I started writing this on Saturday, the last day of July, but I wanted to make good and sure the month was completely out the door before posting it. You never know — July was so sinister this year that I wouldn’t put it past the month to come sneaking in through August’s back door, or suddenly rising from the dead like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. (That was the first movie that popped into my head, where you think the villain is dead but then there’s that last GOTCHA moment that makes everyone scream. I know there are others. Horror movies are not my forte. Please suggest your own favorite.)
Here’s my review of July 2010: It SUCKED. It sucked HARD. It seemed like the heat made all the anxiety and the soul-crushing defeat viz. the job market that much worse. Or maybe it was the heat plus the demoralizing realization that I was entering into my second year of unemployment that just made me want to give up completely and crawl into a cool, dark cave until October. Motivation, inspiration, any good -tion up and left me completely and I had no energy to go after them. So! As part of my mission to make August better, I’m going to try and spin July into something not altogether unpleasant.
I had the flu for about a week. BUT! It was during that one extremely hot, 100+ degrees week, so at least I had a good excuse to not go outside and get heat stroke.
I didn’t get hired or go on any interviews this month. And I didn’t really go out much at all, and then only on weekends. BUT! That gave me a lot of spare time to WORK ON MY NOVEL.
Confession: I don’t have a novel.
Instead I just sank farther and deeper into my own head. NOT a good thing. My head is freaky, especially when you spend too much time in it. It’s kind of like sensory depravation, only . . . the opposite of that.
I had one proofreading job that wasn’t at all a proofreading job, it was a copy editing job, and while I have copy editing experience I am not a professional copy editor, much less a professional copy editor in Australia, where the website I was editing is based. BUT! It was a paying gig, and valuable experience in that I made the executive decision that Elance.com was not worth the energy I put into it. (The nice thing about unemployment is that every decision you make is an executive decision.)
I had one job search bite that led to an informal email interview and then a request to meet in person on a day I absolutely could not make it. I replied and suggested the following day, and never heard back. This led me to the conclusion that email notification widgets are the devil. All they do is raise my hopes. “Ding!” says my Gmail notifier, as the envelope icon shakes jauntily at the top of my browser, turning from blue to shiny red and sporting a “1″ or sometimes “2.” Two new messages? That doubles the chance that one of them is from a recruiter! But . . . no. One is from PayPal trying to sell me yet again on their super fantastic credit card, and one is from CheapTickets telling me about the super fantastic one-way fares from New York to nowhere I really want to go.
I had one job-search-related breakdown from which I am not entirely sure I have recovered. BUT! It did lead me to start an outline for a memoiry-type book about my extended government-funded sabbatical (I wish I could take credit for that phrase, but I can’t). You know, sort of along the lines of “My Year of ______” (see: every memoir that has come out within the last five years) only this would be “My Year (and counting) of Unemployment.” And unlike all the people that got fabulous (I’m guessing) advances that allowed them to take a year and go FIND THEMSELVES, I watched my bank account get lower and lower and lower until I had to dip into the savings that I am really really grateful and lucky to have and then I watched that balance get lower and lower and lower and even then I didn’t want to make MONEY be the driving focus of my job search, even then I wanted to find that elusive FULFILLING job even though after 10 months I still had no idea what that looked like and I kept saying, “well, hey, this is what savings are FOR,” and I became kind of manic-depressive in that half the time I was freaking out about not finding work and half the time I was enjoying not having anything to do.
I don’t know if this is anything anyone would be interested in reading, it’s just something I’m playing around with right now. I think it would require me to do research, though. YUCK.
(I’m kidding. I love research. It’s just that it would require me to leave the apartment.)
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