Job panic.

I’m having a bit of a job-panic. I’m grasping for straws and sending out flares. 

This week at work our receptionist is on holiday. I’m filling in. There’s no big graphic design project happening, so I’m doing what I can from the front desk and everything else can wait. This means I have access to the stamp machine so I’ve been mailing out letters and receiving mail (something I consider fun). I still feel like I’m “playing secretary,” which I enjoy. 

This also means I have more time to write, or go online, or check stuff out. I just have to be at the computer. If I was really “free” to look as bored as I am I’d just sit here and read, but that would irritate everyone so instead I’m writing. I’m writing this. This right now.

I’ve been looking for work for the last month or so. Ideally something not in the city, with a salary of more than 40 G. It hasn’t been easy. I’ve joined all sorts of federal government candidacy pools, but at this point I really just think they’re roads to nowhere. 

I get in these little panicky fits where I just consider everything under the sun. Like, hey maybe I could get a special driver’s license and just start driving snowplows or trucks or something.

I can understand that no job is perfect, and that I’ll probably mildly resent whatever it is I end up doing to pay the bills, but it would be nice to do something that in fact does pay those bills. Living paycheck to paycheck isn’t cute. I’m sick of living with my mother. I want my own space, no matter how small.

A recent survey out of the UK identified that about 35% of Brits identify their jobs as “bullshit” jobs, that have no real value. This doesn't surprise me at all. Especially as someone who has worked in marketing a lot, which I've come to just see as a lie-based / let's pretend this is super important even though it totally isn't - department. So much of sales and marketing is just lies and magic tricks. So much bullshit in capitalism.

For the last decades, all the jobs I've had have put money in someone else's pockets. At least working for a social system or a non-profit you know there's a greater good. 

I've been thinking that since the job market seems so unstable, maybe what would be best would be to get two part-time jobs. Or, work here 4 days a week, and then work another job 2 days a week. 

I know I could find work in a call center, but that's a last resort. It's just so soul-crushing. 

I just get these fits of panic. I want to try and find a solution to this uneasiness. 

I don't trust the job market. I don't feel secure in my skills or education. I don't feel I'm owed a job or any type of security. So what can I do about it? Diversify? Join the army? I'm too fat. And sensitive. Plus I don't wanna be yelled at. It's like, calm down fuck. 

What else is there? I can't go back to university, I'm too broke. I could maybe do an apprenticeship or try and learn a new skill. I'm hesitant to overly-invest in design, though maybe I could do more research in cost-effective design sales on Etsy.

Christ. I'm going cuckoo.

I wish I could get a glimpse into the future. 

The fact of it is, I feel intellectually damaged. I work within limitations. And I don't feel I can over-exert myself. I don't feel gifted, or especially smart and it makes me worry about my ability to take care of myself. Especially, and primarily, financially. 

I know the past decade has taken its toll on my self-confidence. I don't think it's especially revelatory for me to state that, but it's got me in this post-haze space where I'm trying to figure out what my limits really are. My comfort-zone hasn't been that comfortable and I'm now unsure about what it is I'm tethered to.

I don't want to define myself by a job, and I'm trying not to. I just want something decent. I'm alright where I am, for now, but I don't feel secure here. The work has ups and downs and the place has not been stable since I started in 2014.

How can it be I feel so useless half the time, but when I take a step back I'm usually frustrated at the less-than productive pace of others? 

I know that life-long employment under one employer is now mostly myth and legend, so I need to get that out of my head, but I do need to figure out what to do, and how best to do it.

Right now I'm working here, I have money coming in, and I'll only leave for something better in salary and working conditions, or in a better environment or proximity to my home. Looking through job postings is difficult and discouraging. Seeing minimum-wage postings makes me wonder about how it is a person lives off of that. I can barely survive off of my salary. 

I'm also conscious of the criticism of millennials, that they expect instant recognition and aren't willing to work for it. Though I'm in my 30's, I seem to be grouped in with kids 15 years younger than me. 

It's difficult to think about what I want, while also thinking about what it is that is.

What does 2020 look like? 

Are people buying houses? Is there a housing bubble in Canada right now? It seems a bad time to buy, since most houses are over-inflated / not worth what's being asked. I don't want to sign a contract for a car, for a cell phone for anything, my money isn't set, I can't commit to payments.

I'm just in a little bit of a spiral right now. 

Do you have career advice for me? Money advice?

Some money you'd like to give me?

An old country house I can go hide in?

TV these days.

Emily V. Gordon has a piece up on the NYT about mental-health representation on television.

She mentions Lady Dynamite and Maria Bamford, whom I love. She also mentions You're The Worst and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, shows I've heard of, but not watched.

You're The Worst I caught in bits and pieces, I flipped to it mid-episode where the main character was crying alone in her car, which I mean, I get, but I didn't feel like watching.

I'd add Please Like Me to that list - which shows anxiety and depression and mania and is still super funny and sweet. There's actual long-term representation of a mental-health facility and that patients/friends in it.

Even Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt represents PTSD. So there is representation of mental illness slowly making its way into television.

It is, as they say, the "golden age of television," and lately it seems every comedian I like is getting their own television show, so what a time to be alive!

Me, trying.

Every day.

This week at work I'm replacing the receptionist, who is on vacation. This means I don't have access to any of my marketing programs (the design stuff) and I'm mainly answering the phone and receiving mail.

This also means I have more "free time" - since the majority of my work day is me being at the reception, available.



I've been in a bit of a fog lately. My brain has been slow, and I'm just being, I guess.

I need to be more vigilant about the thoughts I feel warrant being put to paper/screen. I'm often lost in thought, but I don't take the time to write down a certain turn of phrase of idea. I let it go.

I get lost in myself a lot these days. I fall down a rabbit hole, wondering what and why.

I'm trying to live my life daily, and it's been difficult. The fact is, I may never get a decent job. Never have a good schedule or a comfortable salary. I will always struggle with my attention span, with my memory. I keep telling myself that a better job situation will change everything. And though it would, in allowing me certain lenience, it also couldn't.

I've got this terrible habit of putting my life on hold. It's deeply ingrained in me.

It's common among the fat, from what I hear. I'll go on a trip once I lose some weight. It'll be different once I lose some weight. I wouldn't feel this way, if I wasn't fat.

So there's that side of it, yes, but I think it's also a result of compartmentalizing how to get through life. It's difficult for me to think long-term because I find it painful. Parts of me, the parts of me that staggered into adulthood did so through just letting time pass. I got by. I took things one step at a time, and then I was 30. I tried to access help and support and some bits worked and some did not. And over time I met some people and learned a certain kind of language and some basic skills and I got enough in me to continue to get by.

And yes, part of my life will always be about getting by. But on good days, I'll have the chance for things to be about more than that.

Right now, these days, my struggle is work. It's what to do, and where, and for how much. A work-life is 40 hours of your week. It's significant and I'm struggling with what I should be doing.

Right now I'm working a 37.5 work week as a "marketing assistant." I was hired as a graphic designer and through a series of colleague lay-offs and quits, I'm taking on administrative work and grossly under-used and under-stimulated. I am not doing any creative work.

These days, I am contented at finding a job that's stable, and leaving the creative work to my evenings and weekends. It'll be Etsy and writing, as long as I have a 9 to 5 that can pay for me to live my life.



I'm not doing that right now. I feel stunted by living with my mother, paying my half-rent and saving up while I can. The saving is eternal. Coins meant to fill a jug. The rattling of it all, a drop in a bucket.

It's long. Saving. Working. Working on myself. None of it has been quick or easy. So in the meantime, what I have is this meantime. It's the everyday. So if all I have are these days, then all I have are the choices I make within these days.

What is it that I spend my time doing?

Who are the people I make a point of seeing?

It's part of why I started volunteering at the dog shelter / animal refuge. If volunteering is part of my values, I need to live that, or else it isn't a value of mine, it's just something I talk about.

And if that principal can be applied to all things - what should I be spending my days doing?

How do I extend that practice? The practice of living my values.



I feel successful with the volunteer work. And I feel successful when I am able to prioritize and accomplish things for myself. Yesterday I did some meal prep. I made healthy lunches, and I made a healthy vegetarian lasagna. It's taking care of myself. It's helpful. I know what I'm eating. I'm eating in line with my values (vegetarian, clean) and I feel pro-active in regards to my health.

There's always a shadow of guilt though. Of not doing enough. And it's difficult to rid myself of that impulse.

I know my next challenge is a physical one. I know physical activity and exercise are my next steps. My goal is to become more physical. To stretch. To work my heart. To be able to purge certain kinds of energy and to sweat out toxins. To court the calm that comes with exhaustion. Something I haven't felt in a very long time.

It's difficult. The every day. How is it a moment can seem so eternally long, and yet so painfully short? How is it my mind can wander so much? How can I truly harness the powers of my faulty brain. Some parts don't work all that great, but surely, some do. Maybe ability to concentrate isn't great, but my empathy is strong. My sensitivity is strong. My dreams are wild. What does that make of me and my brain? Of my potential?

I find myself rooted by the knowledge that there is such a thing as neuroplasticity, and that there is such science that says trauma and habit form pathways that become ingrained so that the brain becomes incapable of taking other paths. These are things I can logically know. But then what? How do I apply this knowledge to my life?



So the times that I remember things I don't want to remember, and they call up in me feelings of shame and guilt, or rejection or embarrassment, how do I respond in a way that challenges those set pathways, those painful roads.

How can a decade of self-harm be quelled?

That's where I am right now. I'm in the every day of it. I find it hazy with familiarity. It seems redundant. Here. Again. Always. It's always the struggle of being here, now.

It's difficult to follow my thoughts when things are muddled, and it's harder to focus when that muscle has atrophied.

Sometimes it seems so easy. Just keep it simple. Minimize. Breathe. Sleep. Take it easy.

Other times, I am astonished it isn't more common for a person to lose their fucking minds.



I think we do. I think we lose is periodically and in moments and then a sensation or familiarity brings us back to wherever it is we are and we're distracted from that insanity. It's the familiar that comforts us, even if that known thing is objectively sick in itself.

Is all this neurosis based in the apathy of privilege? Of access? Of excess?

I make these lists of things I should be doing to be okay. Is that a trap? I'm not okay, and it's my fault. Is anybody okay? Surely, some must be. Or else how would the world work? How would it keep going? There are investments made by those who are invested in it all.

I float too far from my own life.

Sometimes it's just so absurd. Then it's so simple, and beautiful and sweet. Then it hurts so much, my hair, my eyes, my bones. How is it I can feel everything and then feel nothing?

How can I live in this world?

How can I best imitate those who do?



This is my gobbledygook. It's nearly incessant.

All of today's GIFs by Jason Clarke.

The happy introvert.

when u realize that u love spending time by yourself because you are a complete & interesting person on ur own pic.twitter.com/jVBlZ1sBuF

— milka (@ariesjpeg) August 9, 2016

Chani Nicholas.

A buddy of mine linked to Chani Nicholas. I haven't read everything but today's post alone is beautiful. I get my astrology through Free Will Astrology by Rob Brenzy, and friends and I have all mooned over Sextrology by Starsky and Cox (it's so frigan elaborate and approachable), so I do enjoy astrology and find it helpful in pushing buttons and unlocking parts of my brain that might not be thinking too hard or looking at things too closely. 

My weekly horoscope is on-point, check out yours for this week, the week of September 12th 2015.

But really, pay special attention to the piece on the upcoming eclipse, Sacred Territory: The Lunar Eclipse in Pisces.

No matter what we are forced to endure, we must find a way to love ourselves through it. We must find a way to save our own humanity from the wreckage of it. No matter the weight of the burden placed upon us mentally, emotionally, physically, economically and environmentally, we must find a way to connect to what keeps us afloat spiritually.
Suffering isn’t handed out equally among us. The great injustice of life is that we must live it from where we are at. We don’t get a gold medal for enduring our lot. All we get is a chance at life. 

We know that justice isn’t always served. There isn’t always a happy ending. There isn’t always a nicely rapped moral that we can glean from our story. 

...

Our world is wounded, fractured, broken and burning. We are products of this place and it is our job to heal the world through the healing of ourselves. Sometimes this feels like an endless endeavor. Sometimes it feels too much to bear. 

And yet, the wounds we circle around are, in their way, sacred territory. Sacred because they touch the core of our lives. They are ours. They are part of our journey. They are part of the great love story that is our experience here on earth. 

We are not our suffering, but what we suffer with informs our ability to hold our lives with great tenderness, in all its edges and complexity. We are not what we have suffered through, but by living with it, we are changed. 

 ... 

The sorrows that we know nothing of are ours to learn about. Ours to awaken to. Ours to listen to. Our call to answer. The song of the mourner is our invitation to turn our ears and tune our hearts to the great spiritual call of life: being of service to one another.

In the end, we regret nothing but the kindness we have kept from others. To extend ourselves in love and kinship to each other is to reach towards divinity. 

May we learn to give of ourselves and have no regrets.

Read the entire piece!

Just beautiful!

Jessica's "Daily Affirmation."