Living in Filth

I just don't get this whole adult thing where people live in clean palaces.

Here's what I see when I visit other people:

Here's what I see when I come home:

(Except we don't have the excuse of kids to cause this sort of thing)

Wife and I have a bedroom, office, living room, kitchen and two bathrooms to clean. That's really not a lot of space. And this March, we planned out 1-2 rooms per weekend for deep cleaning, like taking out everything, rearraginging, dusting, washing it and putting it back. We got the living room done, and most of the kitchen. 

Even when things are relatively tidy, things go to shit quick. Since we try to eat healthy and make food at home, the dishes pile up quickly. Empty table space is like an invitation for the mail you don't think you can throw away yet, but don't know what to do with either as well as the cereal boxes that just don't fit in anywhere. Wife has a desperate fear of becoming a hoarder, so at least we are able to throw away legitimate trash. At least we aren't living with the remains of takeout food surrounding us along with dead cats for atmosphere. right?

The way I see things, there's about 5 useable hours a day where you aren't sleeping or working (including prep and travel time). Take out 2 hours for applying to jobs. 1 hour for cooking a healthy dinner. and there's two hours left in your day. Oh, wait, we have to budget the bills and see if we have enough to buy gas this week. 1.5 hours left. 

Oh wait, I'd like to spend some time connecting (not a euphemism, not entirely) with the person I want to spend my life with. Hard to connect when you're elbow deep in toilet gunk. 

So we end up doing what absolutely has to be done, like dishes and laundry, and leave the rest for another day. 

It's all just another thing Disney lied to me about. Where are the singing birds and mice that are supposed to help do this shit?

At least we got the Christmas tree down this month. 

Sallie Mae Can Suck My Balls Clean

Life lately:

Enjoying the hell out of working with wife. She is contracting with my company, and making such a good impression that the president the other day was like "Get ____ to help you with that project" to one of the sales head dudes. We eat lunch together every day. We're kindof sickeningly in love :)

Working on weekly goals, some we reach. Others not. This week, to only eat out twice, both times because of work reasons.

Met with a lawyer and found out we are in too much debt for chapter 13, and make too much money for chapter 7. (last year, I would have qualified for a chapter 7, but couldn't find the $1600 that it would have taken to file it since I had no job, so go figure). We literally can't declare bankruptcy even though we have multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loans between us and will NEVER be able to work it all off. Our loan debts take all my paychecks per month leaving not quite enough for rent. So we rely on wife to make money for us to live on. There's something rather freeing about the fact we cannot discharge student loans (because Sallie Mae in 2005 lobbied congress to pass a law making that impossible), yet they are so large due to predatory lending that we cannot possibly keep up the payments. Something freeing about looking at indentured servitude for the rest of our natural lives. In fact, it's weird because even indentured servants got off after 7 years. Fannie Mae has us for life without parole, and it's all perfectly legal for them to do so.

It's easy to denigrate us for taking on so much debt. But we aren't alone. Student loan debt surpassed $1 trillion this year. There's no question it's the next bubble, higher ed. As more and more of us, fed the lie that higher education is the key to a better life, take on debt, then find no jobs for us on the other side, we are not going to be able to pay back the promise/lie you fed us, America. But hey, don't take my word for it. Other bloggers have said it far better than me.

We keep on truckin on. Sallie Mae suicide is certainly something we discuss on an intellectual level, since being in this position sucks so much balls, and no one gives a shit because you took out the loans willingly to chase the dream that we are fed about education being worth the cost. But in the end, I keep saying, we don't have a house, we don't have cars worth more than 300 bucks. we really have nothing to our names, so what the hell would they take? They can garnish wages, sure, but would any sane judge garnish so much that I can't afford rent let alone food or gas to get to work to pay the wages they garnish? It's hard to say, since this insane system has been upheld by judges so far.

Maybe once enough people are out of work and in life-debt to Sallie Mae - and given the exponential costs of higher ed, that won't take long - things might start to change. Until then, will keep going to work, keep paying the interest only payments that are more than i made in a month at my first professional job 10 years ago.

Sigh.

Bipolar Life in 2012

In typical fashion I’m a day late on reflection. Seems that all the year of 2012 blogs are already out and done.

I was at a show the other night, the Vilification Tennis group doing their F**K 2012 show. They are a wildly inappropriate insult comic group and always a blast to go see. You will think “Oh, you didn’t” at least once during the show, often while laughing. Here’s a video of them at the renaissance fest.

 I cannot repeat the Red Hook jokes, but they did help me personally to find some way through that shit that has been weighing on me for the past month.

Well, during the show, one of the activities was to ask the audience who had the shittiest year. They asked people to raise their hands to share. I thought over the past year.

I started off the year 4 months into unemployment that would last another 2 then got some sort of contract-work-employed for a couple months. I would have declared bankruptcy if I’d had the $1,500 for a lawyer. I was 3 months into pre-foreclosure on the house. I told my mother I'd had thoughts of suicide in two emails, and she never responded. I broke off contact with my family. I’ve hit my heaviest weight ever in the last week. Wife is now living in the uncertain contract position life where we never know when she will be paid and how long she has a job. Wife’s years of school loans are coming due at a rate of $900 a month to begin with. We enter 2013 with no savings, no safety net, and capped off the holidays by walking out on Christmas weekend with wife’s family after her grandmother said one too many criticisms of wife (a long list 33 years deep that includes how she was too big to ever get a husband, too dumb, useless and now added too loud, so thanks for that new complex). Also had a fun fight with her family members who were complaining about homeless people begging for money, when we were literally weeks from being among them when I finally landed my job.

Yet. I didn’t raise my hand.

And not because I was scared to speak in public. I don’t have that fear.

I didn’t raise my hand out of some sort of “could be worse” thing.

For every piece of crap part of my life over the past year, I also thought about the things that went right.

We sold the house before it was foreclosed, without owing money. I got hired by an awesome company and doing what I love – writing and creating. I am doing better without my family, and now know they can’t manipulate me through money, even when times are at their worst, and no longer accept money from them. I do pretty well feeling like shit about life on my own without their help, and Wife’s work is uncertain, but it’s a fuck of a lot better than working for Lisa Larson et al. at Hennepin Technical College. She gets paid closer to what she is worth, is respected for what she can do, and has gotten to know my colleagues better than me since she’s more of a people person than me. We get to go to work together every day and eat lunch together. We got on a debt reduction program. We quit smoking in August and it has stuck. Once I got my job, we have been able to start fully participating in life in the Twin Cities by having fantastic dinner experiences at The Melting Pot, the Lexington, Mort’s Deli, and more. We spent our anniversary in the St. Paul Hotel, where we got upgraded to the poshest room where presidents, dignitaries and celebrities stay. We’ve gone to Twins games, Paul F. Tompkins, Wits, Sleepwalk with Me with both Ira Glass and Mike Birbiglia at the screening, the It’s A Wonderful Life Radio Play, a Roast of Ebenezer Scrooge, the ballet, Art a Whirl, the Walker Art Museum, Northern Spark, the Aquatennial fireworks, Prairie Home Companion, Canterbury Downs horse races. Instead of not being able to go to things because we’re broke as shit, we can’t go cause we simply can’t find the time cause there’s too much we want to do. We’ve had trips to the North Shore, Duluth, and Red Wing. Wife’s best friend made it home safely from Afghanistan. Wife overcame fear of heights to go with me up Lutsen mountain in a gondola. For one month, we were both happily employed full time (more than we’ve ever been). We’ve been relatively healthy this year. I’m off all medications. Our cars have miraculously made it through another year.

2012 continued our bipolar life, which would have been a good alternate name for this blog. Highs, Lows, and few inbetweens.

BTW, the guy who won the shittiest year award: Got the Harley he’d saved up for years for, six months later, got hit by a drunk driver and spent three months in the hospital. Yeah, that would suck ass.

A night out at the ballpark becomes a deathtrap

We were spoiled by the RedHawks. There isn’t much more to it. But our evening trying to capture that summer joy of being at a ballgame with the St. Paul Saints quickly became a disaster, filled with danger.

Wife had bought tickets through Groupon, which meant we had to pick them up at the window on Thursday, the opening day for the Saints. This was our first game with them, the first of many we planned. The RedHawks had been a staple of our summers. We’d come to enjoy each player’s quirks, and mourned when they moved on or were traded away.

First thing is parking. For literally two miles along the road the field is on, people are parking along the street. Luckily, there are a few lots close by, and we coughed up 6 bucks to park there, in a field of grass.

We made our way to Midway Stadium, at 5:50. They don’t open the gates until an hour before first pitch, so we had some time to stand there and look around. There’s a sign that says that stadium waves are not allowed at Midway. “Do they hate fun?” I said. “Maybe” Wife said.

Finally we get through the turnstyles built for 10 year old beanpole kids, and start heading to our seats. We end up in the next to last row on the far right field side of the main bleachers. Bleachers? Yes, these seats are silver colored metal steel bleachers (with back rails at least). We’d grown used to nice, cool, plastic fold down chairs with cup holders, like adults use. I can’t imagine these seats are any sort of comfortable in the heat of mid-summer.

At this point, I was daunted a bit. I can’t say I was undaunted anymore. I'm plussed. We puffed our way to the seats. I tried to make the best of it by taking our remaining 32 bucks and get some food. I got a brat and a pulled pork sandwich and two beers for 18.50. The food was good, even better than similar fare at the RedHawks, even if the price was more. I also can’t get over the $12 per seat at this stadium for bleachers in the hot sun high above the stadium. RedHawks were $8 and you could sit right by the on-deck batter as he warmed up.

So now it’s still early. The announcer is testing his mic, and it isn’t going well for him. His station is a fold out table on top of the hometeam dugout. This mic is picking up parts of words here and there, which could be a problem when it comes time to announce a player named Hiscock. After 10 minutes of “mic check” and trying to get through his script and failing miserably, someone goes out to the stage behind the pitchers mound to grab the mic from there. This mic is the only working one in the stadium.

I decide to go get some more food with our remaining money. There are no hot peanuts, my wife’s favorite game food. But they have regular. I get myself a big pretzel, which is my favorite game food. I also try to get some soda, but can’t figure out why they don’t have anything. It’s three bucks a bottle, and all I can see is RC cola and 7up. I leave without soda.

The teams are announced, then the Governor is there, and the Mayor, and all these military people. They wait for the mic to be delivered back to the stage on the field. It’s military night at the ballpark, and they play a video that reduces wife to tears because her best friend is in Afghanistan, and she resents the team for playing so heavily on emotions. The mic is run out to the podium, where the speeches begin.

The pretzel is the worst. The absolute worst I’ve ever had. It was stale as hell, as if it had been waiting since last season. Oh my lord was it aweful. It’s hard to describe how bad it was. My unborn children’s children will carry the stain of this pretzel on their souls. And yet I ate nearly all of it because we had almost no money left and it was going to be a long game. We agreed for me to take the last 6 bucks and get to bottles of soda.

I’m done listening to speeches. It’s now 7:15 and the game isn’t even close to starting.

Turns out that RC and 7up are the major brands of pop at Midway. I get two bottles of Hawaiian Punch and head back up to the seats.

Before I get there, Wife is coming down the stairs. “Let’s go” she says, as if she can hear my battered psyche breaking its nails on the stone walls of this prison well of an experience. I love her. She’s never left a game early except for once, at the RedHawks one July 4 when it was so hot I was turning pale and vomity. Even then it took 5 innings.

This time, we weren’t even going to make it to first pitch, which was now 20 minutes behind schedule.

We walk to the car and start to drive home. “You know, when I got up to leave, the people next to me wouldn’t let me through,” wife says. “What?” “I asked to get through, and they said no.” “Seriously?” “No shitting.” “That’s ridiculous.” “Yeah. Fuck the Saints and their fans.”

Then about the time we get into Minneapolis on 94, the car sounds like something fell off the back end. What the fuck?

We pull over as soon as possible, with each bump making this horrible death rattle. I find a parking lot and get out to look under the car. Nothing is hanging on the ground, everything seems OK. I try to wiggle the muffler, but it’s steady. Now we have a car that runs, but feels like a death trap, and we are in downtown Minneapolis, ten miles from home. We get back on the road, and start driving. The gas is on the last eighth of a tank. So at least when we blow up, there won’t be a lot of fire.

Every bump on the road becomes a new reason for my heart to stop beating. The car clangs away in staccato triplets. Chung chung chung. Chung chung chung.

We make it through half way of downtown when we get to a stop light on Nicollete, and there’s a fucking race going on. A bunch of runners take off and we have to wait for the cops to let us through. Mental math on the state of the car tells me that it wouldn’t handle the cobblestone streets I would have to go on to get to 55, so I get on interstate 394. Going 40. Cars honking, piiiiiissed off, wanting us dead. I go north on 100 to get onto 55. Again, every single bump is another nail in our coffin. Wife is crying at this point. My first paycheck arrives tomorrow, and we may already lose it to the car. “Things will never be good for us.” She says. Part of me wonders if it is true.

We get home an hour after leaving the game. I’m exhausted. The sun is going down. Wife uses the last of her credit card to order pizza. She ends up spending the night throwing up in the bathroom.

Our groupon gives us two more tickets. We will give them another shot, only because the game is with the RedHawks, and they’ll need support to get through playing at this devil field. 

Cleaning up the jobless aftermath

I know I'm posting a shit load more than usual, and I know that leads to a downturn in readership, but shit, I got a job! And I have a lot to process.

The breakdown came yesterday. It’s quite a different feeling to have all these stresses and weights on your shoulders for months and months.

First, an interesting tidbit about credit cards. When you decide to stop paying them, you get a lot of phone calls. Luckily, we live in an age where our phones tell us what area code a call is coming from, and you can just ignore them. But it was getting to be about 12 calls a day to ignore.

I wish I could have picked up, to say, yes, I’ll send you a payment straght away. However, I learned early on that when they say “We want to work with you,” that means, “Pay us the full amount you owe us now.”  Don’t have a job, or money? Too bad, pay us.

(warning, video has strong language)

The crazy thing is after a few months, you start getting really ridiculous offers. At one point, they said I could pay off the whole 20,000 on the card with just 11,000 in four easy payments. You got to wonder, what the hell do they think I’m not paying for? Because I’m secretly stashing 11,000?  But it occurs to me that if you don’t give a shit about your credit score and you want to simply cut out a lot of debt, stop paying for a while and see what happens.

I have a bankers box full of recent bills, paystubs, late payments, tax returns, house information. It’s about 10 pounds worth of documents I used to fill out the lawyers form for bankruptcy. It’s been sitting there, waiting for me to have enough money to move ahead with it. Then I sold the house and got hired. So all that was left was about 30k in credit card debt.

And with the new job, I have the ability to make things right. I was more than willing to do bankruptcy and take a dump on my credit rating. I don’t want to buy a house again for a long time, and used cars are the only option I’ve ever thought would be available to me. Renting if we ever decided to move would be difficult, but we are settled with no plans to move for another four years anyway. Moving sucks balls.

On Wednesday, I called ACCC, a nonprofit debt relief company to see if I could get on a debt management program. They set me up to start at 770 a month for nearly five years to get out of it, which was less than I imagined. If I were to continue paying the minimum payment on these cards, it would cost me 1000 a month and take 25 years and about 17000 more in interest. They asked me to call each of the five cards to close the accounts.

OnThursday, I called each card. The big one, the 20000 one, gave me an offer to pay off directly to them, 270 a month for 60 months. They would forgive the interest, so the total cost would be 16000, with 0 percent interest locked in for those 60 months. I called ACCC back and they were like, shit, yeah, take that deal. So now between the two, it will be 550 a month to fully pay off my debts. Half of that for 4 years, the other half for 5. And I’ll be out.

Not to mention we can start paying back the family debts that accrued just so we could eat PB and J sandwiches and fill the car.

And after all that, I started putting the papers I’d pulled out of the box back in. All the credit bills, all the paperwork, the 10 pounds of paper that has felt like 2,000. And my body began to shake, and my face clenched in tearless sobs. And I can breathe. 

I got a job!!!!!!!

It’s hard to know where to begin. How about the numbers?

9 months

500 applications (at least)

50 interviews

1 job.

A JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Plus a side job editing stuff that I can continue to do to bring in some extra money each week.

Plus some freelancing.

And I sold the house.

On top of that, this new job pays nearly 30 percent more than the old one in Fargo (which is about right for the difference between here and there according to some sites). After 9 months of trying to pay for a wedding, going DEEP into credit debt, trying to figure out how to make $50 last the week when one gas fill up takes most of that, trying to remain sane, I have a new job that starts on Monday. Yesterday, we were wondering how the hell we were going to pay rent in June. Today, we are planning a budget that more than doubles what we were “living” on.

I can soon get an oil change for my car that has muscled through 5000 miles since the last mechanic set eyes on her.

I can soon own more than one pair of kacki pants.

I can get new shoes after 2.5 years on the last pair, daily.

I can have more than a carl budding lunch meat sandwich and ramen for lunch every day.

24 hours ago, we were trying to figure out how to come up with 1500 for a bankruptcy lawyer. Today, we can decide to go through a credit counseling service instead. They couldn’t help me before without a steady income.

Tomorrow, I have a therapy appointment. I’m still going, cause you’re probably wondering why I haven’t been already for criminy sake.

Job hunting has never been this hard in my life. It has been brutal. Painful. Confusing. Madening. Frustrating. Full of moments that seem like, "This is it, this is the one!" and then having that job pulled from your open hands, and then crushed in front of you. And every time you see Romney saying he's jobless, or see some politician on tv talking about how jobless people need to just get back to work you want to punch their grandchildren while they watch. Better yet, make them apply to jobs they are more than qualified for for 9 months without landing anything.

Every job advice column grates on you. You follow the advice, you blame yourself, you want to scream at HR computers who disqualify you without explanation.

Its experiences like this that people with jobs just don’t understand. It’s so easy to get comfortable, to think that you are a highly qualified, great worker with impecable references and qualifications. But the moment you take that leap into the unknown and find out how none of that means squat in a new hiring computer system that rejects you without a chance after you spent 2 hours filling out their stupid forms that repeat every goddamn thing that is already on your resume. Yet, don't accept that where you are is where you will have to be forever. Fear of leaving a job you hate can be just as soul-killing as trying to land a job you'll love.

Yeah, today is a day full of relief, fear, confusion, a new ability to breathe. I’m still trying to process it. It’s going to take a long time to recover.

Cee Lo, I need to go enjoy this breathing thing, please take it from here:

(addition): Long talk with the wife last night on how to be smart about this. How not to do the dumb thing and go money crazy the first month. We can live with our laptop that's missing a P button and has a cord held together by duct tape. We can live with the couch that got messed up in the move so now it feels like sitting on the floor. Slowly, carefully, we will crawl our way back to normalcy. 

Anatomy of shitty job seeker columns

One thing that I get a lot of as a job seeker is email newsletters from the many places I use to find new positions. Often, an HR professional will write an advice piece on what you are doing wrong as a job seeker and how to correct that.

The beauty of this sort of criticism/advice is that it can be done to anything a job seeker does, because it is ALWAYS your fault that you don’t have a job. You said something wrong or did something “unprofessional” that lost you the job.

Let’s take today’s e-mail from The Ladder about annoying voicemails. 

The writer brings up a topic, here leaving voicemails, and has a handy example of why some moron didn’t get a job because of his stupidface voicemail message. Some of the tips are solid – Of course you should leave your phone number and full name.

But most of these are doing some language parsing and imagineering on a grander scale than a sophomore English major trying to impress her professor. The columnist reads the line: “When I spoke with your CEO at our Alumni Conference last week, he mentioned what a great background I have for the role” as a vague threat. Perhaps Stan was genuinely excited about the job, to the point that when he saw the CEO at an event, he introduced himself and made a good impression. Stan really wants to work for your company, so much so that he’s generating networking opportunities to build relationships. He wants to jump in right now, because there’s nothing more he wants to do with his life than help your company become the juggernaut of industry that you all know it can be. But I guess noting that you are ready to go ASAP is “desperate.” My argument here is that the audience can take the message any way they want to. It's the old communication machine: 

You can encode a message as carefully as you like, but half of the process lies in the ability of the receiver to decode the message accurately. If you intentionally want to be a dick, like the HR person who read Stan's message about chatting with the CEO as a threat, you sure can, but do you think there's more than 5 percent chance that Stan could have been calling to threaten the HR person?  

I’ve got some degrees, and I can play this fun game as well. Lets look at the voicemail that the columnist says is a good example and one we should use as a template for our own interactions.

“Hi Susan, it’s Jim Ablebody at 867-5309. Just calling to let you know how excited I am about the opportunity there at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. As I mentioned last week, I’ve spent 17 years in nuclear safety, so I feel there could be a great fit. Hey, just like Mariano Rivera, I’m getting better with age! Thanks, Susan, and, again, it’s Jim [stop and tiny pause]. Ablebody [stop and tiny pause]. 867-5 [stop and tiny pause]. 309 [stop and tiny pause]. Thanks, Susan!”

1. Hi? Hi!? You really need to be more formal in these voicemails. Friends and schoolkids say Hi. Professionals say Hello or Good Afternoon.

2. “Just calling” is an outright lie. You are not just calling to let me know you are excited. There are a plethora of valid and good reasons you are calling me.

3. “Mariano Rivera”? Seriously? Is that a baseball player? You’ve just turned off anyone who isn’t into sports. Add to that your use of the word age rather than experience and you’ve just lost the job, buckko.

4. You said Thanks, Susan twice here. You are groveling too much at this point. You are repetitive, and aparantly have some sort of “thanks” Tourettes.

5. You said you have 17 years in the business. So, why are you trying to kill me? (Ok, that was just for fun)

So what’s the upshot of all this? The vast majority of columns can be boiled down to “just be nice and be respectful of the HR department’s time.” “It’s always your fault you don’t have a job yet because you did something stupid, stupid pants." And in part "HR departments are always right no matter how they want to interpret your messages, so don't question them. OBEY." 

With the wide variety of HR professionals out there, each with their own strange quirks, pet peeves, and outside lives that affect their mood at any given moment, there is no magic bullet that will get you hired. It's an impossible task to come up with something so neutral that it won't offend someone for some random reason, but will also be in the least bit memorable. What you say to one employer can be taken completely wrong by another. But such thinking makes for entertaining exercises in language analysis and keeps job experts busy writing columns about all the things you are doing wrong. 

Things sticking in my craw lately

If you are going to have me fill out a job form that takes 2 hours to give you the exact same information that's on my resume and cover letter, please don't be a dick and send a form rejection letter.

I should not get antibiotics right away for an ear infection and then watch as my wife is told she has to wait a week to get antibiotics for an illness she got from me.  Watching her suffer for a week while I got better was horrible. Then she finally got a prescription on the THIRD visit to the doctor.

I got a call from a job that I did a phone interview for two weeks ago. They were going ahead with other people, but it was certainly nice to have a human being call to let me know. I appreciated that.

One of my wife's friends is helping me with my query letter, which is absolutely wonderful since he used to be in the agent business. He's also forwarded my name to contacts that might need some freelance work done from time to time. He is now my hero. 

While I will not use my name in this blog, since people who hire in this day and age do searches, and this is not a professional outlet that I want to advertise myself, I did get a thing published today by Walker Blogs. They were looking for writers of 300-word quickies called viewfinders. Wife encouraged me to send one in about a piece we saw last month at the Walker. The few readers of this blog will find out who I am, but I'm OK with that as long as you don't use my name in this space. The nice thing is that it will lead to some freelancing work so I can write about art events in the cities that wife drags me to.   

So between the contract editing work and this Walker thing, I might actually have some money trickling in. Not enough to live on, but I like that both things are doable even after I get a full time job. Once that happens, these part time things can go entirely to paying off debts and bills that have piled up during unemployment. It's just getting that full time job that's eluding me.

Our house is in the middle of selling. So that's nice!  I stopped paying for it in November, and I won't see any money whatsoever from the sale, but I think once it's done, it will be off the plate of worries I've had resting on my shoulders.

Wife is feeling the pressure of keeping things afloat by working full time while I struggle along looking for a full time job myself. It's a daily struggle. Tears. Stomach pits. IBS. Judging by the shit that's coming out of me now, by the time I'm in a home, I will be a nursing assistant's worst nightmare. (I said this wasn't professional. You were warned.) I love my wife and wish I could pull through soon to just get us both on some kind of solid ground. Once that happens, Watch Out Twin Cities.

The Wife Speaks!

[Fargo Jones here. Today, I was a chauffeur for my wife as we got free dental x-rays at her school, then headed to a conference in downtown Minneapolis. I sat and applied to jobs while she went to breakout groups. She came to find me after one of them. "We have to go now." She was steaming mad. And not at me! As she told me about what happened, I said, you need to write about this. This is gold! Gold I tell ya! Below is her guest entry on my blog. I swear I didn't write a word of it, especially the nice things she says about me. She asked me to interject wherever I wanted, and when I do so, it'll be in brackets. Like this]

17 months ago, the dream of achieving a Ph.D. in literature at UND was ripped from my grasp.  The business of achieving Ph.D.'s in the humanities isn't like other fields.  Most medical doctors can practice medicine in life or death situations after 7 years of post-secondary education.  I completed 4 years for my bachelors, 2 years for my first Master's, 2 years for my second Master's, and 4 years towards my Ph.D., which, ladies and gentlemen equals a total of 12 years of post-secondary education.  12 MOTHER FUCKING YEARS to teach people how to write a sentence.  In most professions, you get to some point where industry standards exist.  Hair stylists, nail technicians, medical doctors, nurses, and auto mechanics all take board exams to practice their professions.  But, Ph.D.'s in the humanities do not have ANY industry standards.  Instead, every school can create the craziest, most unfair requirements, which they can change at a drop of a hat, to prevent people from achieving their dreams.  I gave up my life for this dream, only to be brought down by unfair, unachievable requirements and self-absorbed faculty members who collectively decided that I was NOT Ph.D. material.  They forced me out of the only world I knew, and my dream was shattered. 

Too many people use the cliché that time heals all wounds.  I resigned myself to screaming "That is FUCKING BULLSHIT! You should be wearing a HELMET!" at all people who say that to me.  While the wound isn't gaping, I still can't breathe several times a day because of the pain.  I was literally told that I didn't belong in this world, so I created a new dream, with my beautiful and talented husband in the Cities.  Followers of this blog are quite aware of our trials and tribulations.  But yes, the dream was shattered, followed by 8 months of unemployment, followed by 6.5 months of my husband's unemployment which leads us to today.

Today my current job forced me to attend the MNCUEW Conference.  I should have been excited to get away from a rather hectic week at work, which resulted in a new student visit record.  My stats say that I have increased student retention and visit rate by 1600%.  Yep, that number is right.  I'm married to the most amazing man, AND I wore the cutest dress ever.  I should have been ok.  But, walking right back into the trauma, all by myself, felt surreal.  The fact it was held at the Minnesota School of Art and Design, and I was surrounded by pictures of abstract vaginas didn't help.

The first and only session I attended today was titled: "Teaching Inside and Outside the Classroom" which was supposed to be a panel "composed of higher education professionals with graduate degrees in English. The panel addresses the multiple career paths, including careers in student life, academic support, and higher education administration, available for those with English backgrounds who elect not to teach." Turns out the panel consisted of two deans, who were clearly best friends, from a local community college.  Sadly, the session was not well attended, which indicates the worst 2 words known to man: audience participation.  MOTHER FUCK! 

When it was time for me to introduce myself and say what "my dream job was outside of teaching" it was if I was possessed.  Even now, some 8 hours later, I still wonder what came over me.  Did I get some sort of contact high from the art?  Was there something in the vegan lunch they served which was a bit too "organic?"  So I said my name, my two jobs, and the following: "I tried the PH.D., and I don't want to teach full time because contact with faculty makes me vomit in my mouth a little.  This week alone, I worked with 75 different students in 3 days, and I just don't know how much longer I can keep this pace up."  It was as if my filter had disappeared.  What the hell, "vomit in my mouth a little," that phrase is saved for my husband.  But, everyone laughed, as they always do when my insanity starts showing, and I became the negative, overwhelmed, underachiever in the back.   

The women believed the best way to tell us about our future was to brag about their perfect lives.  They handed out sheets of paper with their job trajectory and said such garbage as "I've never had a job I didn't love going to everyday," "My job title is Dean of Innovative Teaching & Learning.  Isn't that an exciting title?" and "I've never been without a job."  Was this included in the program? HELLS NO!

Their suggestions for getting a dean job were the following:

"You could sell courses to online universities for 20-30 dollars a course."

"If you're feeling overwhelmed, take a sabbatical."  [This is what Deans said to a room full of adjuncts and staff workers. They don't get sabbaticals unless you count not hiring an adjunct for a semester a sabbatical.]

"Just market your skills a little differently, and you'll get the job of your dreams." (Notice how they didn't exactly give concrete suggestions about how to do that)

"I know there are other jobs out there, but I just don't know what they are." [Good thing you have this fucking session about other jobs for teaching backgrounds, you stupid fucks]

Intermixed with this incredibly unhelpful advice was verbal masturbation about their lives.  I felt like they were saying, "How great is it to be me. You should all want to be me."

But, the one thing, that pushed me over was the following comment: "You will NOT get a dean job without a Ph.D. in the metro area.  If you do not go back to school, you must move to greater MN. My suggestion to the woman in the back is to go finish your Ph.D." [Never mind that we tried greater MN, it didn't help. Also, wife's bosses have less education than she does.]

Seriously, if I could have picked the worst thing said to me ever, this would have hit the top of the list.  I mean my husband's mother told my husband, shortly after the wedding "I can't find anything to love about your wife" was less hurtful than this.  The thing about is, though, only one of the two women had her Ph.D. and the woman who said this to me was the one who didn't. 

Fortunately, when discussion time arose, one of my husband's friends from his Creative Writing Days, who just happened to be at the session announced, "Well, you made my decision clear.  Admin is not the way to go for me."  I could have hugged him.  Here we were, 12 overworked, underpaid, exhausted human beings searching for a way out, a ray of hope, an idea that we hadn't thought of before to get us out of our current predicament.  Instead, I received a spear to my heart, a re-opened wound from UND, and hatred of two women whom I will never see again. [I want to say thank you to that friend for verbally bitch slapping these two condescending bitches.]

To them I say, Fuck you, you do not matter.  I am grateful that I do not have to work with you two bitches every day.  And, to UND and my husband's mother I say, Fuck you, you do not matter.  In spite of this session, my husband and I will find a way off of this dark, dark path we are on and into the light.  By holding on to each other and our absolutely magical love, we will find a way.  And, I thank you, dear readers and followers of my husband's blog, for indulging me in this rant and for supporting him in his daily struggles as a Midwest writer.   

I wrote this while in my boxers

So week three of the temp job is going along nicely. It’s late tonight, and I haven’t blogged in a while. Wife is sleeping, dreaming poorly if history is any indication. Lots of things going on, and I don’t know how to organize it all into a coherent blog from the heart.

Temping. I have to say that I have truly enjoyed the mind-numbing trudgery that is my temp job for the past 2 and a half weeks. Mostly, I spend my days cutting and pasting from one document to another. Sometimes, I go in and fix html code. Sometimes, I create excel documents on what information is missing. Sometimes, I read over pages and pages of numbers to make sure that they are all correct. But, I’m getting paid for the first time in a long time, and that’s nice. I got to work overtime last week by going in Saturday. Time and a half kicks ass.

Not to complain about getting hung with a new rope, but it hasn’t made hunting for a permanent position easier. I now spend my few hours not working and not trying to tackle the laundry or keeping connected with the wife by applying to jobs. I’m still up for a couple, that said they would call two weeks ago. I send emails every 6 days to see if they are progressing. Nothing.

On Thursday, I went in for an interview at Sears. The internet link led me to believe it was the first of two such interviews, but I was hired after 20 minutes. For $6 an hour plus commission.

I’ve never been a proud person. I’ve worked shit jobs for shit pay and had no problem doing it. I lived for 2 and a half years in a 2 room apartment that had a bathroom in the main hallway, and with no shower where I had to sit in a tub and pour water on my head with a bucket because the tub was too small. I’m pretty sure my neighbor was cooking meth every night too.

But there was no mention of benefits. There was almost an expectation on the interviewers part that I would say no. “Do you have any problems with what I’ve said so far?” was a common question.  Then I was told to get a drug test in the next two days, regardless of what my availability was. The drug testing place was only open 9-4, and on the other end of the metro area. I already had work scheduled for the temp job where I get more than twice what I would earn at Sears.

So now came one of those moments. Those decisions that will haunt you no matter which way you choose.

Left: a soul-sucking job that I woudn’t enjoy, that wouldn’t help with the bills that have already piled up, that would be a large step backward, keep me away from the wife, and horrible to be around when I was with her, and my job hunt would be curtailed for who knows how long.

Right: A soul-sucking joblessness that continues to eat what little remains of my self esteem and self worth. Temp work that isn’t reliable.

A long weekend and lots of soul searching and conversations led us to me not going in for the drug testing. I have an interview Friday to do a similar job to the caretaking thing I did for 8 months after grad school – watching people with disabilities to make sure they are OK. I didn’t mind the work then, and would be happy to do it again. It also pays a shitton better, if not as well as I got in Fargo.

Here’s what keeps me going, in all the darkness. I just need a yes.

One yes.

I’ve been asking for that yes for six months now. And wading through rejection after rejection.

But One. Just one and both wife and I will have full time jobs for the first time in our relationship. We dream of paying bills when they come in the mail, instead of waiting until the last possible day. It’s a small dream, but its ours.

One yes and we will be able to finally take part in some of the events that the Twin Cities has to offer.

One yes, and we can start the long road of recovery back to not having to raid the change jar to pay for gas to get to an interview. To not having to craigslist items to get by for another week.

One yes and our world changes.

That’s what I hang on to. 

The incredibly demeaning, pointless, soul sucking mindfuck that is job hunting

So it's been about 6 months now of job hunting. 250 jobs applied to, 2 job fairs, 2 networking events, and about 30 phone and in person interviews. That's 1 out of every ten applications that gets an interview. When you figure that most jobs have 90-200 applicants, I think those are pretty good numbers, yet I still have not converted into a job. The frustration is aggravating, demoralizing, and highly depressing. I've been sooooo close, and usually get told that I did absolutely nothing wrong. Wife says it's a miracle that I don't just lie in bed all day under the covers.

Three weeks ago, I was in the running for a position at the MNCPA for basically the same job I've been doing for the past 5 years, even less demanding, in fact. I did something I hadn't done before, I was more myself than usual, rather than formulating answers based on advice learned from interview books and websites. I briefly hinted at this previously, but want to go into this more. At one point I mentioned how my last job writing and editing newsletters was everything I loved about journalism with nothing I hated. I usually don't use the hate word, and books would say this is a big no no. And when asked what I hated about the job, I answered with my heart rather than my head.

"Well, that's a big question with a rather complicated answer, but I think it comes down to honesty. Newspapers pretend to be objective, but, particularly in small towns, the newspaper is essentially a promotional tool for how wonderful the community is no matter what the story. I found that to be a sort of dishonesty that can eat at you over time. Newsletters, however, are up front about their purpose. Everyone involved is in on the production process. You write stories about people, and they have a chance to see it before it goes to print. I like that collaboration."

Ordinarily, I would follow advice and address such a question with this. It usually doesn't come up since I don't talk like that about former jobs to begin with.

Anyway, I came in second for the job. The interviewer was super nice and left a message for me that was hands down the best rejection I have ever received. She seemed very sad that she couldn't hire me, that they didn't have two jobs. "You did everything absolutely right," she said. If anything didn't work out with the other person, or if she heard of anything, she would let me know. It made me feel pretty good and hopeful for the future. Perhaps I had latched onto something.

Then, on Tuesday last week, the same MNCPA job was posted online. Perhaps it was a mistake? I emailed. No response. I called, no answer. I called again, and she picked up. It was a pleasant conversation. I asked about the position, indicated that I was still available and willing. She said they were starting the search from scratch, and that I would be in the mix, that the other person didn't work out for some vague reason, and they were going another direction (with the same exact job description). She didn't know how long the process would take, but I should call back to check in at some point. I wanted to throw up a bit. Was everything she said before a lie? Was I grasping on to such hopeful words after a long, brutal search for jobs, for nothing? I was on lunch at my temp job, so there were no blankets to crawl under.

Life goes on. More jobs applied to. I'm waiting to hear about one editing position after interviewing 10 days ago. I should hear in the next day or two. I have a phone interview on Wednesday for a proofreading job and an in-person interview on Thursday evening for a job at Sears that would be a desperate return to retail. Next week I have an interview to work for the state in a caretaking position.

All I have ever wanted to do was write, to work on the craft, to meet people and talk to them until I find out why they are incredible and to share their stories with others. I moved to the cities thinking 8 years of doing just that and doing it well -- and earning a master's degree -- would be enough to land any number of communications jobs only asking for 2-3 years of experience and a bachelor's degree. Turns out that it isn't.

After almost 6 months, I did manage to get a temp job last week entering data from an adobe document to a CMS system. It continues this week. Although there were two aggravating hiccups with the temp service.   On Wednesday, when the world was covered in ice, I woke in time to give myself an hour and a half to drive ten miles to work. What I didn't account for was the extra 30 miles that would be added to the trip when my wife needed me to drive her to work as well. I notified the temp service of this. When I got a call from them, she asked "did you leave early?" Like I was some lazy roustabout barely able to figure out this whole "work" thing. I let it slide. Much like my car on the way to work. Then, I found out about a potential full-time job interview that wanted to see me. I emailed the temp service to ask: "I have received a call about an interview on Friday. I have not asked about how you work around interviews for permanent positions. I have not returned the call for the interview yet, so don't know how flexible they are on time, but she requested a 2 p.m. interview. Let me know." The answer was illuminating.

"As for an interview on Friday – this is only a week to 2 week assignment so it does not look good to have an interview during this period.  I would think the company would accommodate you if they know you are working on contract and will schedule after hours."

First, thanks for assuming that anyone would stay late at their job to interview a potential employee. Second, thanks for putting my temporary position above a potential permanent placement.

Anyway, that's a lot of ranting for one blog post. It may not be exciting to read, but this one was more therapy than anything.

Take your job advice and shove it

It’s been one of those weeks where I’ve been disoriented a lot because I can’t hear out of one ear. I get ear infections from time to time, and I’ve had so many at this point, the only way I know is I can’t hear. So now I’ve been on an antibiotic for 12 days and it still isn’t better but I have to wait until Tuesday to go in for something else. Antibiotics make pooping horrible, and it used to be a favorite past time of mine.

The main focal point of this entry, though, is to address those of you out there who like to cast aspersions on people who by hook and crook can’t land a job.

Back when wife was unemployed for 9 months, she started volunteering her time as she searched for jobs. She worked the phone bank for the Fargo Flood people and worked for the Red Cross. They got her out of the house, talking to people besides me, and put something fresh on the resume. She was applying for any and everything in Fargo Moorhead. She applied to work reception at an acupuncture place, teaching at any of the public, private and for profit colleges, student advising, libraries – basically anything that she had some degree of aptitude and experience to do.

While volunteering at the phone lines, she worked alongside middle-aged women who were married to well off people and didn’t need regular jobs. They would give her advice that always came off horribly. One said she should apply to teach high school, which you need a teaching license for which she doesn’t have. The person said she obviously didn’t have a job yet because she was being too picky.

Flash forward. I’ve been applying to about 20 jobs a week for several months now. I’ve become a wizard at filling out my job history, including phone numbers and addresses, from memory. I’ve had a couple dozen interviews, which means I’m in the top 5-10 out of 100 candidates usually. Last week I came in second for a job that would have been perfect. It was gut wrenching, but the interviewer said I did every single thing right, that I was obviously a great candidate, and she wished she had two jobs open. It was a spirit lifting message, since often times they don’t go that far and you are left wondering what happened.

I’m applying mostly to communications positions that fit me between 80-100 percent. That alone keeps me busy, but I’ve also been applying to stop-gap jobs that I have experience in – retail, home health care, admin work. That hasn’t worked either. Side note, menial jobs are much more likely to have to take hour-long ethical quizzes than jobs higher up the chain – seems to me this is backward.

I’ve got two temp-agencies working with me, one creative, one office staffing. Still nothing. I’ve been to job fairs and networking events. I’ve had people in various organizations put in a good word for me. I’ve listed my resume on a half-dozen sites. Still nothing.

Surely there must be something wrong with me, the common thinking goes. Anyone who wants a job can get one in this country. That’s what politicians like to say, and people believe it. They believe that they got a job because of their exemplary skills. I admit I had this too. When wife got a job in the cities, I figured with my strong background, awards, and crazy work ethic, it wouldn’t take long to land a job. I haven't been jobless more than 2 months since I was 15, and even then I usually had two jobs going on at any given time for a 50-60 hour work week. Sometimes, though, life just doesn’t work out that way no matter what you try, no matter how many different types of jobs you apply for.

I’m still getting interviews on a weekly basis with a resume one guy said was the worst he’d ever seen. After so many interviews, it starts to be like acting in a play. You wait for your queue and recite your well-rehearsed answers. For the last interview, I was a little more myself than usual. Rather than follow the advice from books and blogs about how to answer questions in an interview, I opened up a little bit and said what I actually thought when it came to the “what didn’t you like about your job” question. It got me closer to a job than I have before. So sometimes, you just have to chuck all the sage advice out the window and try something else.

A dialog with the bank

Me: Hello?

Bank: Hello! I’m returning the call you made about getting a month extension on the loan?

Me: Yeah, you did this magic thing in November so I just paid $40 to cover the interest. Wondering if that could happen again since I am still unemployed?

Bank: We love to work with our customers here at Gate City Bank, but since we did that before, we can’t do it again. You will have to make the regular payment to avoid any difficulties.

Me: Yeah. I have $19 to my name.

Bank: … We could set up a payment system.

Me: A payment system?

Bank: Yes, since the payment isn’t really due for 10 days after the due date, you could do half now and half after 10 days.

Me: I have $19 to my name.

Bank: We love to work with our customers here at Gate City Bank. Is there some way you can borrow the payment?

Me: Yeah, I’ve drained what I can of my 401k, cashed out my life insurance, and have pawned anything of value that won’t help me get another job. Still waiting for a job offer. I’m applying to 30 jobs a week, regardless of what it is. That doesn’t change the fact that I’ve reached the point where I have $19.

Bank: Do you get unemployment? 

Me: No. I don't since I got married two months after I moved.

Bank: Well, here is my number, please let me know if your situation changes. If you work at it diligently, I’m sure you’ll be employed again soon.

Me: So, no go on the extension?

Bank: We’ll have to keep on the same payment schedule.

Me: (wishing I said, I guess I’ll hear from you soon when you try to withdraw the payment and there’s no money there) OK. Thanks.