Mind you, I hate the way I look without facial hair (read: like a twelve-year-old boy) but when it's this hot, sacrifices must be made. As you know, I'll be getting a haircut when in Omaha over the 4th, too, so this is the beginning of "summer look Brandon," apparently.
See? I don't look bad, I just look young and hairless. And generally, when I have my long hair with no facial hair (as I do now), I also get mistaken for a woman. Frequently.
You may laugh, but it's true. It's absolutely true, and happens a lot more than you'd think, especially in retail establishments and restaurants.
My face does feel a bit cooler, though.
Even though I have a ton of razors, I don't use them to shave my face. They irritate the skin way too much, especially if I've had a beard for many months (and even more especially when it's hot and I sweat a lot). I have a set of electric trimmers I use for my face, which also leaves me stubble that quickly grows back in. That's part of the plan. Stubble, or a light beard, is good for the summer. The full Castro-esque beard I've been rocking for the past four months or so is totally not.
Part of this is also because I'm expecting phone calls and/or Skype interviews soon for many of the positions I've applied for. I may have an in-person interview or two while I'm in Omaha as well, so therefore I have to look somewhat professional and not like a wild bushman.
Today is also Daisy's birthday. She's 25.
"I'm no longer in my early twenties anymore!" she exclaimed last night. "Now I'm in my mid-twenties! I'm an old woman! I'll have two more gray hairs by the end of the day, you wait and see."
"25 was more of a milestone for me than my 21st birthday was," I told her. "25 made me feel like I was actually a grown-up of sorts."
This is true, but only to a certain extent. You know what really made me feel old? Turning 30. Yeah, that's when I started to feel old. As for my 21st birthday, I don't even remember it, mainly because I did nothing interesting or of note. No, seriously, that's the truth. On my 25th birthday, I was working in a grocery store in Missouri -- and yes, I had to work that night. I remember it vividly, as I was rather pissed that I didn't get it off and was stuck working an overnight shift during the busiest week of the year -- the week before Christmas. Four days later I would get extremely awful food poisoning that would last for over a week.
Yeah, my 25th birthday wasn't that great.
Similarly, Daisy's isn't that great either; she began, and will end, her birthday at work on an overnight shift as well. She described this as "depressing," and I agree, especially since she's had to work overtime the past two nights because she's the only one, apparently, capable of doing her job.
In the past, it's been only on rare occasions that I've had to work on my birthday; throughout my seven non-consecutive years of higher education, my birthday (December 20) has always fallen outside the window of class days -- the semester always ends before it, and likewise, I can't really celebrate it with anybody because all of them tend to leave town fairly quickly after said semester ends. The night of my birthday last year, I was flying back home to West Virginia for Christmas -- the long-winded tale of which you can read starting here if you missed it. The only times when I've had to work on my birthday has been when I've been employed in the service industry, such as the grocery store, or occasionally when I was working in Microbiology (ages ago).
I did not get anything for Daisy for her birthday; she asked long ago for me not to, because (primarily) she knows I have to keep to a budget while I am unemployed, there's nothing she needs from me anyway, and she doesn't really like getting gifts anyhow. While I respected her wishes on this matter, I still felt like there was something I should have done -- even though she just spent several days with me, we went to see Man of Steel, and I fed her and put gas in her car. That's not the same as a birthday present. I know it's just an arbitrary day, as all other "holidays" of its ilk are, but still. It's an important day, and we don't like to spend important days apart (which is part of the reason I'm going up there over the 4th; the 4th last year was the first day Daisy and I met in person).
I have been busy applying for jobs again today; I applied for three teaching positions in Florida with Full Sail University, as well as one at the University of Colorado and one or two other places which offered quick, fill-out-a-form and upload-a-CV applications. I've lost count now for how many positions I've applied for since graduation, but I'm guessing it's close to 100. Something like that, anyway. Time is ticking away if I'm going to be hired anywhere for the fall semester -- this is probably the last week I've got to get in my last applications before I shift my focus to "anything and everything I can do" mode, simply because of time constraints when it would come to being able to move anywhere and settle in with enough time to get it all done. I'd basically have to be hired this week, and hired outright, if that's going to happen -- and I'd also have to basically move mountains to get everything packed, cleaned, and moved out of here and into a new place by mid-August if that happened. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't sleep for the next month or so straight, and Daisy and I would have to figure out when and how she could join me wherever I was hired, etc. To sum it all up, even though I'm still applying to all sorts of different places, getting hired by one of them at this juncture would almost be a curse more than it would be a blessing, and would certainly be a massive, very fast upheaval of my entire life.
Not to mention the stress it would put on my cats.
I have little plans over the course of this next week except to keep applying for jobs and teaching positions, and to wait to hear back from any of the ones I've applied for at this point already. The job market is grim, but it's not that grim. I'll find something sooner or later, even if that something is working in a bank or some office doing something I didn't go to school for as a stopgap measure. I remain optimistic, as generally that's the best course of action for situations like this. In the meantime? I pay bills, I do my grocery shopping, I keep the cats fed and the house (relatively) clean. I go about life. Whatever happens, happens.
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