One of my friends was reassuring me tonight and said she was hopeful for me even when I had trouble with it myself and I told her, "Oh, I'm still hopeful. It's just that I keep getting my hopes up only to have them stomped to death by the giant elephant of life sucking." I have trouble believing in the power of prayer and the like when I know that despite all my friends and family and myself praying for me to find a job, I still get passed over and rejected at every turn. And I know that that's really not how I should be thinking about it, but, damn it, it's hard not to after 9 months of job hunting (and it really has become a hunt; I think that editorial jobs in Dallas ought to be up on the endangered species list--there have barely been any new job postings in my field in the last month). Faced with the prospect of having to borrow thousands of dollars more from my parents (as Jane put it so succinctly in P&P, "How is half such a sum to be repaid?"), put my stuff in storage and move halfway across the country, it is increasingly difficult to be hopeful about anything. My current job definitely does not inspire hope. In fact, I am quickly becoming jaded about humankind as nearly all of my shifts at work have involved some kind of brush with theft. Apparently people who read are inherently more honest. I can only remember one significant case of theft in the two plus years I worked at Barnes and Noble in high school. I've already had to deal with ladies who stick shoes in purses or attempt to walk out with them on their feet and men who stick shoes down their pants (Nancy Drew: Shoe Detective...there's a reason nobody's made that movie). It's not like they're necessary to your life. It's not like you can't go to Wal-Mart or Payless and get something passably stylish. It in simply incomprehensible to me how these people can live with themselves. I would feel like I was walking around with two cement blocks of guilt on my feet if I ever stole a pair of shoes. But apparently my values are not a reflection of our society en masse. The only good news right now is that I have four days off from Shoe Hell to work on my stories. If I could just finish a novel, then maybe all my troubles would be resolved. At the very least I could say "HA!" to all the people I went to high school with at my ten-year reunion whenever it is (I'm just glad it's not this summer). So, yes, right now I really feel as if Life has stomped on my spirit and left it behind forgotten and groaning into the dirt.
I've never understood that kind of theft either. I imagine they use the same justification as internet pirates. "Well, I don't have the money to pay for it, and I want it, and the big corporation has enough money."
ReplyDeleteThe GEOLS (Giant Elephant of Life Sucks) stomps on everyone once in a while, some more than others. When I had a temp job, a coworker told me she had been unemployed for 13 months once. She worked at a liquor store at that time while trying to find a "real" job, which was our company. G hasn't even been able to get a 9-5 job with benefits and he has two degrees.
Things will get better. Think of this job as valuable future writing material.