Day 29: Unemployment has ruined the Holidays

I just can't enjoy Halloween this year; partially because I've out grown the whole "sexy-profession" costume but mostly because Halloween is just another reminder of time ticking by in my job hunt.

By November 1st I wanted to be in Chicago. Actually i promised myself i would be in Chicago. But I'm not and i have to admit that i feel like a bit of a failure. I have yet to move beyond college.

Maybe this anxiety is why i keep waking up at 6 AM, worried that if i don't start my job search now, i will miss the perfect job.

The thing i have come to accept is that i'm not going to be 100% satisfied or even happy while i am unemployed. I can't enjoy this as leisure time because my mind and body were not meant to "leisure." I need a purpose to feel whole and good.

So this may be one year where i don't enjoy the tricks or treats as much as i wish i could, but at least i have learned i don't have the spirit to be unemployed. My father will be so relieved.

Advice for Day 25: Screw All the Advice

I went to my career advisor today for the third and last time today. Halfway through her contradictory advice, I felt those ridiculous tears of frustration building behind my eyes. As she discreetly tried to pass me a tissue, I wanted to just bolt from that office of reiterated “It’s a rough economy” cheer-up lines.

But just as I was about to high-tail it out of the office of torture, my advisor said one of the most valuable pieces of advice I’ve heard. She looked over my cover letter and said, “This just doesn’t sound like you.” I told her she was right. It wasn’t me. It was parts of the dozen or so people I have been receiving advice from over the past few months. I lost me sometime around the end of September.

She told me to scrap the cover letter and start over putting me into it. Because, as she so wisely pointed out, I was qualified candidate and I did kind of kick ass.

It’s hard to pinpoint when I lost that sense of self. It is not that one day I woke up and decided to give up my identity in favor of everybody else’s vision of me. It was more that my identity was whiddled away at by all those well meaning advisors and mentors, until I was a hodge podge of dozen other people’s lives.

I have been so confused when I look into the future, that I was willing to put anyone’s future into my cover letters instead of myself. It was just easier.

But in the end, I underestimated my will. It is a lot stronger than I thought and a lot harder to get to shut up. I’m not saying I can magically wash away all that advice garnered over the past few months but I can decide to listen to my gut more. And in the end I am going to give myself the deciding vote of what my future will be.

Advice for Day 24: Have Good People

I have to make a quick tribute to my humbly genius journalism friend Elli Thompson, who is the only individual who can make me jump off the pity train and onto the optimistic wagon with nothing more than a cherry coke and an hour of sincerity.

We all want to be these people, these genuinely good and honest people like Elli, but we rarely can inspire such goodness in ourselves much less pass it on to others. But some of us are blessed to have such graces of human nature in our circle of friends; we must take some time to stop wishing we could be them and start being grateful that they put up with our shit.

As a rule of thumb, I think we should surround ourselves with people who make us feel good and people who make us want to be better. We spend way too much time wanting to change others to be the people we want them to be instead of appreciating those good friends we already have.



And while i am on my tribute kick let me make another shout out to the amazing and beautiful women I have bee privileged enough to call friends the past four years of college. I am blessed with having not just the goodness fairy as a friend, but also a whole slew of lovely ladies I like to call my entourage of kick ass. They may not have the cheeriest dispositions but they could drink Mary Poppins under the table and then give her a eloquent speech about politics or conservation or phycology or the Brewers. Combined these ladies hold all the characteristics I so respect: the gumption and guts, the humor and humility, the charisma and charm, the selflessness and sexiness.

At times when it is apparent that we are not the greatness we anticipated we were going to be, it is easy to forget are in the presence of future greatness. All of these ladies are going to be the future faces of what a power women looks like- and let me tell you, they look way better than Sarah Palin.

Advice for Day 22: Delayed Birthday Gifts can bring supervicial smiles to us all

Being unemployed is really starting to get in the way of my irresponsible consumerism. With $60 to my name and that number quickly dwindling thanks to yoga classes, Chinese takeout and gas station cappuccino, I am beginning to become the most hated player in the US economy: the frugal spender.

But luckily thanks to my mom's "3 months late is better than never" attitude, I have once again joined the ranks of useless spending and become the proud owner of a ridiculously overpriced MAC purple case for my baby.

And let me tell you, it is beautiful, and it did make me happy, if only in the very superficial and fleeting moment of glee. I will take what joy i can get these days.

Advice for Day 21: Find Zen without Losing your Hygiene

First let me make a disclaimer: I love hippies, really i do. I love their avantgarde approach to halter tops, bangles and tie dye. I love their hand-inked butterfly/flower/fairy tattoos placed strategically on the ugliest and most noticeable part of their bodies. I even love their silly annual parades to that weird shaped green plant called mary.

That said I do not like their "au naturual" scent; that distinct order they seem to have copyrighted as organic (as if they could put a sticker on their armpit and sell it for twice its market value). From the unwashed dread to the unwashed unmentionables, hippies need to find a shower before they find their inner peace.

But luckily the WASP's have gentrified hippyhood the same way they do to any dignifably ugly neighborhood and turned it into YOGA Inc., my zenarific 45 minute noon power stretch.

Every Tuesday and Thursday I am welcomed into the studio with a sign asking guests to consider their hygiene for the comfort of other guests. That is how WASP's say no effin' Hippies allowed. We may be embracing the religions of the East but we will never forget the 1st commandment of the West: politeness is next to godliness.

And so i enjoy 45 blissful minutes of the gentrified skeleton of ancient yoga that the Green Bay area has so finely honed over the course of the last 3 years. And I walk out feeling good and smelling even better thanks to my all-powerful Secret deodorant.

But beyond knowing i just participated in an ancient religious practice watered down for and then steroided back up to appeal to the "i want a hot ass and inner peace" American, I feel like i did something i little good for myself.

I took 45 minutes and realigned my spine and my priorities. I folded my body in half, rested my nose to my knees and didn't think once about the my impeding insurance-less doom. Yoga may be too hippy for WASPs and American Yoga may be too WASPy for hippies, but I say light the effin' incense and find zen my friends because neither side is having much luck these days.

I am starting to see I may be a WASP but I may be a Yogi as well. Really the only difference is a little more deodorant and a little less stick up ass.

Advice for Day 19: Advice from Reruns

Sabrina Spellmen and Rory Gilmore are now my sole sources of advice.

Today, as i was watching the cable i swore i would unplug yesterday, the two wholesome TV role models leaped from their respective wholesome college careers into their respective wholesome real worlds; Rory with an internship at a small local newspaper and Sabrina with a job at a hip music magazine. Neither was their dream job- working, of course, at the prestigious New York Times- but both sucked it up and made the best of their new jobs.


Of course i don't have the help of a talking cat or a caffeine-hyped ADD mother, but really if the Spellmen's and Gilmores of the world can learn that lesson in an hour, then i really should have caught on by now.

So I'm swallowing some of my burdensome pride and asking the cyber space gods to send me an opportunity, any opportunity, before I run out of reruns to get life advice from.

Day 18: Reality TV is my Sunday Reality

My mom told me that when she was younger she used to hate Sundays. She loved the weekends, especially going to see whatever long-distance boyfriend she was currently canoodling with, but she dreaded Sunday: the day before reality.

The anticipation of going back to school or her job or whatever her real life was at the time ruined the entire Sunday and therefore half of her precious weekend. That always seemed a little ridiculous to me. Why ruin a perfectly good weekend with the fear of the inevitable return of reality?

Here is where my mom and i differ. I never feared the reality of Mondays; reality, in fact, was a welcomed break from the usual insanity of weekends. Mondays brought back the structure and safety of routine.

But Sundays now are different because they aren't followed by a healthy regiment of the predictable work and class schedule but instead by the frightfully free time of unemployed Mondays; Mondays where nothing "has" to be done but everything "should" be done. My Mondays are now just as dreaded as my mother's were 30 years ago.

Usually on weekends you can rest guilt-free knowing you will be back to work in a few days. You can allow yourself freedom to be unproductive because that American 40-hour-productive work week lays right around that lazy Sunday. But when weekends are not followed by the productivity of the "work week" then weekends become a hideous reminder that no part of your life is productive; that you have no reality to return to on Monday.

So instead of face the fact that by life is embarrassingly useless, i submerse myself in Sunday reality TV show marathons. I usually get hooked when I click on the TV for some background noise and find there is yet another ANTM marathon. I now know just about every winner of the show- including my girl Whitney, season 10 winner and first plus size model at a whopping size 10. I try to take solace that if Whitney's pant size is ever a question on Trivial Pursuit, i will kick ass...but since i haven't played Trivial Pursuit since I was 11, it isn't much consolation. I am still left living my Sunday reality through reality TV marathons.

It is just that somehow watching others live their reality, makes me forget that I don't have a reality waiting for me on Monday. The bliss of mind-numbing reality television is the escape from my reality-less existence.

Maybe my mom and I aren't so different. Maybe we both hate facing our Monday realities: her's of a low-paying social work job; mine of a non-reality unemployed existence.

Yet maybe if my mom had had reality TV back in the day she could have blissfully lived in someone else's reality for a Sunday instead of her Monday-fearing Sunday reality. And maybe if i could disconnect the cable I could get busy living my Sunday and forget the reality of TV.