The GIGO World...

I hate it when I'm not working on writing. I feel like I'm floundering. My idea all along was to live in as cheap a place as possible, that took as little time to maintain as possible, work outside of my home as little as I could financially get away with, and ultimately spend as much time and effort as I could on improving my writing skills. The ultimate goal being to create works that I am proud of and that will sell.

So where am I now? I'm living in suburbia in a house that I couldn't even dream of having the skills and time to keep up (at least not at this point), I can't afford even the reduced rent on it so someone else is picking up the difference, I'm working overtime in an environment I consider to be somewhat hazardous (though I'm honestly not sure how "hazardous" it is), I am allergic to one of the chemicals I work with and in spite of my best efforts the skin on my hands breaks out every time I work (and having latex gloves rub up against itching and stinging blisters makes my 12 hour shift that much more fun), and the few blog entries I manage to get up is the only real writing I am managing to pull off.

For some reason I can't seem to get anything done on my days off, and then there is this nagging voice that says "your lazy, there is something wrong with you, if you wanted to write you'd write..." and maybe its right... I don't know. So I find myself contemplating jobs I could take, courses I could take, and degrees I could get that would land me jobs that would make it easier to fit in (financially and otherwise), but in the end I feel like all these things are just taking me further away from where I want to be.

Meanwhile most everyone in my life's position on my writing seems to be "don't quit your day job" (in my case "night job"), except everyone wants me to quit my night job cause they are afraid they are going to get a call from a hospital one day and find out I accidentally inhaled some acid at work or something.

Meanwhile even BilLee is touting the "this will look good on a resume" line. Like we should dedicate months and years of our life to looking exactly the right way on paper to appeal to the prejudices and biases of hiring managers. I wouldn't write essays in college to appeal to the biases of my professors even though I often had problems because of it. I failed a few tests because of it, so why would I now? In hopes of edging out an equally or better qualified candidate for the same position by being a little more clever in the presentation of my resume, or by having some little job or club I was in here or there that was completely meaningless to my personal development that just makes me look a little more savvy than the next girl/guy... FUCK THAT!!!

And meanwhile I have people telling me that I should lie on applications so that on the little personality portion I look like an extrovert instead of an introvert, because almost all retail jobs have apparently decided that introverts do not work well in their particular "sales" environment. Meanwhile I actually know of introverts who are great salesmen. The only difference is that the skill doesn't come quite so easily to them as it does to some extroverts, but when they have the skill down introverts are just as good (and sometimes better) at sales as the so-called "out going" extrovert. So all this is just more bullshit and prejudice, and I shouldn't have to lie when I know perfectly well that I can do a job and be good at a job if given the chance -especially since I am already over that particular learning curve thanks to Papa John's and Dial America.

I don't think that there is anything wrong with having to "sell yourself" in terms of convincing an employer that they should hire you (presuming said employer is rational and you are not having to appeal to irrational biases), but that really should be for the interview or the cover letter. And unless the job you are applying for is particularly sensitive to people with mental disorders (like a security job or something) there is no good reason to be taking any sort of psychological test.

If I want a sales job the hiring manager should be looking to see if I can sell him or her on me, and if I can't he has good reason not to hire me. There should never be a "I'm sorry but your personality profile doesn't quite fit what we are looking for..."

I have actually sat before hiring managers and thought "you know what, I could do your job a hell of a lot better than you." I've sat before guys who were awkward and uncomfortable trying to figure out if they should recommend me to their boss who ultimately does the hiring, and who didn't even seem to have a clue why their own job existed.

So we go from the GIGO university systems to the GIGO corporate world, and you don't have to go far to find the garbage either. And I'm supposed to try and fit into that... is someone laughing somewhere... isn't this just a big joke... and I'm supposed to try and live in a nice house in a nice neighborhood and have pretty pictures to put on my walls, and pretty curtains to put over my windows, and random nick nacks to put in random places, and completely useless pieces of furniture to store dishes I never use, and display random I items that just collect dust.

Its not that I disdain those things, or people that have them, its just that I really don't want them, and I feel like I'm supposed to. Now I look over what I've just written and I think aren't you being just a little hypocritical here or there, don't you just want to have your cake and eat it too? Aren't you just being unrealistic? What's the point?

You know what I want? Right now I want a little apartment thats easy to keep up. I want to get rid of all the junk I don't need that just clutters up my space. I want to put my own art work (and that of my friends and family) on my wall, have a nice quiet corner to work, and a comfortable living room to entertain guests in (and to just chill out in), I want to have a small managable wardrobe, a small managable kitchen, and I don't want to work in an environment that causes me to have the equivalent of a perpetual case of poison ivy. I want to spend as much of my time as I can writing even if I am barely making enough money to survive, and I never want to ever have to give a damn for even a moment what happens to be on my resume, or how it will look that I was only at x job for two months, and I kind of like the idea of being a street poet -don't know if I'll be able to pull that one off or not. I'd like to learn spanish, take some martial arts classes, get into better shape, possibly take some voice and/or acting lessons, and maybe just maybe if I'm good enough and have the time get involved with a small community theater (or maybe found one someday). Then I want to expand my family, have kids, homeschool them or found a school, and hopefully by that point I'll have a life I'm proud to bring them into, and an environment that is manageable. Is that too much to ask?