lessons in humility: applying for jobs

Well, I've applied to more than 1 job each day last week--I averaged 2 applications each day and there's no sign of slowing down!

While I am glad I am starting now, before the pressure is (really) on, now I see I could have started sooner. Having reviewed hundreds of job postings, I have begun to notice common skills and qualifications that I have not got and that would serve me well as I look for stable employment and financial solvency. For example, it would help a great deal if I could demonstrate real proficiency in Excel and PowerPoint. What does it take to be "proficient" or "expert"? This is going on the list of Questions to Ask and of Training to Pursue. Other jobs want a portfolio of writing samples, and it seems that chapters of my dissertation will not serve. What to do? Do I start (yet) another blog, a professional one in which I write little articles twice per week in order to make a (barely) plausible case for myself as a "content-writer"? For other jobs, demonstrated abilities in budgeting are required. I imagine sending in my own monthly and yearly personal budgets and savings goals might be a bit naive. How does one demonstrate these things? What is it, specifically, they are looking for? Is there a workshop or continuing ed class I can take that will help me out here?

Being able to create such lists will give me something to talk about so that when people start asking "So, what are you going to do?" I will have some things to say. I think that might be one of the most isolating aspects of late-stage dissertating and early-stage job-hunting: one is too close to the project to say anything about it in the first case and one is too new to the process in the second case to say anything about it, either. One is left with no real response than pasting on a too-bright smile and reciting, again, "Oh, well, I'll figure something out!" Lists and questions, at least, can become conversational material.

evidence of time passing

When I was younger, I saw ugly people with some regularity, I thought. I saw many people whose looks could be improved upon and still others for whom no amount of improvement could make enough difference to matter. The older I get, the fewer ugly people I see. I rarely seem to see them these days at all, in fact. I see many beautiful people--many faces and bodies that are are shaped and arranged in such a way to be considered very attractive by a majority of people. But I see more and more interesting faces and bodies. Faces I would have considered very plain at best do not seem plain at all these days. In some lights and with some expressions, they seem quite beautiful. Sometimes they evoke moods or feelings I can't quite describe. Other times they simply convey a sense of rightness.

I think this may be one of the nicest things about growing up: beauty grows too and expands to include so many more things than it did when my experience was limited. Perhaps I won't have to wait too much longer before nearly everything can be seen as a variety of beauty.

general accounting (spinster edition)

Though I've alluded to some splurge-y shenanigans recently (so many pairs of jeans! perfume samples! sassy boots!), overall my finances are fairly solid and fairly frugal. I save a significant portion of my monthly income. I usually pay off my credit card every other month. Not only will I have a reasonably comfortable savings cushion by the time my fellowship runs out, I also have smaller savings accounts for other expenses and goals: clothing, taxes, medical expenses, new computer fund, gifts, and travel. This helps me to feel secure and future-oriented.

When I graduate and find employment and thereby become a Real Person, I will set up other accounts for other purposes:

Iceland.
Once I devise a plan for aggressive repayment of my student loans, I will save nearly as aggressively for a trip to Iceland. I just love the idea of it: mountains, snow, steaming water, and bleak, dark, somber skies. I will go alone, at least the first time. And I'll journal everything so that maybe, a year or two after I return, I might write my way into understanding what it is about Iceland that so fascinates me.

Flowers.
When my budget has enough flexibility that I can buy one pair of rubber gloves every single month--or more even, if I like--(for dishwashing and other damp chores) instead of stretching them out for three or four, then there will be flexibility enough to buy flowers regularly. Nothing too fancy or extravagant. Single blooms may be all I require some weeks. But there will be plant life in my life: something alive and with no other purpose than to be beautiful.

Coffee.
How I long for the day when I can return to quality coffee!

the future is now

new plan: apply for five new jobs every week.

If that doesn't put the fear of, well, everything into me; if that doesn't light a fire under my toes; if that doesn't make me better at applying for jobs when it matters, then I am not sure anything will.

Applied for one today; four more by Friday.

facts

Things that are beautiful so long as they are not in my home or on my person:
• white bedding
• light-blue denim
• rings on fingers

Things I resist even though I love them:
• scalding, lavender-scented baths
• long novels
• mornings

Things I love in spite of their difficulty:
• poetry, generally
• kickboxing workouts
• choral music

Things I forget I love: 
• photography
• Beethoven symphonies
• long walks on cloudy days

Things I never regret:
• waking up early
• writing
• meditating    
 

career day retrospective

Things I have wanted to be when I grow up:

writer
preacher
lawyer
carpenter
truck driver
counselor
advice columnist
editor
chaplain

Personas I have wanted to cultivate:

Sophisticated city-dweller: impeccably tailored outfits; sleek hair; smart, professional shoes.
Perfume: something elegant but forbidding--maybe Ivoire or no. 19.
Lipstick: red.
Drink: wine.
Favorite activity: museum-going.
Most pretentious possession: custom briefcase.
Guilty pleasure: manicures.
Vacation: New England bed and breakfast.
Exercise: kick-boxing.
Morning routine: alarm, coffee, oatmeal, commute to work
Currently reading: Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change by Pema Chodron

Urban homesteader: jeans all day and every day; choppy, sassy, edgy hair; boots that look cool, feel good, and keep my feet dry and protected. A couple of "around the house" cashmere sweaters that I wear while feeding the chickens and making decoctions.
Perfume: simple musk.
Lipstick: tinted balm.
Drink: bourbon.
Favorite activity: bartering for groceries.
Most pretentious possession: tiny still.
Guilty pleasure: late night cab rides.
Vacation: mountaintop silent retreat.
Exercise: kettle-bells and yoga.
Morning routine: coffee, oatmeal, ride bike to part-time job
Currently reading: For the Time Being by Annie Dillard

Rural/small town loner: more jeans. so many more jeans; short hair, probably not very interesting; boots chosen entirely for comfort and fit; flannel and wool or tank tops.
Perfume: jasmine, tea, and musk.
Lipstick: pink or berry stain.
Drink: herbal tea.
Favorite activity: long walks with a dog after writing.
Most pretentious possession: vintage typewriter.
Guilty pleasure: peaty scotch.
Vacation: weekend trip to visit a friend.
Exercise: large dog.
Morning routine: black tea, oatmeal, settle in to work from home
Currently reading: Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver

it is harder to face what is painful than to abstain from what is pleasant

When Alice Koller removed herself to Nantucket for three winter months in the early 1960s, she had no idea what it would take to learn to live deliberately and freely. Up until that winter, Koller arranged her life around the men she desired, abandoning good job opportunities in distant cities for menial work in whatever city her lover du jour lived. No matter that those men often had other sweethearts, or that they left happily to take jobs elsewhere. No matter, either, that there was never an occasion on which this plan or schema for prioritizing worked in her favor.

At the edge of Nantucket island, Koller began to notice her patterns of thought and behavior as patterns she herself had created, instead of as unavoidable catastrophes that simply happened to her out of nowhere. As she began to see herself as responsible for those patterns, she began, in Murdochian terms, to let go of fantasy and to see reality. The word "see" is important, not only because of the emphasis Murdoch places on vision: Koller has to see reality before she can see the reality of it, before she can accept and prefer reality to fantasy. —I am not saying this clearly. All of Koller's interpretive frames, all her criteria for evaluating events, persons, and situations, all her mental furniture were built of fantasy and ego. When the real first appears on the scene, she has no reason to believe it is any different than any other frame, criterion, etc. she had used or created. The first step is not to see the realness of reality, but is instead to notice it at all, simply to see it there at all, even if what it is cannot (yet) be grasped. 

Thus, when Koller realizes she has been moving through her days on the island as though at any moment she could call up or write to or come across one of the men she adored and desired, she forces herself to say to herself out loud "They are not possibilities," "They are not available to me," "I don't know which of two men I want to marry when neither of them has ever asked me nor likely ever will." She does not quite know why it is she makes herself say these things out loud, and she does not get any immediate benefit from it. But what she says is true and real and these things are among her first steps toward living a life grounded in what is real instead of a life built around escape into fantasy. 

It is extremely tempting to think that virtue can be won simply by abstaining from what is easy or pleasant. If only I had not gone on that shopping binge, for example, I would have been thrifty and frugal and thus virtuous. But that's only part of the story. For virtue, I must face what is painful. If all I do is abstain from doing that which I don't need to do or ought not to do (like shopping when I do not truly need things), I will not achieve real excellence. Courage is facing what is painful: I am vain; I must graduate; I would rather abdicate responsibility for my life than do difficult things.

But I can take on courage gracefully—wear it like a perfume, daub myself with foreign virtues until, having worn them so long, they become forever associated with me.

what is the secret to your academic success?

Recently I applied for a work-from-home customer service job. i haven't heard anything, and I don't honestly expect to, but I don't mind much. I need to start applying some time, and starting slow before I really need a job can't be a bad idea.

One of the last questions in the online application portal asked the secret to [my] academic success. I said it was that I had not yet quit. I am not startlingly brilliant. I am not passionate (and I do cringe at the word) about philosophy. But I do have two master's degrees and I am about twenty pages away from a complete doctoral dissertation on an interesting and under-explored topic and the only reason is that I have not yet given up.

This is true. I did not lie then and repeating the gist of what I wrote is no lie now.

Still, rereading philosopher Alice Koller's response to a significantly similar question rang too true for comfort:

Ed's question returns to me again: "What sustained you during all those years of getting the degree?" When I leave Nantucket, I may know. Now I can only say: blind pride, together with a constant and ignorant heedlessness of the consequences of my acts and the passage of time. Even saying I ignored them assumes that I knew what the consequences were but was tossing them aside. But I didn't know and I still don't. 

Never once did I ever think of myself defending my dissertation. Never did I imagine myself in a job post-graduation. I assumed that by the time I finished my degree (any of them), I'd have figured things out, learned what it is I am meant to do. I assumed that once I hit or passed thirty years of age, I'd be sufficiently at home in myself to know what it is I want to do. None of these things have turned out to be true. And I will have to defend in the next few months without having learned what the next step is. By now I can acknowledge, even if I can't accept, that this is simply the case, that I will step out into darkness, and that there is no escape from this. 

will I be pretty, will I be rich?

The spinster has gained in poverty and humility as of this writing. By now I really ought to know myself well enough to disregard intense desires for new or expanded wardrobes. When I feel overwhelmed by the certainty that I must have a pair of shoes or a color of lipstick or a pair of jeans that looks precisely. like. *this* —what I really want is to be a certain kind of person. What I want is to feel confident and polished and prepared, and instead of doing the work that will yield real gains in confidence, polish, and preparedness, I settle for the image and buy clothing that I think will project that image. 

It is not surprising that anyone might want to feel strong, happy, comfortable, and ready for anything life will bring. That seems fairly human to me. What is surprising is that I know when I am at risk for shopping binges of this kind; I know that the feeling will pass within an hour (or a day, tops); I know that the clothes will ultimately disappoint because they can't do the inner, personal, moral work I want them to do. I know this and I do it anyway. 

Sometimes I am grateful to myself for such splurges. In a rapid fit of shopping a few months back, I bought some new clothes to accommodate a recent, sudden, surprising bit of weight gain. Instead of squeezing into too-small pants and going about in a lovely coat that no longer flatters, I had clothes that looked quite nice and so I didn't engage in (much) self-shaming for my larger size. On balance, I call that a win. 

Sometimes my longing to feel "all set" really does pay off, and I feel delighted and relieved to find just the kind of item I need at just the time I need it. 

Too often, however, the clothes that were going to make me look tall and lean and happy and successful turn out to be merely pieces of ill-fitting and unmagical sewn fabric. They end up in bags in corners of my closet until I can donate them. I lose money, time, emotional energy, and a little bit of self-respect. 

Still, I think those new boots are going to look pretty rad with the new jeans. Just the right balance of cool with comfortable. I hope.

I don't know where I'm going, I'm not sure where I've been

When I get out of my own way, even just for a few minutes at a time, I feel myself slipping into myself, inhabiting my capacities, tendencies, aptitudes, and excitements. Just now I have been taking notes on an article that is proving surprisingly helpful for the conclusion to the last chapter of my dissertation. With every sentence I record and annotate, I find myself recalling threads and clues that will become the substance of the conclusion. Worse/better, I find myself feeling excited.

I don't put off writing because I don't like the project or because I can't do it. I put it off because it interests me and I am skittish when I am interested. I worry I will fall down the rabbit hole and live only in my own head, severed from community. I worry that I won't be able to find the connections that will allow me to create the argument I am excited to create. I worry most about my own limitations, though. What if I let go and immerse myself into this (or any) project, marshal all my energies, and then arrive on the other side where I find that the product is lackluster? Do I risk it? Do I channel my scattered and hesitant energies into this or any project even though the result might be weak? That is, am I brave enough to endure loving something while bearing the knowledge that loving something will not guarantee success of any kind?

No. I am not so brave.

But it is Lent, and this seems as good a desert experience as any. I'll write in this pathless wilderness.

let's just say my pride has the flu

so I've wrapped it up in soft, faintly stale layers of self-loathing and self-pity. tomorrow I'll do the psychic laundry, put on my big-girl/pretty-spinster face, and get moving. tonight, I'll remain swaddled while I eat the last of the chocolate, drink big mugs of tea, and watch forgettable television.

welcome.