Multi-talented woman seeks to recover pride

I am a woman of many talents. I can wiggle my ears and sing. I can make a tube-like shape with my tongue while I write. My vacation-taking abilities are out of this world. However, none of these skills makes me necessarily employable.

So, I guess I shouldn't feel bad that tomorrow will be my first day of training of a job with the U.S. Census. It's not that the job is beneath me; I have enormous capacity to irritate people, and am completely qualified. It's just that it wasn't something I envisioned for myself. It doesn't feed my ego one little bit to have this little, temporary position as an "enumerator", even if it does pay more than my unemployment benefits.

I'm not even sure what my job will entail, since the census isn't really happening until next year. I suspect I will be seeing if there are families really living in the addresses from which the census will be expecting information. I can do that. I can walk up and down the streets and count. It will be the realization of yet another talent, and all this time I thought I hated math.

When I was laid off last year, I told myself that I didn't have to be defined by what I do for a living. It was a way I could feel better about job hunting in areas of maintenance or delivery services, I suppose. I believe that there are other areas of my life where I can express the real "me" that don't necessarily have to bring in the bucks. Employment would sustain me financially, writing and things like thumb-twiddling could sustain everything else. I decided that I would rather have (what I would have earlier considered) a menial job than to make an insulting amount at something I love to do, such as writing.

If only I was qualified to get a maintenance job! It was a rude awakening, this jobless period of mine. A completely humbling experience to see that I never acquired the experience now necessary to get a job mopping floors or emptying the trash.

Okay, the condition of my home would explain all that, but I can usually lay the blame for that on my dog and get away with it.

Friends send me scads of writing ads, where sometimes, they're paying upwards of 35-cents per word, if you become a member of their site, enter contests and mostly write "sample" pieces for which which they'll claim the rights and then not pay. Publishers know that many people will write for free these days, as is evidenced in this very blog. Nobody would pay me to write this kind of tripe now, although I have gotten a pretty penny for it in the past. Actually, upwards of 150 pennies per word for some articles. Those days might be over, unless I can re-convince Wine Enthusiast Magazine that they still need a columnist who barely can purchase a bottle at Big Lots for $4.

Oooh, and there we have it -- another good idea for a column. I'd better get to pitching the editor. If only I could remember his name. I do remember that he used to be the editor of Chocolatier Magazine, and I asked him if he got to wear a perky hat and eat sweets all day. What a job that would be! It's difficult to imagine why he left.

But meanwhile, I will drag myself in the required business casual (if they only knew what that really means to me) replete with sack lunch to the census training tomorrow and learn new skills for some pretty decent nose-counting money.

Pride or paycheck. If only it were easier to decide ...

Key Lime Pie and other concerns

Through the years since I graduated high school, I've considered and subsequently rejected the idea of attending any of the reunions with my graduating class. It's not because I've become a much older version of my former self in all the ways we dread being seen at reunions. It's because I don't remember anyone!

I've looked at the yearbooks. There are such heartfelt little messages written and signed by I-haven't-got-a-clue. "Will always remember how much fun we had in typing class together" has me completely stymied, and well, ashamed of myself. There's someone out there who will always remember while I was probably working on frying some brain cells during typing class itself -- that much, I do remember.

It's really not so difficult to skip the reunions. After all, I live across the country from where I went to high school and college, safe from all the potential blackmail those events could bring. But now, the reunions have come to me.

I was lured into using Facebook by a friend who proposed a game of Scrabble. He'd even made the first move and it was my turn. Now, I had a responsibility to start a facebook page and get into the game, in more ways than one.

Employers are now requiring a passable knowledge of "social networking" sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. I figured that I may as well dive in and see what all the fuss is about, and learn something in the process.

I set up my page and played the word games with my friend. Facebook encouraged me at every turn to see which of the people I know were already on Facebook, or would like to be. In no time at all, I was in touch with family on the East Coast, old friends with whom I'd lost touch for eons, and yes, my graduating class from high school.

It's amazing how many people have been able to post at all times of the day and night. I'm not sure if it's because they're staying tuned in via their cell phones, or if it's because nobody is working.

"So-and-so wants to add you as a friend", my email message read.

So Who? Uh-Oh. I dragged out the yearbook. There was only the most vague impression that I'd seen her face before. She obviously remembered me, and what was I going to do, refuse her offer of friendship? Are Facebookers even supposed to take the term literally?

Seems to me, that anything less than an acceptance would be an insult, so I complied. However, since I was drawing a blank, I asked her what she remembered about me.

"You were always so crazy and fun," she wrote. It's generic enough to make me wonder if she really does recall me. Maybe she was there with me in typing class. Maybe she's just trolling the yearbook, trying to add to her collection, my posted photo indistinguishable from her family or (real) friends.

"What's on your mind?" is the question atop every page on that site. I think it's a very dangerous place to go.

Today, it's a toss-up between Key Lime Pie and pseudo friendships.

The Land of In Between

There are some serious value differences between me and some of my friends. Whenever they come up, I am faced with questioning the worth of the friendship itself, which usually gives way to doing nothing at all -- I mean, c'mon, it's easier.

"Can you have friends whom you don't respect?" I used to ask my students. The responses were always strong, one way or another -- never anything in between. Lucky for me, my role was simply to evoke discussions, not to offer my own opinions. I live in the Land of In Between.

Old boyfriends who cheated may still tell great jokes; a completely fun and supportive friend who happens to be in prison (for something completely unrelated) thinks it is fine to cheat an insurance company. My best male friend is a racist, which has to be a difficult path, given that he has to work and interact with all different kinds of people every day.

Once, he told me I looked like a Jew. I got huffy with him; what the hell does a Jew look like, anyway? Judaism is a religion, not a race, I said.

"Well, all I know is, if they lined you up with 25 other women and someone said, "Pick out the Jew girl -- face it, Honey: You'd be picked."

Who can argue with that kind of logic?

I have friends who drink and smoke themselves senseless, and though I used to do the same things, there came a point in my life when I shed all that. They continue and then want to make long, slurring phone calls to me and rant angrily about politics. I have a few who are "half-friends", who never seem to be able to be there for me, even though I'm always around when they need someone.

These cronies stunt me creatively. I can't write about them without hurting their feelings. I've often said that if I wrote a book with characters who exhibited these idiosyncrasies, I'd have very few friends at all. What does that say about me?

"So, you don't like your friends," said one of them to me yesterday.

"No kidding"?, I asked. She nodded in the affirmative, which made me wonder what the hell I was thinking when I did her a favor minutes earlier by picking her up at the garage where her car was being repaired. As I drove, she took a call and talked to someone about how her mom's "filter" was gone, and would say just about anything.

This was especially interesting to me, because she'd just gotten through saying that she would really like to put her mother in a home and take away all of her medications. I suggested that maybe she should just get a gun, but that's a whole different tangent.

Regardless, her statement shook me up a little. Of course, I don't want to think of myself as a bad (or worse, insincere) friend.

As I dropped her at her destination, my friend flashed me the most amazingly-artificial smile.

"See ya. I look forward to reading about myself in your book."

I knew in that instant that there was nothing more I could do; this was indeed goodbye.

But, part of what she's saying is true. I don't like some of the things my friends do; their actions really bother the hell out of me sometimes. (I'm sure some of them don't like mine, either.) It's completely hypocritical to keep friendships with some of them at all. The rub is, I still have my filter. Weak as it may be at times, it's one that (for the most part) keeps me from writing things that will hurt people's feelings. Some would debate that, I'm sure.

"Fuck 'em," said another friend of mine, an avid blogger who says he won't leave anything out even if it offends someone. What freedom that is, to be able to say that! Especially if you can pull it off and not miss anyone who leaves because of it. I'm not entirely convinced that even he wouldn't hesitate; he's a very sweet person.

So, instead of following his example, here I am writing about writing about people. Some of the most published authors do, you know.

I won't promise that you won't be in my book, but if you shoot your Jewish insurance agent, I might have to 86 the friendship first.

The Trouble with Eunuchs

I was laid off while on vacation.

"That's terrible!" said my friends. However, I'd planned it that way: it was going to be a lot better to be on vacation in Colorado, than to be stuck in San Diego, watching the whole place circle the drain.

The first couple of months, I decided to take it easy. After all, the holidays were going to be on us any moment, and we were going to be gone again for much of that time, anyway. I decided that after the first of the year, I'd really try in earnest to find something, and in the meanwhile, cherry-pick the jobs that would be ideal for me.

What a joke.

By the time we got back from a couple of trips, almost everyone else was unemployed, also, and those who weren't, were getting a crook in their necks from looking over their shoulders at work. For some reason, there's no glut of jobs available for group facilitators with ample freelance journalism and bus-spy experience. Go figure.

So, I began applying for just about anything.

"Think they'll notice if I don't have any actual piloting experience?" I ask a friend who was loitering on Facebook in the middle of the day, like me. They agree that it can't hurt to try.

I actually got a call last week from an ad agency where I really wanted to work; where I thought creativity could really count. A real interview -- a rarity these days where almost every ad is accompanied by a plea not to contact in person or by phone.

"Don't say anything about eunuchs," said my boyfriend, reminding me of my last interview fiasco. Last fall, when the handwriting was still being written on the wall about my job, I thought I'd begin some early trolling for a new job. I snagged a face-to-face in a local computer college about a job in curriculum development.

I immediately liked the director; she was about my age, and had a casual style all-around. She was very interested in my journalism stuff, and we had a great rapport, since she spent the entire time talking about herself. The whole thing was going swimmingly, especially if you count the fact that an entire water bottle leaked into my purse and onto the interview table. Not a paper towel in sight, so I kept casually swiping at the pool of water and pretended that I was able to concentrate on her questions. I shook out a hopelessly soaked letter of reference and decided to stuff it back into my bag. She didn't seem to care or even notice that my eye was twitching while she escorted me through the labyrinth of halls. We passed a classroom that was full of computers.

"This is where we teach UNIX," She said as she waved her arm, very Vanna-like, into the open doorway.

"You didn't really just say eunuchs, did you?" my mouth said, completely independent of my brain.

"Oh! You know UNIX? Fantastic!" The rest of her sentence went unheard, because I was trying to think of a way out of this mess. There simply wasn't one I could muster in time.

"Uh, no ... nevermind. It was just a joke. A very bad joke."

Wait for it, wait for it, I thought.

Talk about stink eye. I couldn't get out of there fast enough for either of us. By the time I hurled myself into my car, I was laughing hysterically. I reached for my phone, but it was dead, drowned in the morass. Insult to injury.

So, anyway, I didn't get the job. Damned eunuch-hater!

This time, I was determined to behave myself. I promised Robert I would try to keep my mouth under control, but since it's almost been a week without hearing back from the new interview, I'm chock-full of second guesses. Did I speak too frankly? Was I a smart-ass? Did I show too much of myself? Probably.

In any case, the thing I came away with, is that the owner basically asked if I had written anything lately. What was I going to do, have him read my blogs about my dad's death? Or, the one that's titled, "Things You Can't Read", that's full of my dark thoughts about a dead-beat client? Hardly. Almost as toxic as eunuchs, I'd say.

So, if nothing else, I realized that it's going to be a "What have you done lately?" kind of world, and I'll have to sink or swim on the demands for a smart-assed writer/facilitator/bus-spy.

I'm going to need a raft; it's going to be a very interesting year.