Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Oi. My throat kills. I think my body has finally had a few days to catch up to the stress of my life lately, and as a result my immune system is saying, "Screw this, we're taking a vacation!" I have a runny nose and I can't bear to swallow anything other than tea and soup.

The move went relatively well. Moving piece by piece on foot is not pleasant though. After several days of walking things over, my legs and arms were actually looking kind of toned. Now they've gone back to their feeble state.


The other day, some friends and I were talking about animals we look like. It was decided that Denis was a goat. Margaret a dog, Shawn a badger, Sadiya an elephant, Kevin a bear and Kate an owl. I got a bird, which is the strangest thing. Not any specific bird, just the generic bird. I couldn't wrap my head around why. I don't exactly have a beak-like nose---on the contrary, I'd say it's rather small and button-ish. I'm not peckish or exactly flighty. Maybe somewhat scattered and bird-brained at times. I guess I like nesting, maybe ruffling feathers on occasion and flying around from place to place. But I'm still puzzled.

It's been lazy days for me for the past little while. Moving, settling and now my biggest task at hand is to job-hunt. One of my most despised activities. I've written about this several times before, relentlessly, much like my efforts to find a job I like. The quest seems futile, and despite having a journalism degree under my belt, I'm still back at square one. Journalism is a field where you have to work you way up, paying your dues and praying to the journalism gods to smile and take pity on you. While I'm definitely not a hard-hitting newsie type, I do enjoy writing and when I got into it, I realized it's a hard living.

I'm convinced that there are a few lucky souls out there who are smart enough to land a job that will allow them to climb the ladder quickly while the rest of us poor sods will have to take part-time jobs calling people, trying to manipulate them into buying something or serving java just to make ends meet while waiting for the world to recognize our hidden genius and talent.

It's the finding a job to pay the bills that is giving me a hard time. I'm selective (to a fault, ahem) and would not want a job that will make me want to gouge out my own eyes or pull out my own hair (follicles included). As a result, job-hunting has been less than fruitful. I've had a couple interviews and rejections, which does little to help my pathetic state as is. Sooner or later, I'm going to have to waltz into a coffee shop or call centre, drop off my resume, boast my credentials and grovel for shifts. The thing is, I feel like I'm too old for this. How long can I keep working jobs I hate? Yes, there's the idea from my parents' generation that work is work, you're not supposed to enjoy it. And maybe I'm coming from a spoiled Generation X, where dot commers learned to go for it themselves and the notion that work can be what you want, and telling the boss to shove it was commonplace. Sadly I don't have the gumption to go it alone. Even this brief sojourn into freelancing is proving to be challenging. I have a somewhat hazy idea of what I want to do but I'm not quite sure how to go about getting there. If only I had a little birdie to tell me.

1 comment:

xammm said...

I would like to hire you for writing some bird-related stories for my website but the salary would be kinda... neglectable... If not zero :(
Anyways you have to manage to be like Berlin. The official slogan for Berlin is "poor but sexy".