk to string coherent sentences. I’ve decided to really take this time and take stock of my situation.

I’ve been applying to jobs all day and getting to the cover letter stage and freaking out because cover letters scare the shit out of me. So I have a bunch of tabs open with my résumé uploaded waiting for me to grace the page with some witticisms about how I want this bullshit job so I can show a judge that I shouldn’t be evicted and convince my landlady to give me another lease. At least until I can figure out if I’m really going to throw things in a bag and move to Paris. It wouldn’t be so hard if I could just get a commercial. And the thought of trying to get more work makes me want to drink. Not that I mind production work, I mind the fact that no one’s calling me to work. I’d love to do another commercial like the one I just did. Or like the movie, but the Marshall is scheduled to put me out January 7, and I don’t really have all the money I need to make that not happen. I’ve sold some mutual funds, but what if I give her all the money and she still evicts me? Then I’m really broke. And I’m just figuring out what I’m going to do here now that I’ve given up on production. I’m so close and just need like 6 months. I might not have it. So, I must write cover letters.

But I’ve gotta tell ya- it’s certainly put another kind of fire in my belly. I’m not so much saying what I won’t do, but look at what I really want to do. And not just write to make money. That puts too much pressure on my writing right now. It’s going somewhere I really like and, like me, tenses up under pressure. My personality changes and is not the creative soul I’ve sold myself on.
So I really want to bartend, but it’s the holidays and I’m waiting for the dust to settle before I go out and hit that. I don’t know the first thing about how bartenders make the magic that lives in my glass. I mean, I know, but I never know how much I owe or how much cocktails cost. I want to take a bartending class to get comfortable back there. And bartending classes aren’t free.

The thing about it all is- Money!

Every sidestep I want to take takes money and it’s keeping me up at night. All this education and I don’t feel like I’m qualified to do anything. I’ve never gotten a job with my résumé ever. I believe this is so because I have my crazy cover letters attached. I can be professional, but I’ve never really worked in a professional environment. I don’t have the clothes for it. I’d have to take out a loan to go to work and I am not what they call credit worthy right now.

So today on day one of my not drinking, I gave myself a little schedule and as of now, I’ve completed the big tasks. But I had to write down to eat yogurt with honey (check), journal writing (check), drinking tea (check) then working out (check). Shower (check), lunch (check), write on blog (check), read (I’m on it now).

So I’ve given myself a gold star day. I always like to keep the momentum of gold star days. Days when I’ve done exactly what I set out to do. There aren’t many of them, which keeps the gold star special. (I should get some more colored stars that way I have some kind of grading system. Make it not so all or nothing.) Yet, it’s Christmas now- an actual event day. Then it’s Saturday then… Then nothing. Then Saturday I can do the same exact thing and make it to class.

But see how the alcoholics can’t think about Saturday. So I’m going to follow their sage examples and just think about tomorrow. I’m going to keep it even simpler and just think about today. Because 10 days from now, I’m getting it in!

Reading: "It's Six A.M., Do You Know Where You Are?" by Jay McInerney in the Paris Review Book of Heartbreak, Madness, Sex, Love, Betrayal, Outsiders, Intoxication, War, Whimsy, Horrors, God, Death, Dinner, Baseball, Travels, The Art of Writing, And Everything Else in the World since 1953

Justin (shitmydadsays) on Twitter

Justin (shitmydadsays) on Twitter: "'That woman was sexy...Out of your league? Son. Let women figure out why they won't screw you, don't do it for them.'"


I have a feeling that if my dad could talk to me like this, we'd be much better friends. And we're already homies, except for him knowing about the smoking, drinking and fucking parts. Other than that, great.

Aw Shit, I shouldn't have answered the phone

So I’m sitting watching Cadillac Records with Leslie and my mom calls. I’ve also just painted my fingernails purple. I had to file them down because I scratched my face like a baby, and they’re still wet. I'm holding the phone precariously to my ear.
I answer cheerfully, as I always do and tell her what I'm doing, and she says, this’ll be quick. Of course it will because I just told you I’m watching a movie and poisoning myself inhaling paint fumes (which isn’t as bad as people say). She asks “do you know what I was doing 23 years ago today? Getting high.”

I thought, that’s funny, I just got high too. Then she asked what she was doing 23 years ago tomorrow- not getting high. I was thinking, where’s my pot? “And,” she continued, “and it was all because of my baby.” That baby would be me and that’s not a kid’s responsibility. I told her well, congratulations.

In addition to being drunks, my mother also likey-ed the cocaine. I guess it was called crack if that’s still the same as freebasing, but since we were in a different tax bracket and she actually bought powder and cooked it up herself, I guess we’re safe on the freebasing. She worked for Amtrak and ran the line from Chicago to NY to LA and San Francisco. They partied on those trains like it was actually 1999, so she got all the best drugs (and records) from all over the country.

I remember walking into the kitchen one day and it’s covered in all kinds of bowls, butane, what looked like metal medical supplies and shit I’d never seen in the fucking kitchen before. Besides the fact my mom was the worst cook ever and when trying to make me biscuits invented “breakfast cookies”, so much seeming activity in the kitchen surprised me. I asked what all this stuff was and she said, “Something I don’t ever want you to do”. Well, that was clear I knew she smoked pot, but I assumed everyone smoked pot. She smoked pot with her dad, so why would I think it’s strange. And she drank, but everybody drank. I didn’t see anything wrong with the way we lived. . I didn’t really understand about the drugs until she went into rehab.

23 years ago today I suppose. I do remember it was the end of school. The sixth grade. It had been a tough year for everybody and I was one worn out 12 year old. My mother had abandoned me in France. I don’t mean she left me to fend for myself in the French/ Swiss Alps, but she didn’t send me any letters or call. No one in my family did. It was so bad they called my house so I could talk to someone and no one was home. I wrote every day at first, then every other day, and then I just stopped. Later she told me, all fucked up, that she’d sent me a huge care package with all of the newspapers of the important events I’d missed in the mountains. Like, the Bears winning the Super Bowl and Challenger blowing up. She also sent some Championship t-shirts and hats, she said.

Then, my Granny had died. She’d been sick while I was gone and my Granddad says that she waited for me to get home safely before she died. I wasn’t home two weeks. I was on some Brownie trip that day. It was Presidents Day. Michelle had on too much of her mom’s perfume. (I don’t know the name of it, but whenever I get a sniff of it in my nose I think of this time and want to throw up.) Granddad had dropped me off for it before he headed to the hospital because my mom was M.I.A, California run. I’d barely seen her since I got home. I was staying upstairs with my other Grandma, Granny’s daughter, and my Aunt Donna. Uncle Sidney was around but he was so strung out and evil I didn’t miss him. And Uncle Torry was sitting around smoking cigarettes and looking maudlin as usual. Aunt Donna was also on a tear and Grandma was waist deep in Crown Royal and black assed days.

From February through June it was just Granddad and me. He was about 76 then and still took me everywhere I needed to go. I got cookbooks to learn how to take care of us. Even though everybody was around, except of course for my mom, nobody was really there.
In March I got my period and didn’t have anyone to go through the talk with me or go get me pads or rejoice in my becoming a woman. So I scavenged through my mom’s stuff and found this long pad that needed a belt and stuffed it in my panties. Luckily that first one was only a little spotting and only lasted a day.

At school it was tough too. I was awkward and too smart and my boobs were getting gigantic. I was also becoming chubbier because I was trying to feed my grandpa and myself and didn’t know what I was doing. And my Grandma was dead and no one would talk to me about it. I was pulling stuff out of the pantry that had been in there for years. I made egg foo young and we ate a lot of Vienna sausages. I was also nervous about boys and had a crush on Chris Fryison who was also chubby but had a great smile and made me laugh and bought me Chinese jacks in the 3rd grade. But since I was getting busty, the 8th grade boys started paying attention to me. I was still an early hip hop tomboy wearing bandana’s around my knees, plastic bangles that later had to be cut off, one earring like Janet Jackson and tons of neon pink and green. I had no female adult supervision so I looked a mess. And I had a curl.

One day in June, after my mother had been gone for weeks we were in the bathroom together in my Grandpa’s house. I was sitting on the toilet and she was in the mirror behind the sink. We were facing each other. I remember that part, but then I don’t remember the part of the mythology where I say “Mommy, what’s wrong with you?” I’m afraid that sounds a little too naïve for a girl who’d just told her uncle that he wasn’t coming in her house to look in the safe. My Uncle Sidney was a junkie and a thief and had Drunk Eric from down the street with him. He’s already broken into the safe and stole all the silver dollars and coins Granddad and I had been collecting my whole life. I stood my self in the doorway and told him he was coming in over my dead body and to get the fuck off of my front porch.

But that’s the story she likes to tell because it makes me her conscience. She needs me to be her mirror, but I can’t anymore because it’s too heavy. I can’t be the perfect reflection of her good intentions.

We got off the phone quickly. I hung up and harrumphed. Leslie looked in my direction and I picked up my pipe. Bouncy was screeching in the background and I just looked at him and took a hit. He asked what? And I answered, “nothin’ bullshit.”
That Beyonce sho cain’t sing.

Did I ever tell you about the one when I was growing up?

When I was a kid I lived in a house full of drunks. Not run of the mill drunks, I mean drunks that had doilies on tables and dusted every inch of the house until it was spotless. These were people who used to pick cotton and were terribly ashamed of it. I remember the one and only time I found a book on the top of my grandmother’s ivory wardrobe. It had numbers and names and was ancient. When I found it I took it to my great-grandpa cause he always told me the truth. And then the truth only needed to be that I was loved and adored and there was no other little girl in the world and beautiful and good as me.

When my Granny, his wife, saw that he was explaining the book to me she went ballistic. I never understood why because to me I had history in my hands. My granddad was explaining that this was the book they kept their sharecropping records in.

Anyway, these people drank and drank a lot. My Granny, had my Grandma, when she was 14 years old and Granddad was 21. These weren’t mature people. And they were suddenly in the north with a new set of rules and regulations and Chicago in the 30’s was almost as bad as Jackson, Mississippi- well I guess at anytime by my reckoning. So they drank and had fun (as far as I could see) and lived it up with the relatively few minor freedoms they got to have in the north. Like buying a house in what was previously a majority white neighborhood that would eventually become the murder capital of the city in the next 50 years.

What I realize now is that they were depressed and sad and living unfulfilled lives. They also didn’t know how to nurture us. They didn’t know how to nurture themselves; they hadn’t come from a nurturing environment. The legacy of The South still complicates the lives of those who escaped its horrors. I still live with the legacy of Jim Crow because Jim Crow people raised me. People who now theoretically had more freedoms, but also knew that Chicago’s Jim Crow could be worse. So what do they do with this baby born in the 1970’s without any knowledge of the systems they needed to survive? They teach her the same rules while telling her to fly away, but not too high. And not too fast.

The shames and inadequacies they felt when sober came out in a wale when they were tight. You could hear it in their laughter, the freedom of it. I guess that’s why I always thought they were having such a good time. I rarely saw them this free. But that freedom came with a cost, because as I’m learning in my life, you pay for that freedom the next morning with guilt and more shame. Living a whole life embarrassed and not wanting to pass that embarrassment to your children. It’s living in the fear that a misplaced word will display the short educations prescribed to children who had to work. Not wanting to pass on a shame that you don’t even have the language to denounce. It’s just a feeling.
It feels like sinking. It felt like my body was actually sinking and drowning. My chest would tighten, my skin would go prickly cold and my throat would go dry. Like all of my moisture was evaporating and I was becoming like stone. And then I would turn off. The messages getting yelled at me were getting through, but how I felt about them never really developed past that sense of dread. I get that feeling less often now, but when I was a kid it was constantly overwhelming.
Seeing that book was one of those times that I was conscience that the wrath I was getting had nothing to do with me. It was embarrassment on my Grandma’s part because she was almost hysterical. She told my Grandpa he had no right to show me this book and it was hers. He explained what he was doing, but the reason Grandpa and I had so much time to discuss the book was because she was off taking a nip. I’m sure she fully expected to come back in the room and watch one of her stories, but instead she sees the proof that she picked cotton in the south and whatever that entailed on the lap of her great granddaughter.
The great granddaughter that was going to be proof that they were all okay. She was going to rise above her roots and make everyone so proud. But I didn’t understand that either. I didn’t know there was anything in our lives to be ashamed of (except for the drinking part- that got complicated for me to beg off friends visits).