Fantasy

I'm exhausted. Today was a beautiful day - I went up into the mountains with some good friends. We ate, browsed in some shops, hiked a bit and came back into Denver. In and of itself this is an exhausting day, and, I have so much on my mind at the moment that staying engaged in the moment and enjoying the day took so much work in and of itself. I hope that this doesn't continue. I hope that I can find a job soon - or at the very least settle into what unemployment payments will be like.

In a beautiful moment this weekend I was sitting in a friend's front yard talking about the past, present, and future using cards with words picked anonymously from a stack. The word I pulled for my present was fantasy. At first it seemed incredibly ludicrous - but when I sat with the word I realized that I would love to view life for now as fantasy. As in - I currently don't have to work, but should, barring something with the unemployment, have my bills paid for. This is a fantasy of mine. And - I have the opportunity to look at my future through fantasy eyes to perhaps find a job that I can love. One where I can wake up in the morning and not dread going into work.

That fantasy is so hard to find. I get totally bogged down in worrying about money, and searching for currently open jobs to get back to work as soon as possible. I'd like to slow down.

Is This What My Life Has Come To?

I'm watching the Super Sweet Sixteen movie on MTV while job searching. Like OMG I am not ROTFL.

Not as Bad as Originally Thought

So while getting let go, fired, the boot or whatever has not been easy, I'm beginning to see that perhaps in the short run it's not as bad as I originally thought. I took a generous offer from Sheralee and accompanied her on a work trip to northwest Colorado. I can search for jobs and field phone calls from here, so I'm basically getting a change of scenery while doing the work that I'm responsible for now - namely finding a new job.

While I've been here and perhaps just while I've been unemployed - it's mostly the same - I've realized that while I'm certainly stressed and worried about where the next rent check is coming from it's a totally different stress than working for a company that could care less about me. It's a different stress than dreading going into work in the morning. I don't stress looking for jobs, or answering phone screens in and of themselves. I stress about finding a job and about finding a good job but somehow it's different. Partially I suppose because I was already stressing about finding a new and good job while going through the motions at a really horrible one.

Don't get me wrong - it's not all sunshine and lollipops - and somehow while I wish that I didn't get fired some sort of huge weight has been lifted. I say this today. I say this right now. Tomorrow may be different - yesterday surely was. But I'm slowly learning that all I have is right now and I'd like to learn how to live with that in mind.

Job Hunting is Hard

Do you ever wonder if maybe you just don't know how to be content? I do. I really didn't like my last job. Almost every night I would think, or say to the person I was with "I wish we didn't have to go to work tomorrow. Then we could just stay up and watch movies and sleep in." The thing about working though is that you end up getting a paycheck for the time that you spend working. Turns out now that I don't have a job I like the idea of a paycheck much better than the idea of staying up late and sleeping in.

There's certainly a silver lining. I'm heading on a work trip with Sheralee this afternoon and I can get up whenever I feel like it in the morning. I can lounge around in my underwear until I feel like hopping in the shower and I can do laundry during the day when there's not as much demand for the machines. I've had a chance to read blogs that are of interest to me and I have all day and night to look for and apply for a job that I have a chance of liking.

Still - If I'm honest I'd really like a flexible schedule AND a large paycheck. Hmm - don't think that's possible though. If anyone has any leads on a job in Denver please pass them my way!

Holy Hell This is Funny

Star in Your Own JibJab! It's Free!

Update

I have been posting very vaguely about phone calls and things that I want for the past at least two weeks if not more. And the time has come, dear readers, to tell you the story. It is NOT the story I wanted to tell you, and still it's the one I have. So sit right back and I'll tell a tale...

Around July 4th I began looking for a new job. I haven't come right out and said it on this blog, but I do not like the company I've been working for, and finally got to a point where I was motivated to do something about it. I applied for a select number of positions that looked really interesting, and got called back for two of them right away. I'm sorry to say that a large chain store that sells organization products exclusively did not pursue me past the first interview. But that's probably for the best - I'm an organizational wreck, and probably wouldn't have fit in real well there.

The second job was more promising. I was extremely excited about it and made it through 5 rounds of interview. Yes, you read that right - FIVE interviews. The third of which had me spending 3.5 hours meeting with seven different people in groups and some one-on-one, and the fifth of which had me presenting to a group of people about the trip I took to Carnegie Hall when I was working in Grand Rapids. This was no ordinary interview process. The five interviews took place in the span of a little more than two weeks and then I started the waiting game. I waited, one deadline passed, two deadlines passed and before I knew it more than two weeks had passed. Each time I had contact with the company I was told that the team was meeting or that the contact person was on vacation - it seemed incessantly long to me, and yet, I understood a bit of what was taking so long. In the end I did not get that position. I was extremely disappointed and still don't quite understand why it took more than two weeks to tell me I didn't get the job. That was Friday.

So I resolved to find something else, borrowed a friend's computer over the weekend and began the search yet again. Or continued it depending on how you want to look at it. Friday was also a hellish day at my current job, but that's a story I'd like to forget and for that reason will not be posting about it here on the blog. Yesterday was a hard day. I woke up in the morning after having a terrible nightmare, and went into work resolved to be productive even though it was the last place on earth I wanted to be. Turns out my unspoken wish came true. My boss (of about a month and a half) pulled me into his office one hour before quitting time to tell me that I'd been fired. He gave me some bullshit about low productivity and evaluating the department to see if anything could be scaled back. I had never in the time I've been talking with him and meeting with him gotten one ounce of negative feedback, I've been hitting my performance goals, and this was certainly a shock. I (halfheartedly) tried to convince him that he was being unreasonable and that I should be able to keep my job, but to no avail. So - it's off to the unemployment office for me. All this on a day that I should have been celebrating my southpaw-ness: http://www.lefthandersday.com/.

The time since then has been a roller coaster of three basic emotions (with a couple variations, which I won't go into). 1 - The pain of being fired, or at it's core, the pain of rejection so obvious and forceful within the span of four days. 2 - Anger at the messed up people I was working for. 3 - Relief that I never have to work another minute for the little shits. I hope that the roller coaster reaches it's end in the not to distant future, and, I hope I can use some of this anger and relief energy to find an amazing job that I can love, be productive at, and last at for more than 10 months.

Here's to another round of dying, and the feeling of loss. I really hope that I get to the bottom of this pit soon - this falling, falling and oh yeah, some more falling is absolutely excrutiating and exhausting.

Nightmare!

Last night I had a really disturbing nightmare. I'm still surprised I got back to sleep after I woke up and I'm a bit disappointed that I can still remember it - I would like to forget.

I've always been curious about my dreams. I think that they tell me things, sometimes things that happen in my dreams happen in real life. I feel a bit crazy even admitting this, and, it's my reality. Now I'm wondering what this terrifying, and yet plausible dream means.

I didn't have time to research in my dream books this morning - maybe I'll be able to find something online.