I have begun working on two stories for the newspaper; hopefully, and with a little luck, I can finish them by Monday, send them off to my editor, and create an invoice for them. Neither one should take me incredibly long to write once I get the information for them from my interview subjects; when I was working at the paper as a real reporter, I would sometimes write three or four stories a day. Even when I was freelancing before I would tackle stories one after another until I had exhausted the list of them. I must've written thirty or more freelance stories in the span of two or three months before I became a full reporter and webmaster at the paper. Pages upon pages of invoices, let me tell you.
The problem is the stories themselves; I've been in contact with one of the interview subjects via email for the first story, and he seems like a cool guy. Once he answers the few questions I asked him, I can put together and write that story almost effortlessly. For the second story, I've been shuffled around to three different people now to get information from, none of whom seem to know what the hell I'm asking, and I have to call one of them from my own phone on Monday to even see if I can get the information out of him that I need.
This doesn't really make me feel like I've accomplished much; really, it feels more like a hollow victory more than anything else. I'm doing something, but it's not a lot, and a drop in the bucket when it comes to finances.
I've not been eating much and I've been trying to drink more water due to the fact that earlier this week, for some reason, by the time I went to bed at night (or in the early morning hours) my feet and ankles were swelling up. Not painfully or anything like that, but it was definitely noticeable. I've not really changed my diet recently, nor have I injured myself or gone outside my daily, normal routine, and I feel perfectly fine and normal -- yet for some reason my feet started swelling from my ankles down. They swelled slowly, and when I went to bed at night they went down, because upon awakening, they're perfectly normal again. Daisy mentioned that it might be because I consume a lot of sodium, which is true -- so I've been trying to eat less and flush what's in my system already out with extra water. She also thought that it might be because of the heat, and I reminded her that it's barely been above 90 for the past week here, and it's certainly not been as hot as it was, say, earlier this summer.
Also, don't Google "feet swelling" if you're a hypochondriac or at all able to be swayed by the worst of the myriad reasons your feet might swell, because fuck, I made that mistake, and would rather not believe that I'm somehow dying slowly because I have swollen feet.
Anyway, eating less and drinking more water seems to help; all I've eaten today is a bowl of Cracklin' Oat Bran and some coffee, and tonight (so far) they've not swollen up to any noticeable level. So who knows. I think some of it may be attributed to my new computer chair, which was the spare I had to switch out of the spare room when my old one broke -- it sits higher and at a different angle than my old one, and therefore puts pressure on my legs and ass in different places than before. I am not yet used to it.
I had to go out to Walmart -- as much as I didn't want to -- last night, and spend yet more money on things for around the house. The cats go through litter so very quickly that I can barely keep up, and unless I wanted to eat nothing but cereal, coffee, ramen, and homemade waffles with peanut butter on them for the next week, I needed to get some actual groceries. As it's not been entirely sweltering hot recently, I actually have the desire to cook some food as well, since if I try to do so when it's 100 degrees outside, the kitchen gets so overheated that I almost pass out. I ended up getting some hot dogs/buns and some chicken nuggets (yay, more sodium!) because both were on sale and will provide me with something different to eat for once.
It's also rapidly getting to that point where I need to make a "big" shopping trip again sometime soon -- and when I say "big" I mean "over $300 or so" to get everything I need around the house at once. Unfortunately, it's not like I have the money to do this, so I have to part-and-parcel everything I purchase until I can find reliable, sustainable employment again -- the search for which, if you read my last post, isn't exactly going well at this juncture. I've thought about going over to the discount grocery store and purchasing absolutely everything I might need or use in one big trip, spending about $100 or so, but I'm usually not awake (or awake enough) to make that trip during their normal business hours of 8AM to 7PM. I say "awake enough" because, if I'm awake early during the day anymore, it's usually for a reason. I got up early yesterday morning, for example, to work on those newspaper stories, search for more work, and get an update from my mother about my grandmother's current condition (I'll get to that in a bit). When I was done with that -- or as done as I could be, really -- I went back to bed until around 8PM, as I was tired from getting up and being mobile during the morning hours. If I land a reliable job sometime soon -- even if it's adjuncting for the fall -- I'll be able to go out and get all the groceries and items I need without worry. But, for right now? Budget, budget, budget. I still have to pay next month's rent, and I still have about $250 or so to pay off on my credit cards next month. It appears that ordering pizza last week will be about the only "indulgence" I'll be able to afford for a while.
I'm starting to get to my "nervousness point," as in, the point where the money I have will seem to go much more quickly than it did before when, really, it's going at the same rate -- there's just much less of it. This is part of why I desperately want to know ASAP if I'm going to be teaching this fall in any capacity, because if not, I should probably be filling out a Walmart application at their computer terminal the next time I'm over there. I don't want to do this, of course, but I have to find something to stop the money drain, and soon -- at this point, foreseeing the bills I have coming over the course of the next several weeks, as well as expenses such as food, I won't have enough money left to be able to move out of this house and into a new place after, say, the end of August or so, even if I were able to get hired on somewhere closer to here (such as Omaha). It takes a lot of money to rent a moving truck and to pay first/last month's rent plus deposit on a new place, any place. Taking into account all of my expenses, I've got about another six weeks before -- if that scenario were to occur -- I would no longer be able to afford it on my own.
If that scenario doesn't occur, and I'm stuck not teaching this fall and simply writing a few articles a week for the paper, if that many (read: the worst-case scenario), then I will completely exhaust my savings by late October, or mid-November at the latest. And I mean completely exhaust, to where nothing at all will be left in my bank account.
Now do you see why I'm nervous or constantly stressed and in low-level "panic mode" all the time? It's fucking terrifying.
On some level, I can't believe I'm in this situation again. I went off to get another degree, got it, and it seems in many ways that I'm right back where I started in late 2009, early 2010: technically unemployed, with many financial responsibilities that drain me of all the money I do have, and with nothing sustainable on the horizon. It's one of the primary reasons I went to graduate school in the first place, as I've written here before -- a guaranteed three-year job with the ability to get an advanced degree that may save me from the hell of being otherwise completely unemployable.
Apparently that second degree, and the three years of work I put into getting it, didn't really raise my overall worth to employers by that much. If anything, it upgraded me from "completely unemployable" to "only mostly unemployable." Fuck, really?
And now, of course, I'm saddled with a bunch of student loan debt that the clock is ticking on. Debt that if I hadn't taken on, I wouldn't be paying bills right now.
To make matters worse (at least marginally so), I received this email yesterday:
Dear Brandon,
This is to acknowledge receipt of your application for the position English Faculty (Reg FT 10 month, with benefits) Job Slot # 2006, 2272, 2468 at the Community College of Allegheny County. Your application has been carefully reviewed with those of the other applicants, but has not been chosen for further consideration at this time.
We sincerely thank you for the time and effort you invested as an applicant and for your interest in the Community College of Allegheny County. We encourage you to visit our employment website at www.ccacjobs.com often to explore other opportunities as they become available. The website is updated every Friday with the latest openings. We wish you the best in your employment endeavors.
Sincerely,
Human Resources
Community College of Allegheny County
Allegheny County, if you're unaware, is Pittsburgh.
I'd really like to know what other applicants were better than me for a community college English teaching position. Especially since people with doctorates don't generally apply for employment at community colleges, and I doubt that many more applicants than me, if any, have three years of experience teaching three different courses under their belt, one of them being a course they basically designed (which is stated quite clearly in my CV).
I will, however, give them the props for actually emailing me to tell me I haven't been selected for any of the positions they had. Note the job numbers above in that email; I applied for not one, but all three of the English faculty positions they had open. Took me a good 90 minutes or so to do that.
You know how much I would have loved living in Pittsburgh? A lot.
After reading my previous post here, Daisy was upset and thought that somehow, it insinuated that I was suicidal, since I referenced the MFA graduate suicide rate and made several references to not wanting to work a job where I would come home every night and want to eat a bullet or drink myself to death.
Well, yeah, I don't think anyone wants a job where they'd come home every night wanting to fucking die, duh. But I'm not suicidal (also duh). I have too much shit to take care of in my life and too much life ahead of me. Even if I'm depressed and feeling stressed, strung-out, and fairly hopeless at this point (which, yes, I am) it doesn't mean I want to off myself. It means I'm angry and frustrated at the world, the economy, my lot in life, and the now-broken promises of "you can always keep teaching!" I was told before I graduated with my Master's degree.
I'm angry and frustrated, not suicidal. Big difference. I don't want to end up stuck in a position that would make me incredibly depressed and actually suicidal. Bigger difference. I have a wedding and a family in my future -- those two things are all I've ever wanted out of life. But, obviously, I want to be able to survive and support myself as well. That's a rather big thing, you know.
I mentioned my grandmother's condition before because, earlier this week back home, she fell and broke her shoulder and wrist. My grandmother is frail, 85 years old, and has terrible osteoporosis and heart conditions. Obviously, she was rushed the hospital where they kept her overnight because of the possibility that she might need surgery on the shoulder (and they wanted to make sure she was okay, of course), and I got bits and pieces of details from my cousin and from my mother in the meantime. The doctors there set her wrist and put it in a cast, something that according to my mother was gruesome to watch, since she was there, and the doctors decided that she didn't need surgery on her shoulder but would have to wear a sling until it healed up again. They sent her home, where several of my aunts and uncles have been taking care of her day and night.
Quite obviously, this alone has caused me a lot more stress this past week than usual. I've mentioned here in the blog before that every time I fly home to visit friends and family, I wonder if it's the last chance I'll get to see my grandmother alive. As I've not been able to fly home this summer when I really wanted to, I was even more stressed by the entire situation. It gives me a bit of solace that she's at home and recuperating now, but it doesn't truly ease my worries.
It also doesn't help that, all of a sudden, many other friends and family are all having problems at the same time. Like, everything was fine, and then bam, a ton of people close to me start having health issues, personal issues, people or pets dying, money problems, etc. All at once. Just as many other friends who I was once close with have seemed to drop off the face of the earth now that it's summer. Some of them I'll probably never hear from again.
All of this stuff -- all of it -- makes me want to crawl into a proverbial hole until it all resolves itself. Is July an unlucky month, or something? Who knows.
Rae gave me the advice that I should look for jobs in childcare. Like, in daycare centers and the like, because places like that are always thrilled when men apply (apparently, most daycare workers are women). Also, she said, "some of them pay pretty well."
"Wouldn't these places consider it creepy that a large, bearded burly man was applying to work with children?" I asked.
Because, honestly, that's a legitimate question. As a child, I was in daycare for a long time. The facility was owned and operated exclusively by women. In the facility across town (owned by the same company; we used to do pool days with both groups of kids combined in the summer), there was one guy working for them, and I'm pretty sure he was gay.
"A lot of these kids need father figures," Rae said. "Any man will do. Maybe lose the beard and start baby talking."
While I'd love the money, and it would probably be a relatively easy job, I don't really think the childcare field is for me. Especially as most children tend to drive me up the wall very quickly. When I say that, people look at me with a surprised expression because it is no secret that I want children, and they ask why I want them if they drive me crazy.
My answer is always the same: "Because I can't discipline other people's children, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let my own run around screaming like idiots and be little terrors without rules or sense."
As an aside, this has been a huge point of contention in conversations with Daisy in the past; what it boils down to, essentially, is that she really doesn't believe in disciplining children or raising your voice to them, ever; she thinks that you can sit down and have a reasonable explanatory discussion with a toddler about why they're tearing ass around the house screaming and being a little asshole. You can't; they're toddlers, they don't have the capacity for reason. But I told her that was fine, we'd do it her way when we have kids, and I will silently watch and wait to see how quickly she snaps. Daisy doesn't have a temper; she's one of the most balanced, cool, and level-headed people I've ever met, but watching how she will eventually take care of our children will be a supremely fascinating psychological study.
As a further aside, Daisy is wonderful with children; both of her sisters have several children already (one has two; the other has three, with a fourth on the way). They all adore their Aunt Daisy, and she's great with them. I've seen it in person. So, maybe I'm wrong.
But getting back to the point, I really don't think a job in childcare is for me. I know my temperament; I'd snap too quickly. I will, however, suggest such jobs to Daisy in the future, so that she may possibly get out of the horrible job she has now. Part of why I don't think I'd do well in childcare is the same reason I really don't think I'd do well in teaching at anywhere but the university level -- I have to be able to interact with people who actually have some sort of logical skills, and people who will actually follow directions when I issue them. People who will learn something, who aren't there just because they have to be. Etc.
It's finally cool and rainy tonight; right now, it's 73 and pouring rain outside with a good breeze. I've been trying to cool down the house somewhat by opening all the windows and running the fans, and it's working -- but very slowly. It was stifling hot upstairs this afternoon when I woke up and came up here, and there's only so much I can do to keep it cool. Again, unless it's below freezing outside, good luck on ever getting the temperature in this house to stay below 80 or so. And, additionally, when it's super-cold outside, good luck keeping the temperature in it above 65. Old house, poorly insulated, inefficient (and insufficient) heating/cooling/ventilation system. Go figure.
I have a long week ahead of me next week; at some point I have to go to campus and pick up my diploma, and see if I can meet up with the chair of the department (if he's back from vacation). If he's not, I'll wait until he is. I'll also have to get at least one of the stories to my editor by Tuesday morning if at all possible, and see what the status of the other one is or if they have more they want me to do. And, of course, I must continue looking for/applying for other work, pay my rent, do the normal upkeep of the house (including mowing the grass again, as it'll grow like crazy after tonight's rain) and try to keep cool and hydrated so that my feet don't swell up again -- they've been fine for the past two days or so.
As for the rest of my night, though, I'm going to make something to eat and probably watch a movie or something downstairs where it's cool and I don't have to worry about being too hot all the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment