Further Responsibilities

As most of you folks probably already know, I've never been one to shirk responsibilities in any form -- no, when something comes along that needs to be dealt with and/or taken care of, I do that before I do anything else, sometimes to great detriment to my sleep schedule or ability to be social. This is why, for a long time as a graduate student, I was sort of a homebody and/or hermit -- aside from the fact that I don't live in Wichita, I had many more important things to take care of that came first before socialization. I always had student work to grade or plan for, and if it wasn't work for my students, it was work of my own or studying for comps or what-have-you. There was always something else to be done.

Now that I have left that environment and routine (well, at least for the time being), my responsibilities have become much more basic in nature -- take care of the cats, clean the house, make sure the bills are paid, go grocery shopping, etc. But, obviously, the biggest responsibility I've had over the course of the past two months is to find work somewhere, and it is, of course, the responsibility that is the most difficult to take care of.

Over the course of this past week, I haven't been sleeping well. There are myriad reasons for this, some of which I'll get to in subsequent posts, but a big one is the fact that I have a looming sense of dread. I just have this overwhelming feeling that, while things may be okay right now, they're not going to be okay forever -- specifically when it comes to finances and finding work that won't make me want to kill myself every night upon returning home from said work.

I'm going to be blunt when I say that I have never felt, and probably will never feel, like I've been cut out for conventional employment. It doesn't suit me; it never has. When I say "conventional employment" I mean five days a week, 9-5, shirt-and-tie office desk job. I'm not that type of person and I never have been. I relate well to the movie Office Space because it mirrors a lot of what I feel about office environments -- boring, soul-killing, creativity-stifled work. It sounds, to me, like an incredible waste of time and human resources for the benefit of someone else, not towards the personal and intellectual growth of the individual. Even when I've worked in jobs that have involved an office of some sort, they've been unconventional jobs, positions in which the majority of my time was spent outside that setting.

As a college instructor, I taught classes and had office hours. As a newspaper reporter, I did some work on the computer every morning, but the majority of my day was spent writing stories and/or interviewing people for stories, with the occasional layout or field reporting/photography thrown in there as well. As a grocery store worker on night shifts, I generally ran the place (most nights, I was left in charge) and did everything including running register, stocking shelves, taking inventory, and sweeping/scrubbing the floors. As a laboratory technician, I did a lot of hands-on research work in addition to anything and everything else the lab required I do.

I have never worked a conventional job and, am, frankly, disheartened and saddened by the possibility that eventually, in able for me to be able to eat, I might be forced to take one. And believe me, that is the sort of job that will make me want to come home every night and put a shotgun in my mouth. No creativity. No flexibility. Dress codes, codes of conduct, and edicts on how long your hair can be or if you're allowed to have facial hair.

I don't have dress clothing. I maybe have four dress shirts, and I couldn't tell you where three of them are. If I even still own them, that is. I only own one pair of jeans, but the rest of the pants in my wardrobe are either corduroy or cargo pants. I own one pair of black, high-shine dress shoes, and I haven't worn them in five years (they're in the top of my closet, still in their box after only having worn them twice). I don't own a dress jacket or sport coat, because I can't find one that will fit me and don't have hundreds of dollars to spend on one. I own but four ties, despite the fact that no matter how I try and no matter how many times I've read and watched tutorials on how to learn, I do not know how to tie a necktie. I can never get it right. I am not kidding about this. I am thirty years old, and I am not cut out for the corporate world or private sector. I never have been, and I don't think I ever will be -- nor do I want to be, or want that kind of life. Ever.

Daisy works in an office setting, a setting in which she has a cubicle, desk, and computer in front of her, and she has to deal with all the office drama in addition to the customer support and management issues that is her job. And she hates it. She gets paid well (or, really, well enough, anyhow) but she hates it. Half of our conversations about work involve, on some level, how much she hates her job. Daisy has also encouraged me to apply there myself, in a position different than the one she works -- because it is decent money, after all -- and I told her that quite frankly I would rather shoot myself than work in an environment like that. It's really not for me, and I don't know any way to put it better than that.

I had once lost all hope that I would ever make something of myself; when I originally started this blog six years ago, I had resigned myself to a fate of being a grocery store worker forever, that no matter how I tried, I would never get out of that soul-sucking, morale-crushing job. And, believe me, I tried. I tried for well over a year to find a job someplace else. I interviewed at other retail establishments -- Kmart, JCPenney, Target -- and none of them wanted me. I interviewed at banks and insurance companies, called and sent emails to the local newspapers trying to get reporter work, etc. I couldn't get anything. Nobody wanted me.

One of the insurance companies I interviewed at wanted to pay me $10k a year driving 500 miles a week in my own car (when I didn't own a car) back and forth, to and from Kansas City and several other large cities around the area -- with no benefits and no mileage reimbursement, frequently spending weekends in hotels and on the road selling insurance. For only ten thousand dollars a year.

I made $17k a year at the grocery store. And I'd applied for a secretary position at that particular insurance agency, not a traveling salesman position -- because even a secretarial position would make close to or more than $17k a year, and I wouldn't have to be doing manual labor work on nights and weekends. When I told the interviewer this on the phone, he promptly hung up on me.

This is similar to earlier this month, when my teaching credentials fit the bill and experience for a teaching position in Lincoln, and the lady called to offer me four hours a day at $8 per hour. It's insulting. There's a Writing Center position open in Omaha at the university there that pays $20 per hour, but it's also listed as "temporary" and "part time" with no benefits and no other details. I told Daisy that it was probably a waste of time to even apply for it, as "temporary" and "part time" more than likely translated to less than ten hours a week -- with the former meaning they could basically tell you to go kick rocks at any time they wanted to.

I keep telling Daisy, mostly because it's true, that I desperately want a teaching or writing position someplace, not some sort of office job like she has. This is because doing a job like she has would more than likely put me back into the rut of life, which is my greatest fear -- if I settle for something that is below me, something simply done for the sake of necessity, something that I did not go to school for and could have done without an advanced degree...I will once more give up on my life's dreams. I'll realize that I'm trapped in whatever position I have for the foreseeable future, and I will slowly resign myself to my fate as a low-wage slave more and more as what little self-esteem I have evaporates. After a while I will no longer have the drive and motivation to succeed or make anything of myself anymore -- my work will boil down to something I have to do for simple survival, and something I cannot escape because, when I try to, I am constantly smacked down and reminded that being a wage slave is all I'm good for. I know me. I know how I am. I know how my mental state operates.

The only thing that got me out of that mindset four years ago was leaving the grocery store job, uprooting myself, and moving to Kansas with my longtime ex when she got accepted into graduate school. It was the one and only good thing that came out of my move here to this hot, flat, dismal red state. It is a mental state that I refuse to fall into again. Ever. And nobody seems to "get it" when I say I don't want to be trapped in doing one thing and only one thing for the rest of my life. All of them look at me with sad eyes and say things like "do you think I wanted to work where I work for as long as I've been working there?" They say things like this because they've already resigned themselves to defeat, and did so many years ago -- now all they can look forward to is retirement or death, or both.

Careers in teaching, writing, or (really) teaching writing give me options. Options are important. This is why I've felt so fucking defeated over the past two months in being able to find nothing. Teaching, at least at the college level, is one of those few careers left in which you can work your way up through the system and actually enjoy what you do while you do so.

"I know you want a tenure-track job..." Daisy began the other night before I stopped her.

"I'm not going to find a tenure-track job," I told her point-blank. "There are way too few of them and way too many of us. Hoping for something tenure-track is basically pointless."

In teaching at the college level, if you do well enough for a long enough period of time, people tend to notice that. They tend to promote you, give you more leeway in what you do, let you fully design and mandate your own courses and their execution, and generally (over some time) tend to pay you more. You don't have to be tenure-track to get these things. Tenure basically boils down to a permanent position that is nigh-impossible to be fired from -- and only sometimes does it mean you'll get paid more than anyone else. I don't necessarily want tenure track anyway -- it means more responsibilities, and with more responsibilities comes higher, frequently difficult-to-achieve expectations. If I've learned anything in my several years of teaching, it's that you don't want more responsibilities or higher expectations -- really, you just want to be trusted enough by the administration to be left alone. As a GTA, I had that -- I helmed the Engineering English 102 sections all by my lonesome, as my own boss, for a year. I only answered to the department chair, a close friend and ally who trusted me, knew the course was "my baby" and that I'd made it my own after his wife designed the original blueprint for it, and let me go my own way. This is because I knew what I was doing, I didn't start any shit, and I truly enjoyed what I did. If anyone were to posit a complaint about me, all he would have to do would be to pull my course evaluations and look at the high-percentile marks across the board. I wore Iron Maiden, Firefly, and comic book t-shirts to class to teach in because I had that unspoken pass from the department (a department without a dress code, really) once I explained, briefly, that Engineers were classes full of nerds who could relate to someone like me better than someone who would wear a suit and tie every day.

And, of course, I was right. I was trusted. Nobody was going to give me any shit about anything when they saw the results of my teaching abilities, and nobody did. Ever. I got along with the program directors who nobody else liked and who nobody else got along with. I had hour-long conversations with them on a semi-frequent basis, because I was trusted and respected. Again, as you know, I took my job seriously. It was the highest of responsibilities for me, and that served me well.

So teaching, you see, is an animal all its own. It's sort of like being in the mafia. You gain trust, you gain respect, and you work your way up the ladder. It's also a position which has just the right amount of job security, and with every class you teach you add more experience and another notch to your proverbial belt on your CV. It's not a conventional, sit-in-an-office-and-work-9-to-5 job. It's a 24/7 job. But it's a job that also gives you a lot more flexibility and leeway than many other jobs do, and when you have downtime you actually get to savor and enjoy it, instead of getting off work and wanting to drink a fifth of gin to make the pain go away.

Teaching is also flexible in the sense that if you don't like what you're teaching, where you're teaching or when you're doing it, you generally only have to deal with that for a semester at a time, and the more respected and trusted you are amongst the administration and your peers, the more you get to have a say in what you do and when/where/how you're doing it. Again, look at my example above -- even as a GTA, I was trusted enough to basically run an entire program by myself. I could've done anything I wanted in that class -- I could've gone in there every day wearing my leather jacket and a speedo, bullshitted with my students about the science of Star Trek, and as long as I performed admirably and still fulfilled the requirements of the department, it didn't matter. Having autonomy, having interaction with one's students, having a classroom full of subjects under your orders and command -- so many of these things are taken for granted. And none of these things are present in most other fields I could be working in. It's a totally unique experience.

The other plus about teaching is that I have never, not once felt hopeless, trapped, or resigned to my fate. My fate was education. My fate was bettering the world as I bettered myself as well. I was never smacked down or chastised for wanting to be the best person I could be -- teaching encouraged and bolstered that in me. I made a difference. I was doing work that meant something to not only me, but everyone I worked with.

The thought that I may have to eventually take an office job that will make me feel the exact opposite of that feeling not only terrifies me, but very deeply depresses me.

Writing, on the other hand, offers supreme flexibility at the expense of any and all job security. I've written before about how I've basically lost faith in the publishing industry; very little of what I see published these days is at all good or interesting, and most of it is just flat-out boring or bad. I became bitter and jaded about literary journals long ago, especially when my own submissions (or the brilliant submissions of my friends and colleagues) were rejected in favor of some of the worst, most trite poetry or short fiction I've ever read. It's almost impossible to get published anymore or to find a literary agent who will actually do anything for you -- it's very similar to the music industry. If you have something good, you might as well put the work into it and release it yourself independently, because then at least you'll be likely to get something out of it. The only way one can make any money writing these days is, sadly, through journalism -- and that's tenuous money at best. I write for the newspaper because I can do it, it's relatively fun and easy, and it's something I enjoy that gets my work read by the public while I actually get a paycheck for it. I took on two stories for the paper yesterday morning, and my deadline for at least one, if not both of them, is Tuesday morning. It won't pay the bills, but it's something.

Still I am filled with dread and uncertainty about my future, and it's a feeling I can't shake. In less than two weeks, I will find out whether I will be adjuncting this fall or will have any sort of employment with the university at all. If I'm not, I have to either dive into as many stories as I can get the newspaper to give me at once, essentially making my freelancing a full-time job, or I have to dive into the soul-sucking, life-draining job market everywhere I can in order to be able to find something that will allow me to pay my bills. Or both. None of it's going to be pleasant.

I don't really tell Daisy about a lot of the thoughts going through my head or the stress I'm under right now, because I am mentally able to keep it pretty balanced and I don't want her to worry about me. My financial situation right now is just fine, but it's not exactly sustainable for more than a few more months, despite my few monetary needs. Internally, I am always in a low-level panic, always feeling that there's something more I should be doing, but I don't know what else could be done. I know if I were to apply for, and get hired into some low-level sales job somewhere, while it would bring in some money, it more than likely wouldn't be enough for me to live on, and I know I would fall back into that pit of despair, that pit of "I'll never succeed doing what I was meant to do with my life, or anything I went to school for" and I will lose all motivation to even try anymore because it will be too goddamned depressing. You may think that knowledge of this situation alone would prevent it from happening, but it doesn't. I know how I am, I know how I think. I can't change who I am at my core, not even the traits and pitfalls that I do not like about myself. It is so easy, whether you think it would be or not, to fall back into that pit of despair and self-loathing. So, so easy. And I don't want to end up looking back on my life in a year or two and hating everything it's become, especially not when I'll just be starting a life as a husband (and probably a father) as well.

In the meantime, there are few opportunities that will offer me any sort of stability at all beyond, say, a semester or so's worth of work. Daisy has applied for academic advisor positions at a community college, and has encouraged me to do the same (as the starting pay is $38k a year or so), and I will do so, but even that feels basically fruitless. While it is still in the education field, yes, I can also see that playing out as one of those positions I'd apply for and would then never, ever hear back from because it is posted as a formality -- something else Daisy's father reminded me of when I was visiting last week.

"So many of these job postings aren't really job postings," he told me. "They're put up because they have to put them up as placeholders when, in reality, they already have someone lined up for the position from within their ranks, and have no intention of hiring any outside applicants."

This is something I knew before of course, and something I've known for years, but had conveniently forgotten in favor of actually being able to hold out some sort of hope that maybe, eventually, someone might actually want to hire someone with my skills, experience, and qualifications.

I put up a treatise this morning on Facebook about why I believe the national minimum wage should be federally mandated to be $20 per hour, for everyone (including servers/waiters/etc) and how employers should basically not be allowed to have "part-time only" jobs anymore. I come from a state where Walmart is the largest private employer because nobody can get any work anywhere else, and Walmart is legendarily known to pay their employees as little as possible and to work them like dogs -- it's the American version of sweatshop slave labor. Yet, companies like Walmart rake in millions, if not billions, in pure profits every year. Companies like McDonald's, who do the same thing and expect their employees to be able to live on their poor salaries, have basically admitted that to break even, an average employee's wage should be at least $15 per hour.

I got a lot of shit over this, by friends of mine saying things like "$20 per hour is $40k a year!" Yes, yes it is. I don't see the problem here. Especially not when many companies like Walmart and McDonald's are making such massive profits on the backs of their employees who essentially run the company for them, employees who are worked to the bone at the lowest possible wage they are federally allowed to pay them.

"Okay," I said, "So don't make it all companies and businesses then, only the ones who make a pure profit of $5M, $10M, $20M a year or more."

Putting in a stipulation like that would allow small businesses to survive, and would force the megacorporations raping the workforce to actually better our economy by, y'know, allowing their workers to be actually able to afford life.

One of my friends replied that "Basic, menial jobs exist to give people a place to start. The opportunity, as it is, is to build skills and a job history in order to advance to the next step. Okay, so minimum wage can't get someone by, fine: work two jobs."

Yeah, that's part of the problem. The solution shouldn't be "work two jobs," ever. If you want to work two jobs? Go for it. I have no problem with that. For a time, after I graduated from WVU, I worked three jobs all at once -- freelance reporter for the Morgantown newspaper, grocery store checker/stocker, and laboratory technician/assistant. In addition, I ran my own web business. I barely slept, and with the money I made from all of those ventures combined, I wouldn't have even been able to pay car insurance, let alone move out of my parents' house and fend for myself. Combined, with all of those, I worked anywhere between 60-70 hours per week -- I usually had about 38 or 39 at the grocery store (so that they couldn't classify me as "full time," which meant they would have to pay me benefits) and around 20 in the lab, not to mention the hours I put into writing stories for the paper. And even in that, if I weren't living with my parents at the time, I would not have been able to survive. This was almost ten years ago now.

"I find it most amusing," said one of my other friends, "that most of the people telling fast food workers to get better jobs that pay more than minimum wage are the same people complaining about welfare, food stamps, low income housing etc. Stuff that a lot of people wouldn't need if they could actually survive on one 40 hour a week job."

My thoughts exactly. It's not about getting comfortable in some fast food job so that one never leaves it -- it's about being able to survive working that job for the time being when one needs it, or, conversely, in the case that the person working it is unable to ever leave it. I know people who have worked in grocery stores or in fast food for over twenty years -- why? Because they can't get out of it, or because they don't have the education or ability to do anything else and are forced to rely on that job to survive. And it kills them mentally and socially, as well as physically. If you think everyone in this country has the same opportunity to get an education and to move up in the world, you are wrong. If you think everyone has the ability -- mental or physical or both -- to continue bettering themselves and rise up, you are also wrong. Most of my own family members worked in the coal mines of West Virginia and Pennsylvania for the better part of their lives not because they wanted to, but because they couldn't afford to go to college, and working in the mines was the only job available that they could actually live on. Even today, in West Virginia you either work for the mines (or mining companies), work for the university in some capacity, or end up working at Walmart or a grocery store. Those are about the only three real options unless you want to sacrifice your life to the military, since poor states like West Virginia have the highest recruitment rates -- people would rather take the chance of getting shot at on a regular basis just to be able to make enough money to survive.

I find all of this incredibly sad and depressing, of course.

This is what I have to deal with; this is all of the stuff I think about on a regular basis. It's not much better here in Kansas than it is in West Virginia. It wasn't any better in Missouri when I lived there, either, and it's not much better (if at all) in Omaha. Could I get a minimum wage job right now if I wanted to or had to? Yes, of course I could -- at almost any retail or foodservice establishment here in Newton, for fuck's sake. And yes, it would help pay the bills. Yes, it would keep food in the fridge and gas in the car, and would do so for a while. But would it be enough for me to live on indefinitely? Hell no. It would be just like adjuncting -- it would supplement what I already have, but it would not fully stop the hemorrhaging of money, nor would it really allow me to save anything. It would just slow the bleeding to a trickle for a short time.

I'm not alone in this situation, of course; I'm not crying the "poor me" routine. There are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of recent graduates exactly where I am right now, looking down the barrel of unemployment and financial ruin with hope for the future in my chosen career field slowly dwindling more and more by the day. And what can be done about this? Not a lot. I'm sick of assholes calling people like me -- recent graduates -- "lazy" or "entitled" or what-have-you. We're not -- or at least not all of us are. I didn't get two degrees to expect a job to fall into my lap. I'm not that immature. I got two degrees with the simple expectation that doing so would better my chances of actually being able to do what I want to do with my life, only to find that thousands upon thousands of others did the same thing and are also in the same situation I am. All of us are working hard to find some sort of employment we can live on, and yes, I am fully aware that I am the product of my choices and life decisions (by the way, don't Google the statistics on how many MFA graduates commit suicide, because it's fucking scary). Still, to a certain extent I don't care what other people think -- my life choices, my experience and credentials, should mean something. It's not about self-importance, it's about self-reliance.

My mother asked me this morning if I had any updates for her on the job hunt, and it took all of my self-control to not begin laughing. Instead, I had to explain to her that over the past two weeks or so, while there were plenty of jobs in education-related fields still out there (most of which require degrees more advanced than mine and/or experience I do not have), most teaching positions have been disappearing, dropping like dominoes as the timeframe for being able to interview and hire applicants has now passed -- including many of the positions I myself have applied for. I also had to explain to her that even if I got a call today and was offered even an interview, let alone a position someplace, it's far, far too late for me to be able to uproot myself to move halfway across the country again to be able to start teaching on a set date. That's the difference between teaching positions and other positions -- set dates. You can be the best candidate possible with every degree and credential any given institution would want, but if you can't interview, pack up and move, secure a new living situation and be ready to teach on the first day of classes....sorry, we'll pick someone else. That's part of what's so frustrating about looking for work in education -- very strict, metered-out timeframes. At least for most other realms of employment, if hired I can give them a start date on my own terms. If you're a professor, you can't -- they dictate those times and you have to abide by them.

I found this on Twitter this evening: "Life doesn't give you what you want. Life gives you the materials necessary to create you into the person you're supposed to be."

I've already crafted myself into the person I'm supposed to be.

What now?

Energy

I don't know what's wrong with me; if it's the heat or something else, but I've been incredibly low on energy over the past several days since returning home. It's not that I'm tired enough to go to sleep, it's just that I feel...drained. Like, sort of weak. Not weak in a sick way, but weak in a "I just don't have the energy to get up and move around and do any more than I absolutely have to" sort of way. If you can, imagine being constantly fatigued, tired, and feeling really heavy and useless, but not sleepy. That's how I feel.

Usually when I feel like this, the best medicine is to actually get up and start doing stuff, supplemented by a healthy dose of coffee. That has, somewhat remarkably, helped a bit today. Today it's not the heat that's bothering me; it's only in the 70s outside this evening (thanks to some hellacious thunderstorms that blew through in the overnight hours and kept me awake, knocking out the power twice), and to continue to keep it cooler in here I've had the AC on for about three hours. You may ask why I'm running the air when it's in the 70s outside, and to that I respond that it was in the mid-80s earlier this afternoon, and last night after I turned the air off, it went up to 96 in my room in less than an hour. Again, greenhouse.

But, back to my point -- to combat this lack of energy, I cleaned the cat box/room, filled and ran the dishwasher, and gathered all of the trash and recycling to take out tonight. And I felt better. Sort of.

I think a large part of it is re-adjustment from being in Omaha in a house that is climate-controlled to 74 degrees at all times, to returning home to a house that I can barely keep below 90 regardless of the weather/temperatures outside during the summer. Even with the cooler temperatures outside (78 right now), it's 88.7 in my room, and that's after the AC has been running all day. Greenhouse.

I need to go do some shopping tonight, regardless of whether it continues to rain or storm -- being in Omaha for a week means that what little I had in the house before I left has now been almost completely exhausted several days after my return. This is also why I ordered pizza a few nights ago instead of going grocery shopping. Now it's gotten to the point where I cannot really avoid going out and doing shopping for much longer; the cats are out of litter, I'm almost out of toilet paper and coffee, and as I actually have a little money to spare at this time, I can afford to go get some groceries and the like. I need to fill the gas tank of my car, too, which is getting pretty close to the red "E" on the dash -- I've not filled up since the week before graduation, because it's not like I go anywhere in the summer that I don't have to. My trip meter, which I use (more than anything else) to gauge when I need to fill up, is also stuck -- its numbers are fucked up until I reset it. The car's been pretty inactive for most of the summer; some of the gas in its old-ass tank may be beginning to evaporate in the heat.

After a certain hour of the night, I've found that they shut off the gas tanks at the gas station I usually fill up at, too; this means I'll have to go out a little earlier than I normally do if I want to fill up tonight. That's probably a good idea anyway -- if I get a call tomorrow from my editor at the paper asking me to go cover a story, it's probably best that I have gas in the car.

As for the paper itself, I haven't heard anything since Friday. My editor told me to think up some ideas for feature stories, and I came up with a few that could be written relatively quickly, and sent off said ideas to him last night, though as it's the weekend and the paper doesn't publish on weekends, I doubt I'll hear from him until at least tomorrow morning.

Last night, when I sat down in my computer chair, it basically broke in half.

No, I'm not kidding.

Mind you, this is an old chair -- it came from my ex's mother about four years ago, and it was probably fifteen years old before that. Pete destroyed one of its two arms well over a year ago, and last night, when I leaned back in it, the back detached from the bottom of the chair. The back was then only held on by its one remaining arm, making the chair basically useless -- if I can't sit in it without falling off the back of it, I can't use it. I had to go into the spare room and get the spare computer chair, one that again once belonged to my ex, clean it off, and bring it in here to use. I took the broken one in there to use the same way I'd been using the spare one -- as a coat rack.

The spare chair isn't as comfortable in the least as my old one was, but I'll get used to it. I don't really have a choice -- it's not like I can spend close to $200 on a comfortable chair for my desk right now. And if you think that's a high dollar amount, you obviously haven't shopped for computer chairs recently.

 

So, for the moment, I'm stuck with what I've got.

Daisy and I had a long talk about jobs and job prospects last night, specifically about how she doesn't want me to have to adjunct until May, for fear that I won't find anything else, and then end up being penniless (again) right before our wedding.

"Obviously," I told her, "I don't want to adjunct both semesters if I can avoid it. I don't even really want to do it now, for the fall, but I really don't have any other options."

I don't, really. The money I'd make adjuncting this fall would be comparable to what I'd make as a fast food worker -- except I wouldn't have to work 40-hour weeks and wouldn't want to put a gun in my mouth every night after work (well, no more than usual, anyway). The fact remains, however, that at this point my "backup plan" has unfortunately become my "actual plan," as nothing else has panned out -- and I can't live on $30-40 per-article newspaper stories alone. What's even more depressing is that adjuncting isn't a sure thing and won't be until I'm actually assigned classes for the fall -- enrollment is down, according to the department chair, which means I could be teaching as few as one or two classes, or, perhaps, none at all.

"If they only offered you one or two classes," Daisy asked me, "would you still do it?"

"Of course," I replied. "I have no choice, really, at this point."

"Can you survive on that, though? As in, pay your bills and start paying back your loans?"

"...theoretically," I said, "yes."

I'm not sure what the university pays its adjuncts per credit hour, but the average of what I've seen around the country is something like $875. Even teaching two courses at $875 per credit hour each equals $5,250 for sixteen weeks of work. That in itself is $1,000 more per semester than I made as a GTA, and that's if they pay $875. Could be more, could be less -- I don't know. Even if it's less, I can't fathom that it would be much less than that, especially as I have friends who have adjuncted at the university after graduation who said with three classes, they were making double per month what they made as a GTA. That gives me hope, at least for the time being.

"But you'd still be losing money, right?" Daisy asked.

"Well, yes, but at a much, much slower rate than I am now," I replied. "Even adjuncting but two classes, if it's somewhere around that pay scale, I'd be able to use those paychecks to cover most of my bills every month. I'd still be using what I've saved, but much more slowly. Adjuncting also doesn't count as full-time work, so if necessary I'd be able to defer my student loan payments or go back in and change the amount I'd pay per month. I'd get by okay."

Honestly, I'd probably be able to save up a bit more as well, depending on my monthly expenses and those student loan payments, but I wouldn't be able to do much else.

"I just don't want you to get to January and be in the same situation, and then have to adjunct again in the spring just to keep that money coming in," she added.

"Well, if that's what happens, I can't really help it, honey. I don't know what you want me to say."

I really don't know what to tell her. I can (and will be) applying for all of the teaching jobs I find that I could do for the spring semester, regardless of how busy I am when it comes to this fall, but it's not like I can put a gun to an employer's head and force them to hire me, even if my credentials are far and away better than other people who have applied for the same position. Likewise, as I told her, I can't just up and leave in the middle of the semester if a business or other higher learning institution offers me a job someplace -- I simply can't. Once I'm scheduled to teach a class and I'm teaching it, I'm locked in there until December. I really just am. There's nothing I can do about that but say I couldn't start until January. On some level, Daisy thinks this is ludicrious, I'm sure, because I wouldn't just up and go, but when I'm teaching I have a responsibility to my students and to the university, which I've written about before. That's not narcissism, that's not a me-first attitude -- it's being respectful and responsible about things I've committed myself to, and realizing that more is at stake than just myself. In fact, it is the exact opposite of being narcissistic and selfish.

Regardless, I will be applying for a lot more positions, teaching and otherwise, as the fall rolls onward, whether I'm adjuncting this fall or not. I have little choice there -- I must find something so that I can continue to survive. Adjuncting this fall, if I get to do it, would be simply a stopgap measure -- something to stop me from continuing to horribly hemorrhage money -- but it's not something I can live on indefinitely, and certainly not something that's going to allow me to really save enough money to move with and/or help pay for a wedding in less than a year. Daisy knows that as well as I do, but the really scary part of that is that I may not have a choice in the matter -- if I can't get anything else, if nobody else wants to hire me or will even give me the courtesy of a rejection letter, call, or email, there is literally very little else I can do to improve my station in the world and be able to survive. Again, it's the "can't hold a gun to an employer's head and force them to hire me" scenario. That station in the world gets even worse if I don't get to adjunct this fall, which will fling me into full-on "panic mode" as what money I have will even more rapidly begin to dwindle. This time around I don't have a safety net of "oh, well, my loan money will come in once August rolls around," or "well, I'll start getting paid when I start teaching again in the fall," because neither of those scenarios exist anymore. I'm on my own, and that's completely fucking terrifying. It's no longer a matter of months until I get a guaranteed paycheck again -- from this point forward it's a daily fight for survival.

I can't tell you how tired I am of having to fight for absolutely every little thing. I've been doing that my entire adult life now, just trying to keep my bills paid and keep my head above water. I desperately just want some security, desperately want an ability to relax without having to worry about how much I have to budget for every item I buy at the grocery store, or how often I can run my air conditioner when I'm sweating through my clothes because I don't know if I can afford it. It's so incredibly tiresome. Normal people don't have to worry about this stuff as much as I do, because most of them are employed and, whether or not they actually enjoy their jobs, they're relatively safe in them and don't necessarily have to worry about every little monetary responsibility. I've never lived a life like that. Even when I've had full-time work in the past, it was never worry-free work; I've always had to claw through everything and fight tooth and nail to pay bills and feed myself and the cats, and I don't even have a lot of needs, monetary or otherwise. I've never been comfortable. I don't care about being happy or opulent; I never have. I just want to be comfortable, and to be able to stop caring about every little thing because I can cover the basics without putting up a fight, without worrying if I'm going to be able to break even for the month or for the year. And really, I can't remember a time I've ever been comfortable in that sense. For people like me, I'm not sure an opportunity like that actually exists -- which is the most depressing thought of all.

Regardless, I assured Daisy that I will be continuing to do everything I can over the coming months in order to secure more stable employment, but she also knows that I can't make her any promises, because the results of those efforts are all out of my hands. I can only do so much -- I have to be met at least halfway. If there's nothing I can do or nothing I get interviews for (at the very least), then it's going to be a sad state of affairs, and I'll have to cross that bridge when I come to it.

War Crimes, Part III

Monday was cloudy and mostly dark in Omaha. It was warm and muggy, but not incredibly sunny for most of the day, which meant that it was tolerable outside. It was still 90, but not a blazing hot, scorching 90. This I could deal with.

I went to bed Sunday night around 3AM, and told Daisy (via message) that before she went to bed in the morning she needed to call and make an appointment for us at the hair place. She told me she hadn't forgotten, and that she would do so before she came to bed. She also told me to make sure she got up with me whenever I awoke, regardless of what time it was, since she didn't have to work that night and we had our errands to run. I awoke around 9:30 -- Daisy doesn't even get off work until 7:30, which means she doesn't get to bed until 8:30. This, essentially, meant that she got a short one hour of actual sleep -- a nap. She told me when I woke her up that the hair appointment was at 11:30, for both of us.

The place Daisy wanted to take us -- and the reason we couldn't just go get our haircuts at, say, Walmart -- is a beauty school in Omaha named Capitol. She's gotten her hair done there because it's inexpensive ($8), and because of her long, flowing curls, she can't get anyone else who actually knows how to cut her hair correctly without making it look awful. At Capitol, at least, the students there have their instructors working with them and helping them out, training them on-the-job.

Me? I just wanted the classic "short back and sides," which is the standard adult male's haircut. I suppose, anyway. I wanted this because it leaves it a little bit longer on top, where my hair tends to grow at a slower rate. I made the joke that my hair has always grown in like a natural mullet -- much faster and longer in the back, but the top and sides grow in slowly. I figured even at a beauty school, the students would know what a short back and sides cut was, with a fade going up from about 1/2 an inch at the bottom to 2 inches at the top. Apparently not -- when I described to my stylist what I wanted, in as much plain-English detail as possible, she went to get her instructor.

By sheer luck, her instructor had the exact hairstyle I wanted.

"Make me look like you," I told him.

And they did. Over the course of an hour, I was meticulously shampooed, cut, trimmed, and clipped by both of them, as he gave her instruction on what to do and how to do it. This was the result:

I took that photo yesterday morning before my "interview" with the paper. I could've done most of this haircut by myself here at home with my clippers, but I could not have left the length on the top with them. I needed to look professional, not like a skinhead or cancer patient.

Daisy, meanwhile, got about two inches trimmed off of her own hair so that it keeps growing in healthily and with good length/minimal split-ends or breakage. She doesn't want to cut her hair again in any drastic fashion until after the wedding, which makes me very happy. I love Daisy's long hair. It's gorgeous, and a deep reddish auburn that scatters light and makes it look like it's about three different colors at any given time. Because she didn't have a massive undertaking in her own haircut, however, Daisy was finished in about twenty minutes, while my own cut took over an hour.

On the plus side, I look respectable again. As much as it hurts me to say that -- I've made an image of myself as the burly woodsman with the long, hippie hair and beard. Granted, I probably could've gone into the newspaper this morning without worries had I not shaven or gotten a haircut, but I didn't do it for the newspaper -- I did it, as mentioned before, in case I get Skype interviews for teaching positions or other positions I've applied for. And, again, because it's damned hot in Kansas in the summer.

After we were done, Daisy's heartburn was acting up (she's supposed to take a pill twice a day for it, and it acts up like crazy when she hasn't slept a lot), so we came back home to the house to wait and let it die down before going to eat. This pushed our lunch back to about 2:30-3 or so, and therefore by the time we'd finished eating and came home, I knew we both wouldn't necessarily be hungry for any dinner. We did, eventually, eat leftovers, before Daisy went back to sleep. She told me not to let her sleep all night, so I didn't -- I was planning to let her sleep until midnight or so, though she got up around 9:30. I don't remember what we did that night, really, though I remember falling asleep on the couch at some point.

The problem with visiting Daisy for an extended period of time isn't in the being social and/or being away from home -- more than anything else, it's her bed. She has a full-size bed that's lifted off the floor pretty high. I have a king-size bed that's much lower to the floor. Neither I nor Daisy are small people -- this makes sharing a full-size bed, when I'm there, difficult at times, in addition to the fact that her bed is so much different than mine is that all I have to do is lay on it for thirty seconds and immediately my back starts killing me. This isn't a joke; every time I sleep on Daisy's bed, when I awaken it's not because I'm no longer tired, but because my back hurts so badly that I can no longer sleep through the pain. This also means that I don't get much sleep when I'm in Omaha, and tend to fall asleep anywhere I can recline without my back hurting me. I had to take several naps on the couch while I was there simply because it didn't hurt. I don't have this problem at home -- my bed is worn in enough and my body is used to it enough to where it doesn't hurt me at all, and I think over the years I've grown so accustomed to it that I can't sleep comfortably anywhere else. It takes great effort to get any true sleep when I visit back home in West Virginia, as well, even though I slept on the bed there in my room for ten years. Therefore, when I went to sleep while I was in Omaha, it was either passing out on the couch or running myself into sheer exhaustion just to be able to pass out and sleep on the bed that my back hates.

Can't really do anything about it, of course. By Tuesday, my back was hurting me so badly that it was hard to move. I didn't tell Daisy because I didn't want her to feel bad, and I also didn't want her to think that I was being a whiner about it.

Daisy's parents returned on Tuesday night, right as I woke up from a nap (in that bed, of course). With them came Daisy's sister and her two little boys, one of them the baby who had just been christened that weekend. I hadn't seen Daisy's sister since Christmas, and this was also the first time I got to see the little baby, which I held and talked to for a long time. He's a cutie.

As I got up, wincing in back pain, Daisy asked me how I slept.

"Horribly," I said. "I can't get any real sleep on your bed. It's not your fault, babe. It's my back."

It was somewhere around this point that she realized that I hadn't slept well at all the entire time I had been in Omaha. No, it wasn't her fault, of course, and she knew I found her bed uncomfortable, but again I'd been hiding just how much it hurt my back. She'd given me massages and had done everything she could to make me feel better, but by that night, shortly after awakening, my back was seizing and spasming a lot worse than it had been in previous days, and I really couldn't hide it that much when it hurt so bad I had trouble sitting up and walking.

"Do you just want to pack up and go tonight?" she asked me.

"Yes," I replied immediately.

We'd planned to leave on Wednesday morning anyhow; that had always been the plan since we got there. Daisy had asked if I wanted to stay longer, because the rest of the family was coming back into town over the course of the rest of the week (just like they did when I was up there after graduation) and if it hadn't been so hot here in Newton, with me constantly worrying about the cats, I probably would have -- bed and back problems be damned. However, in Newton on Tuesday, the temperature reached 106 -- probably close to a record for that day -- and I was desperately worried about the cats being able to stay cool and having enough water. We'd also been gone for six days at that point, as well.

"Okay, we can do that," she said. "I just worry about you and your back, and I want you to actually be able to sleep without being in pain."

The parents and her sister/the kids went to bed shortly thereafter -- they'd been on the road since 8AM -- and we had our mutual friend over for homemade pretzels after all of them went to sleep. After said friend left, we packed everything up and left the house around 3AM. Neither of us were incredibly tired; Daisy is used to being up at night because of her job, and she napped with me that afternoon as well. We were both awake and wired, and there was no reason to wait until the morning -- when we'd have to drive in the sun and the heat -- to get back to Newton. It's also much easier to make the trip in the night as well, simply because there's no traffic and it's a more peaceful drive. I told Daisy that at least in the summer, we should do this on a regular basis. It makes the trip seem much shorter, and it's a lot more comfortable. You don't want to drive at night in the winter, though, because that sucks.

We arrived back here in Newton around 9AM or so. It was sweltering in the house, but not as bad as I expected it to be. It was nice downstairs, though the temperature upstairs was easily 95 degrees. I immediately clicked on the AC and let it run all day long. Daisy went to sleep shortly after we got home, and I made sure the cats were okay. Of their food, they'd emptied one of the two large bowls and had eaten half of the other, and they'd drank three of the four water bowls dry.

Also -- and here's where the title of these posts come in -- they'd left the cat room and their litter pans so destroyed and utterly a wreck that I'm sure, if they were human, their actions could be tried as war crimes. They were certainly crimes against humanity, the "humanity" in question being me, their owner and master. It took me forty-five minutes to clean the mess they'd made in the cat room and restore it to normal, during which Pete kept trying to charge the bathroom door to get in before it was done.

Yeah, that's seriously why I titled these three posts "War Crimes." I dragged out a joke for three posts. You're welcome, America.

Daisy awakened that evening; I napped for a little while with her, but not too long, and let her sleep until she woke up. When she did, I made her a waffle so she wouldn't be hungry, gave her a bag of the ketchup chips to take home, and she left before it got dark. I waited until she got home safely before going to bed for the night, finally. I slept for at least ten or eleven hours with the cats lovingly cuddling me, with the fan blowing on me at full blast, and without back pain.

Since then, life has basically returned to normal here in Kansas; it's still hot, I still have to cook and clean, pay bills and go shopping, but at least I got out of this house and out of the state for a few days. Yesterday, as you know, I went over to the paper for the "interview," and ran a few errands around town (including stopping at the smoke shop up the street). I paid my credit card bill, which is good, because between the smoke shop and $40 of pizza I ordered last night because I didn't want to go grocery shopping, I put another $90 on the balance. Today I'll pay most of my other credit card bill and try to sleep through the heat -- it is, again, supposed to be about 100 today before it cools down into the 80s again and (hopefully) rains/storms from Sunday through Wednesday. In the meantime, I'll more than likely be working on stories for the paper if they come in, which will keep me busy enough and give me a reason to get up every day.

I also sent an email to the English department chair, asking for updates on adjuncting, dropping off my keys (if necessary) and what the budget situation for the fall is like (read: if I'll be able to do the Engineering English class stuff or not). He replied that enrollment is low, but since I'm golden in his eyes and the eyes of the department, I'm at the top of the list for adjuncting work for the fall, and that we can talk about the future of the Engineering English program when I come back to pick up my diploma in another week or two. This is promising, at least, on some level. Again, adjuncting isn't exactly great money, but it's leaps and bounds above what I'll make writing stringer stories at the paper, and it's usually more than I made as a GTA. I told him I'd take on as many classes as necessary -- my schedule is basically wide open, and even if I don't get a lot of sleep during the fall, at the very least I'll be doing something I know how to do, something I like to do, and something that will give me enough money to live on while I continue to search for more reliable employment.

"What happens if you get a job offer while you're adjuncting in the fall?" Daisy asked me.

"Well, that depends on what you mean by a 'job offer' and how much they'd pay," I said. "I can't just up and leave in the middle of the semester, especially if I'm helming four or five classes."

I really can't. There's no backup plan for that sort of thing; if I have full sections, which I may, the department couldn't shuffle around 100 or more students into other instructors' classes. No, if I adjunct in the fall, I'm locked in there from August through December. I told Daisy that unless it was some sort of $50k a year or more, guaranteed position, in which I would have immense job security...there's little I could do after the semester starts. And even then, if they really wanted me, I'd more than likely tell them that I couldn't start until January. I simply can't leave the university (as well as all of those students) hanging, with no recourse, after the semester has started. Not only would leaving be poor form and immensely irresponsible, it would more than likely burn bridges with the higher-ups at the university -- people who all adore me now -- and those bridges would more than likely be unable to be rebuilt. I have more respect for my university, my students, and my colleagues within the department than that.

It's reached that weird point of summer where I'm not sure how much job searching I could, or should, actually still be doing -- especially since so much is still hanging in the air. Again, I no longer have time to relocate, really, to start teaching across the country in August -- not unless I was offered an amazing position with incredible pay. Any other position, if they contact me and want me between now and August, I almost have to tell them that at this juncture, if they want me, they'd have to defer that employment to the spring semester in January -- even at my fastest there isn't really any conceivable way I could get this place packed and move out of here, cats and car in tow, to anywhere with enough time to start teaching next month. I just couldn't.

Daisy's mother told me some good advice: "If you get an offer, just pack up and go, and deal with the little stuff later."

I can do that for some positions; I can't do it for others. If I got a job offer in Omaha somewhere, for example, I know I could stay with Daisy and her family during the week and come back down here on weekends to pack up everything that I could bit by bit, get a place in Omaha when I could, and Daisy and I would be fine. It would be rough and I'd barely ever rest, but I could do it. It would suck to leave the cats for many days at a time while I was up there working, and only get to see them/take care of them on weekends, but it could be done. That's about the only feasible scenario, though, and I'll remind you that nowhere in Omaha seems interested in my credentials and skillset, save for the place that wanted to pay me $8 per hour for four hours a day.

Indeed, it is at that time of summer where I have no idea what I should be doing next, if anything. So much is up in the air once again. I have the position at the paper, one that may open me up once more to a full reporter position, but that's a big if. I have the opportunity, more than likely, to adjunct at the university this fall, but that's also an if. I have no time to relocate for anywhere but close jobs without a lot of money, help, or both. So, what should I do? Anything? Should I even be looking for applying for anything anymore at this point until, say, mid-September? I don't know. With so many balls in the air, any of them could fall back down and land me something, or they could all fall down and land me nothing. And, unless I apply for teaching positions that won't start for another six months, as I said, it's too late for anything else. If I adjunct, anything I'd apply for now, even if I were to get it, I wouldn't be able to do. If I don't adjunct, I have to begin applying for other positions in Omaha and keep applying for teaching positions for the spring. It's totally a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.

My plan is, really, to lay low for another week or two. If I notice a good position, regardless of what it is, I'll apply for it, but I can't really actively seek out stuff over these next two weeks until I know what's going to happen a little more clearly. Once I know that and can figure things out a little better, I'll be able to better plan my next steps.

In the meantime? It's 4AM here, which means that it's cool enough downstairs to be able to go to bed and actually sleep. Today is Saturday, so I really don't care when or how late I get up. Daisy works for the next three nights in a row, so she'll be sleeping during the day as well, and I will...well, just be here. Possibly writing newspaper articles. Possibly sweating a lot in the heat. Possibly running errands, paying bills, and grocery shopping. But, I'll be here, safe and sound, in Newton.

War Crimes, Part II

Before you folks wonder too much about why I've titled this series of posts "War Crimes," don't fret -- just like everything else, I'll get to it, and it involves my return home to Kansas. It'll all make sense eventually, so just hang in there.

So.

I'm not sure I mentioned it here before, but before I left for Omaha, I saw on the Newton newspaper's Facebook page (because, since I worked for them, I follow them -- they're also about the only source of news in this town) that they were looking for writers to cover some stories over the summer months.

Mind you, I did this for a year -- I moved into my house in Newton in July 2009, and by September I was working for the newspaper as a stringer, as they call it -- basically, a freelancer. They give you a list of topics/interview sources ranked by priority level, you call (or email, as it gets much more reliable quotes) the interview subjects, and write a story, email it to the news editor, and they assign it a publication date and pay you for it. As a stringer, I got $30 per story, and I wouldn't get paid until after the story ran. I even did some news briefs when they were shorthanded, and took some photos as well for varying rates of pay -- I wrote on anything and everything they gave me, as at that point the thought of applying to grad school was basically on the back burner and wasn't yet an option. I quickly became their go-to-person for stories, which made me first in line to be hired on in the paper's offices -- primarily as the paper's webmaster, but also with a dual position as one of the five staff reporters. I worked in the offices at the paper for about eight months, during which time I was accepted into grad school, and after which I left to, y'know, go to grad school.

I miss my reporter job. I live in small-town Kansas, in a town of about 17,000 people. I got to sit at a desk, take care of the newspaper's website, and write stories/take photos, sometimes going out on assignment or working on larger projects (such as the high school graduation section or the 2010 county elections). I felt like Clark Kent. It was an awesome job, and once I got hired on officially, I had a schedule and a pretty competitive salary for what I did. It wasn't great money, but it was better than I got paid to teach as a GTA (by leaps and bounds).

Anyway, I saw that they were looking for people, and then sent an email to the new editor there -- a guy I've never met, but who has been associated with the paper for a long time off and on (he worked there before I was there, and then came back and took over as editor a few months after I started grad school, when my former editor left the position). I gave him my credentials, told him I worked there before and that any writing samples he may want to see were in the online archives of the paper (because, ahem, I put them there) and told him I'd be happy to come back if they needed someone.

He responded that I should stop by and meet up with him, do the paperwork, etc -- on the days I'd be in Omaha. So I told him that I would be out of town and would happily meet up with him when I returned. I got home on Wednesday, and this morning woke up early, drove over to the paper, and met with him for almost two hours. Nice guy. Really nice guy, actually. About my age, probably a year or three older, really smart, and someone I'd love to work with. I filled out the paperwork and will be an "independent contract" journalist with the paper again -- the complicated way of saying I'll be a freelancer with them again, a stringer, and will be apparently focusing on feature articles. It also puts me at the top of the list for a full reporter position again if and when a position of that sort would open up.

"I do have to tell you this, though," I told my new boss. "You read my resume, and I told you before that I've applied for a lot of teaching positions all around the country. Obviously, in order to teach this fall, if it's logistically possible for me to pack up and go if someone in another state offers me a job, I need to do that."

"That's completely understandable," he said. "Remember, you're an independent contract journalist with us at this point -- you can do what you want and vice versa."

"I know that, but I would feel like an asshole if I had a bunch of assignments on my plate that I suddenly had to drop and hand back to you if something else came up. I worked here for a long time; I have a loyalty and sense of duty to you folks, and I hate letting anyone down."

"Understandable."

"Also, even if that doesn't happen, there's a good chance that I'll be adjuncting at [university] this fall, taking on up to five classes to teach. If that happens, my ability to write for you folks will be dramatically lessened."

I wanted to make it clear that as much as I loved working for the newspaper, as it is a pretty sweet job, I've got a lot of other feelers out right now for something that will pay me a liveable wage. While my priorities for the moment are focused on the paper, that doesn't mean everything will remain that way for a long time -- and truthfully, all of that could change within a week or so. He seemed to understand that; it also seemed quite apparent that I was the only person who had expressed any interest in writing for them, stringer or otherwise. 

A lot (and I mean, with much emphasis, a lot) of the logistics and behind-the-scenes stuff has changed since I was last working there -- for one, I'm not working with any of the news crew I worked with before. They're all gone now, save for the sports guy. For two, the entire newsroom has been overhauled and rebuilt. A ton of positions have been eliminated, as much of what the paper now does is automated, and a lot of the more tedious work I used to do when I was there before -- such as layout, online advertising, online publishing, etc -- all of it has either been automated and/or is taken care of by the company itself now. That means that there's been a lot of reorganization within all newspapers owned by that company, as well as budget cuts and/or layoffs. It's been a mess. The webmaster position I used to have there has been completely eliminated, for example, which I was told three years ago, even, when I was working there, that it probably would be once I left. There are a few holdouts, however, mostly staff, who are still around, a few of which I got to talk to before I left. It felt like I was home again after a long absence.

So, I have a job again, apparently. Or at least sort of a job. The going rate for the stories I'll write is $30 each, $40 if I get pictures as well (some of those will be stories where pictures aren't really applicable, however). I've been encouraged to come to my new boss (read: the editor) with ideas and thoughts about stuff that could be turned into features, though I'm not incredibly sure how that's going to work as I don't get out much. In the meantime whatever I can do, I'll do. $30-40 an article isn't great money, of course, but it's a little. Pocket money, money I can get food with or fill the gas tank in my car with. Obviously, it's not enough to live on, but for the moment it's something, and if I'm writing several stories a week until I get something more substantial -- there or somewhere else -- it's better than nothing.

This thought was in the back of my mind, of course, the entire time I was in Omaha -- I knew as soon as I got back, if nothing else I would be able to go over to the paper and help out, and get a little cash for my trouble (as well as more experience). So, upon my return, when I had two rejection letters from two different universities I'd applied to teach at (one in Pittsburgh and another in Kentucky), I wasn't incredibly distraught.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Onward with the story I started in my last post...

The 4th was pretty uneventful, and it was filled with relaxing family interaction. Daisy's mother went to bed after dark, and I sat out on the porch chatting with her father for probably two hours before he went to bed as well. Daisy and I stayed awake a bit longer before going to bed, but still went to bed before it got really late. We had a lot to do the next day, and throughout the weekend.

The next morning, we got up and had breakfast with the family -- bacon, bagels, and other wonderful breakfast stuff. We'd planned to get our haircuts on Friday (that day) if at all possible, but Daisy called to make us appointments and found out that not only were they closed, but they would be closed throughout the weekend until Monday. I had already shaved down to a goatee in anticipation of getting a haircut, as I look really weird with a full beard and short hair (plus, when I shaved it had been really hot). I was itching to get out of the house and do something, even if it was something inconsequential. We'd wanted to go see a movie, but wanted to wait until Tuesday night (as it was the "cheap movie night" at the theater). Daisy had Friday off, so we could really do whatever we wanted. We ended up going out about town for a bit, going over to Gordman's and getting me some dress clothing fairly cheaply (I got several nice, dressier shirts on clearance, one of which -- a Polo shirt -- I wore to my newspaper "interview" this morning). Her parents offered us dinner, but we declined -- we had plans.

Daisy had, weeks before, asked if I wanted to go to some arcade up there. Family Fun Center, or something like that. I told her I'd be happy to, as part of a date-night thing, but that it wasn't required. This was good, because as we were driving to it, Daisy's GPS went on the fritz and stopped working, basically (it happened again, in the same spot, two days later). So, as a result, we couldn't find it.

"It's fine, babe," I said. "We don't have to go to this place, we can go somewhere else."

"Well, there's a Dave & Buster's right up the stree---"

"Take me."

That's basically how the conversation went. For those of you who have never been to one, Dave & Buster's is basically like a Chuck E. Cheese for adults. And it's awesome. So we went there and had an awesome date night, and afterwards went to our favorite pizza place in the city, Night Flight Pizza, where we shared vegan cheesesticks and a vegan artichoke/onion/garlic pizza before going home and ending our night.

Here's the thing, though -- while Daisy had Friday off, she still had to work Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights. While I'm not normally up there and visiting while she works, this time I would be. I knew this beforehand, of course. Adding to this was the fact that her parents were leaving for Colorado on Saturday morning for their new grandchild's christening (Daisy's sister had a little boy a couple of months ago), so Daisy and I would have free reign of the house -- and when she was at work, I would have free reign of the house. I made the joke that I needed the home address there again so that I could put out a message on Facebook that said "House party at [Daisy's] place, __________." She didn't find it as funny as I did.

Obviously I would never do that anyway.

Before leaving, Daisy's dad asked us to take care of the house, water the plants, and get the mail while they were away -- they weren't returning until Tuesday night -- and that I was welcome to any food in the fridge or freezer that I wanted to make for myself. I was told to make myself at home, as Daisy's parents always tell me.

I don't take advantage of this; I never have or will. I'm not the kind of person who's like "free food? MUST HAVE IT ALL" or anything like that. I made jokes to Daisy about raiding the fridge/freezer/pantry, but in reality all I did was bring up some American cheese and some pepperoni from the freezer while her parents were gone. Cheese and pepperoni, I might add, that would be used almost immediately upon their arrival home.

"There's steak down there! Shrimp!" her father told me upon their arrival back home. "You could've had anything you wanted!"

I know that. I didn't need it. It would've felt intrusive or advantageous of me. I only use what I need to survive, and Daisy had made a point of planning and cooking several vegan meals for us while I was up there. I didn't want for anything. It's also an issue, for me, of the golden rule -- treat others as you'd want to be treated, etc. I do, of course, want Daisy to eat and have whatever she wants when she visits me, as my house is her house. And she does, and I don't mind that at all -- I encourage it. It's different for her parents; I have way too much respect for them to perform a freezer raid and eat $30 worth of steak or shrimp. Being poor puts that in perspective to me -- I know how much food costs. I don't like costing people money, nor did I see a personal need for any of that stuff. So, while I'm open to it and very thankful that I'm given such free reign, such trust, I'm not going to take advantage of it and eat all of the stuff they spent a lot of grocery money on. As much as I like decadent things on occasion, I am a minimalist at heart: I only use what I need to survive, and I don't want to inconvenience anyone, or cost them money, in doing so.

Anyway, when Saturday afternoon rolled around (when we got up), everyone was gone and Daisy had to work that night. We went out and got vegan junk food for dinner (pierogies, fries, fake chicken nuggets, and veggie burgers) and ate that. I also opened my computer for the first time, to see...that it was 73 degrees in Newton and raining.

I'd been outside a good chunk of the afternoon on Saturday, and it was 90 and blistering hot in the sun in Omaha.

"So it waits until I leave town -- and leave the state -- before it gets cool and rains in Newton?" I asked Daisy. "Figures."

I was mad at mother nature. Of course the weather back home is my absolute ideal weather in the middle of the afternoon, after I'd been begging for it for two weeks or so, when I wasn't fucking there to enjoy it. Of course that's how it works. Still, 73 and rainy was good for the cats -- it would mean that the house wouldn't heat up and get nasty/stuffy for a while when I was gone -- if it's cool outside for an extended period of time, that generally means it stays cool in the house for a while even if it gets hot outside again, especially when the house is closed up, which it was.

Thar night, Daisy went to work and I didn't do much -- she asked if I wanted to know how to work the TV, the Wii, Netflix, etc, but I told her no; I wouldn't use it. I had my laptop, mp3 player, DS, and a book. My entertainment quota was filled, and I needed nothing else. She came home for lunch around midnight and I ate with her, and after she went back to work, I showered and went to bed around 3. She would join me once she got home from work in the morning.

Sunday was very quiet; I got up on Sunday morning around 11 or so, made coffee, and continued to go about my morning routine (though it was a bit altered from the routine I have in my own house). I knew she'd worked all night and hadn't slept a lot over the past few days I'd been up there, so I let her sleep. She slept all day long; I figured that if she was sleeping all day long, she needed to do so, and left her alone. Finally, around 5:30PM, I went upstairs to check on her and wake her. She had been out like a light and had slept close to ten hours straight by this point, so I wanted to make sure she was okay. She was, of course; she just needed sleep. We got up, made a quick dinner (I don't even remember what we had now; it was almost a week ago) and she went to work once more.

About an hour or two into her shift, she sent me a message telling me that she had asked for, and had received, Monday off. This meant that we could do whatever we wanted all day on Monday without having to worry about her needing sleep before going back to work that night yet again. She'd mentioned earlier that she wanted to do this, and I told her it would be good provided that they wouldn't try to screw her over by making her work one of her regular days off to make up for it...since, y'know, that wouldn't really work with me needing to come back home. This freed up Monday for us to get our haircuts and to go out to the Chinese buffet, which is something I wanted to do while I was there in town.

Meanwhile, I had checked the weather forecast for down here to see if it had changed...and it had. Instead of highs being in the mid-to-high-80s at most (which, I'll remind you, is what it should be in Kansas this time of year), the forecast had been completely altered over the course of the day beforehand. Now, it was scheduled to have highs every day of 99, 100, 103, etc -- with the hottest day being Tuesday, where it was supposed to hit 104.

It hit 106 here on Tuesday while I was in Omaha, but that's neither here nor there now.

This, of course, made me worry about the cats. I had provided them with four large bowls of water, bowls they couldn't/wouldn't tip over, two massive bowls of food, and two fresh, filled litter pans. However, I know how much water the cats drink when it's hot, and when it's that hot outside, without me there to monitor them and make sure they were staying cool, I immediately got concerned. The house was closed up, everything was turned off, and I know how hot it gets in there when it's closed up, unless it's cool outside -- after a certain point, as I've written here before, even if I left the air conditioner on and running at max capacity for twelve hours, it's not enough to cool down the house more than five degrees or so. When the Kansas sun is unrestrained and scorching, and when the temperature outside gets above 95 or so, my house turns into a greenhouse. Run the AC all you like, but it'll never be below 90 in there. When the AC is off, it's not uncommon to have it match the same temperature it is outside...in the basement. It's always about ten or fifteen degrees warmer upstairs. This is why, as it was 100 this afternoon, it is still 96 in the upstairs of my house right now (and why I'm so hot that sweat is dripping off of me and I find it hard to concentrate enough to write). The heat doesn't go away once the sun goes down, either. Again, greenhouse. In fact, it usually gets hotter, at least upstairs and definitely in my Man Cave, in the overnight hours. I don't know why. I'll probably never know why.

Anyway, this made me worry about the cats. Again, they're not stupid -- when it's hot, they go downstairs where it's cooler, sleeping on the tile or under the bed. When they're hot, they sleep more and they're not as active. And, regardless of how hot it is, as it's been much hotter than that before, they've always been fine. They don't get sick, they don't get heatstroke, they remain...well, cats. I resigned myself to the fact that even if I were there, there was little I could do to help them stay cool aside from making it about five degrees cooler in the house with the AC, at the cost of a massive electric bill. As I've also written before, after a certain point there's no reason to run the damned thing -- it's just a waste of money for very little, temporary comfort. It's an old house, poorly insulated, and the AC unit is as old as I am. There's nothing I can do; what is, is.

Still, in the back of my mind, for the rest of the time we were in Omaha, I was worried about my fuzzy children. I couldn't not worry -- Daisy, of all people, knows how important my cats are to me, and she understands my mentality towards them. They are, effectively, children to me. Some of you may think that's stupid, but they are. I've raised them from kittens, I feed them, take care of them, cuddle them, and they sleep with me -- all of them, every night.

I shall, in my next post, finish this story.

War Crimes, Part I

In case you hadn't guessed, I've spent the past six days in Omaha (which is why I haven't written here in over a week; it is incredibly difficult to type more than a few sentences on my laptop at a time because of the way the keys are shaped/sit on the keyboard).

Whatever food poisoning I had last week was a 24-hour thing, apparently -- by the next night after I was sick, I had slowly burned it out of my system, whatever it was, and was ready to make my trip northward. I plan to recap that trip for you here and now, as briefly as possible (because while we did do a lot, there was also a ton of downtime in which we did little to nothing).

What I can tell you first is that I'm safely back home in Newton now, the cats/car/house/etc are all fine, and Daisy is sleeping downstairs so that she has enough rest and energy to drive back home tonight (her sister and nephews are in town right now, but I'll get to that). Everything here is as it should be, except for the fact that it's 100 degrees outside (again). Needless to say, after being gone for a week, the very first thing I did when we walked in the door this morning was turn on the AC and let it run all day, to cool down this hot-and-closed-up house as much as possible after being gone for a week. I offered to make Daisy some food, but she declined and went to sleep about an hour after we got home. I joined her for a short nap a while later before getting back up.

To start this tale and keep it relatively short/interesting throughout, I should probably begin.

Daisy had the 4th and 5th off -- she would have normally needed to work the 5th (Friday), but because whenever there's a holiday all of the employees of her company get a day's worth of time off whether they're scheduled to work that holiday or not, she chose to take hers on the 5th since I was in town. This is a longer span of time off than she normally has -- she works Friday through Monday nights. Our original plan was for her to get off work Monday night (the 1st), sleep through the day on Tuesday (the 2nd) and then come down that night when she got up, to return to Omaha on Wednesday the 3rd. Simple enough, right? That plan became modified when a few things popped up and I got sick, so we changed our plans -- she'd get up the morning of the 3rd and go, come down here, get me, and we'd return that night. Even though it was a lot of driving in one day, she said that if she waited until Wednesday she wanted to make the trip back up there in the same day so that we could have the entirety of the 4th together with the parents. I told her that was fine and that I was okay with that if she was, even offering to drive some of the way back if she was too tired to do so (the trip, either way, is basically driving in the shape of an upside-down letter "L," where the corner is the hook-up to I-80 in York). As you folks may or may not know, I don't take the Monte Carlo when we visit her parents; aside from the fact that the car isn't anywhere near as fuel-efficient as Daisy's Hyundai is, it's also falling apart, offers little storage space that isn't dirty (the back seat is ripped all to hell and is covered in dirt/dust, since I've never used it since I bought the car for more than, say, putting a small piece of furniture or two in it on occasion). My car also tends to overheat somewhat easily when it's over 100 fucking degrees outside, it needs an oil change/coolant flush, has no air conditioning and a loud/grinding wheel bearing, and without all of that necessary upkeep I wouldn't trust it to make a ten-hour, round-trip drive. Ever. In fact, unless I'm moving there (or somewhere close to there) I'm not even sure I'd trust it to make it there without hauling it behind a U-Haul or something.

As an aside, I always feel somewhat ashamed by this, honestly; I'm a thirty-year-old man and Daisy comes to pick me up/bring me back home when I visit her family because I'm too financially destitute and pathetic to be able to own a car I can trust to drive from one state to another and back with no issue. On some level that makes me ask myself where the fuck I went wrong in life.

Anyway, Daisy said that her game plan was to get up and go as early as possible on Wednesday morning, and that her projected arrival time would be "between noon and 2" that afternoon. She'd get here, rest a bit, possibly eat something if necessary, and then we'd hit the road, being back in Omaha by nightfall.  I was feeling fine by then, so I told her that was good and we both went to bed.

I awoke on Wednesday around 11AM; all of the house cleaning and most of the other necessary stuff had been done by that point (I took care of everything I could before I went to bed, so that I could just get up and go on Wednesday when Daisy got here). The only thing I'd waited on doing was getting more cigarettes and cash back from Walmart, and preparing the cats' extra food and litter -- I don't set that up earlier than I have to, for not only does it alert them to my upcoming absence, but it just makes it messier to clean up later (again, I'll get to that).

I went upstairs to check the computer, as Daisy always tells me when she's leaving (so that I have an ETA for her) to find...she's still at home.

I really wish I could say I was surprised, but after being in a relationship with Daisy for over a year at this point and having been engaged for five months, I've really come to expect this sort of thing. Again, if you are unfamiliar, Daisy operates on what I call Daisy Standard Time, which roughly translates to "I'll do something/go somewhere/get there eventually." She knows how much this drives me up the wall (though we did have a somewhat jovial discussion about it on the way back down here this morning), but it's one of those things that with Daisy, I just have to tolerate, because I'm pretty sure she's not going to change that about herself anytime soon, if ever.

I also give her a lot of leeway because she works really strange/shitty hours and barely gets to see her family because of them, not to mention the fact that she doesn't exactly have a set sleep schedule (as she works at night, and the rest of the world/anything else she needs to do happens and functions, normally, during daylight hours). So, because of this I've become a lot more lenient and tolerant of her schedules, to the point where I work on her timeframe a lot of the time and that really doesn't bother me as much as it once did. I am nothing if not compassionate and understanding when it comes to anything involving her at this point.

"I plan to be out the door by 3PM," she told me.

Okay. It's a little more than a five-hour drive to get here. It's less than that, really, but regardless of which way we're going, and if we're going together or separate, we always stop at least twice in two towns -- Concordia, Kansas, and York, Nebraska. They've been designated, basically, as our "go to the bathroom and/or get something to eat/drink" places. We even stop at the same gas station in Concordia every time. They have vanilla syrup in their soda fountain. It's awesome.

Ahem. Anyway. I knew if she left at 3, it would be roughly 8:30 to 8:45 before she got here. This gave me time to take care of the last stuff I needed to do around the house. I told her that was fine and logged off; I got a shower, got dressed, went to Walmart to get the stuff I needed, and came back home. When I got back home, I locked the car in the garage, put everything away, and checked my messages again -- nothing yet -- before laying down on the couch for a bit to doze off. I'd taken care of everything I needed to take care of except for the aforementioned cat room, so I was able to relax for a bit. As it was only around 80 degrees last week for high temperatures, I was actually able to do that without sweating profusely through my clothing for once.

I napped for probably two hours on the couch -- I don't exactly remember now, as it was over a week ago -- and went back to my room and checked my messages. Daisy hadn't sent me anything else, but that's not unusual for her. She doesn't necessarily message me when she leaves the house, and she doesn't give me an ETA unless I ask her, and only then when she stops or glances down at her phone and can reply (again, straight lines on this drive, for many many miles at a time). What I do remember is that this was around 7PM, which means that I would reasonably be able to expect her in a little more than an hour, but much less than two.

"ETA, love?" I asked.

It was a few minutes before she replied, "three hours, 40 minutes."

...okay...

"You left the house two hours later than you planned to, didn't you?" I asked.

"Yep."

Daisy Standard Time.

I composed myself, and asked "Do you even want to try to turn around and go back tonight, then?"


Logistically, this would mean she'd arrive at my house around 11PM. If we took an hour or so to let her get out of the car, relax, come upstairs and eat/use the bathroom/decompress before getting back in the car, we'd be leaving the house at around midnight and not getting back to Omaha before dawn...and we'd end up sleeping most, if not all, of the day away. No bueno, as Daisy herself frequently says in conversation.

"It's up to how we both feel when I get there," she told me. "I feel okay now, though."

"Let's just wait until the morning then," I told her. "There's no reason to force it tonight. You're exhausted. I'm awake now, but we wouldn't get back to Omaha before 5 or 6AM, and there's no way I'll last that long. Screw it. Take your time, get here when you get here, and we'll just go to bed, get up early, and go then."

This also let me relax and not have to worry about getting everything ready to go and closed/locked/turned off that night. I hate leaving the house for a trip late at night anyway -- as much of a night owl as I am, I get more meticulous and twitchy at night as well, and as I'm basically night-blind, I'm always paranoid I'll leave a door cracked, unlocked, or that I'll forget to do something really important/leave something really important behind. It's worse in the summer, too, since there's the added factor of needing to make sure the cats will have more than enough fresh water due to the heat. But this time around I'd done everything beforehand, it was (at the time) really comfortable and cool outside, and I figured that as it was supposed to rain the next day down here, it would be another cool, cloudy travel day -- and much easier to navigate than at night when both of us were tired. So, I did what every other red-blooded American male would do when he realizes he doesn't have to leave the house again for the rest of the day -- I removed my pants. Giggity.

"However," I added, "you should get something to eat on your way down here if you haven't already done so, since I've already been to Walmart and back and didn't get anything new or vegan because we'd planned to turn around and go home."


Again, this is true. I purposely try to eat everything I have on hand and avoid grocery shopping before I go on an extended trip -- I don't like leaving anything in the fridge that could or would spoil or otherwise go bad, since that would just be a waste of money (which, as you know, is at a premium while I'm still unemployed). What I'd purchased at Walmart was some Herr's Ketchup chips for Daisy, cat litter, cigarettes, and little else -- just the stuff I needed shortly before, during, and shortly after the trip. As a result, there wasn't much I had in the house I could feed Daisy.

Daisy arrived around 11 or so, and I could tell just by looking at her how tired she was. She hadn't eaten anything, either, but she didn't want anything. She actually was relieved that we wouldn't leave until the morning. After doing a spider-check of the basement and finding nothing, we went to bed. I told her I'd let her sleep as long as she wanted, and when we woke up, we'd get everything situated and we'd leave -- whenever that was. Because she couldn't find it, the only charger she had for her phone was the charger in the car, so shortly after she got here and texted her parents to let them know she was okay and that we were waiting until the morning, her phone died.

I woke up around 8AM or so on the morning of the 4th and got up quietly, letting her sleep. In that time I came upstairs, went through my morning routine, double-checked to make sure I had packed everything I needed, and once she woke up (around 11:30 or so) I fed her waffles and readied the cat room. I also sent her mother a text saying that Daisy's phone had died, her only charger was in the car, and that we'd be on the road shortly. Once everything was situated, we were on the road -- around 1PM or so we left the house, locking everything down, getting gas first, and then hitting the highway.

I want to describe the weather to you on the 4th, because to me it was bizarre. It wasn't even 80 degrees here in Newton when we left the house at 1PM; it was breezy and cool, and was mostly cloudy. I don't ever remember a July 4th since I've been living in the midwest that was so pleasant and calm instead of blazing, scorching hot and unbearable. Because the weather was so nice and because the hottest it was supposed to get over the week I'd be gone was 88 (again, remember, this was a forecast which was predicted well over a week ago), I had closed up the house completely, including my windows, and I'd turned off everything -- I'd even shut off the big power switch on the furnace/AC fan unit, since there's no reason to leave that sucking power when I'm not at home, and the cats didn't need it. It was so nice and cool in the house, and outside, for once in the summer, and according to the weather forecast, that was a trend that would continue. Because there was the chance of storms almost every day (at least a small chance, anyway) I'd even locked the car in the garage, which I mentioned earlier. For all intents and purposes, the house was sealed, my car was protected, and the cats were cool, safe, and well-fed. I was satisfied.

By the third day I was in Omaha, however, the weather had done an almost complete 180, and it was fucking scorching hot again.

But I'll get to that.

We arrived in Omaha pretty quickly and without incident; the trip seemed short, actually. Her parents were getting ready for dinner (grilled foods and picnic-like stuff, including a potato salad Mama made that was easily the best potato salad I've ever had), and then our plans were to stay up late sitting out on the porch watching fireworks throughout the neighborhood -- which we did end up doing, as loud and cacophonous as it was (oh, and it was). Daisy's dad supplied me with rum and Coke, as well as good beer, and we watched part of a Pawn Stars marathon as well. It was a very nice evening, and I was incredibly relaxed and enjoying being in a house with not only good air conditioning, but great air conditioning. I marveled at a house that could be kept at a comfortable 74 degrees at all times and actually kept you cool when you needed and wanted to be cool.

I'll tell the rest of the story, or as much of the rest of it as I can, in my next post.

Poisoned

I'm pretty sure that I'm suffering from some form of mild food poisoning.

I'll spare you the details, of course, but it's not really pretty.

Here's what I know, from the beginning.

Last night I made burgers for dinner. I bought a box of Angus beef burgers from Walmart two weeks ago or so, and I'd eaten all of them but the last two, which I made last night. I also reheated a big bowl of chicken noodle soup that I took out of the freezer and thawed, soup I made months ago. I have a lot of soup, and make a lot when I cook it, so the remnants go into the freezer in tupperware bowls that I can pull out one-by-one if I'm in the mood. I ate the burgers and they were fine. I heated and ate the soup, and it was fine. I felt no ill effects.

Around 11PM last night, I was tired and achy. This is somewhat normal these days, so I didn't think much of it. I've been going to bed earlier than usual, and I thought it was my body telling me it was time to go to sleep. I was also really thirsty for some reason, so I drank most of a one-gallon jug of water and made some Kool-Aid, most of which I also drank. I told Daisy that I needed to get off the computer for a while, because not only did my ass hurt from sitting in my chair for several hours, but I was really starting to feel strange. I didn't tell her the latter part because I didn't want her to worry -- she had a long night ahead of her at work.

I was starting to feel hot, and I needed one, so I took a shower. That helped me feel a little better. I came back to the computer later and checked my email and the like before playing a game for a while in an attempt to get me tired enough to sleep. I finally went downstairs around 3 or so, feeling dizzy when I did. I had a mild headache, a nagging one, but I chalked all of it up to just being tired.

When I awoke next, it was around 10AM, and Pete was repeatedly gnawing on the plastic bag of cat litter I have sitting next to the dryer (because if there's something he can chew on, he'll do it). I yelled at him repeatedly before he went running upstairs, and then I went back to sleep. If I was feeling weird at this point, I didn't notice it.

When I finally got up around 1PM, I felt a bit wobbly and/or woozy. I'd turned off the fan next to the bed hours earlier, as I no longer needed it (it was really nice and cool downstairs) and noticed that my dizziness from the night before was still there a little bit -- along with a feeling that felt somewhat like heartburn or acid reflux, but not quite. I came upstairs and drank some water, and that's when the repeated trips to the bathroom began.

Again, I'll spare you the details. Suffice it to say that it was neither fun nor pleasant.

I felt a little better afterwards (again, attributing it to heartburn and indigestion), and I went outside to mow the grass -- the front grass, anyway. I needed to clean up the branches and debris left over from the storm, which I did, and mowed the front grass in about twenty-five minutes. The sun and constant movement of pushing the mower, however, rapidly made me feel ill again. I started coughing and gagging as well, no doubt brought on by my allergies choosing the most inopportune time to strike. The back grass is fine, I said to myself, and I put away the mower and came inside. That is when the big, bad headache and dizziness/nausea hit me full-force. After another trip to the bathroom, I knew this wasn't normal. I sent Daisy a message telling her that I thought I had a bout of minor food poisoning or something -- though since she had been asleep for hours at that point (and still is) she hasn't read it yet and doesn't know.

I truly felt awful. After yet another trip to the bathroom, queasy and pained, I laid down on the couch in the living room and tried to get the room to stop spinning. Pete and Maggie both realized I wasn't feeling well, and Pete jumped up to lay on my chest/shoulder while Maggie curled up in a ball between my legs. After laying there for an hour or so feeling sick, weak, and somewhat sweaty, the sick feeling gradually began to subside, as did the sweatiness and the weakness. The headache remained, as did the dizziness. I got up and very slowly made my way to the bathroom so that I could take another shower, as I'd mowed the grass and was feeling icky from that, and the shower made me feel a lot better.

Right now, at 7PM? I'm mostly okay. I think. My stomach is no longer going nuts, and I'm not dizzy or weak anymore. The headache, dull and probably related to allergies more than anything else, persists. My body aches also persist, though I don't feel stiff or sore or anything...just achy. I'm half afraid to do anything requiring a lot of movement for fear that I'll get sick again, or that whatever this is will fire back up full-force again as it did after I mowed the grass. This effectively puts nails in the coffin of doing anything productive this evening -- I do need to go to Walmart to pick up a few things -- and makes me feel somewhat useless, really. At least until I start feeling fully better, anyway. Typing here is about all I can stand to do right now while upright.

I told Daisy last night about the $32-a-day teaching job offer in Omaha and she said "Oh, wow, that's depressing," followed by "I'm sorry, baby."

"I know, right?" I replied. "I don't even know why they'd advertise a position like that."

The company must be really short-staffed, or, conversely, I'm the only applicant who passed all the background checks for working with children (aside from a speeding ticket eighteen months ago or so, my record is spotless).

One of my friends from the department who graduated a few years ago sent me an email this morning, telling me a job opened up in his department at a college in Iowa, and told me to look into it. I haven't really done a lot of research into it yet, since I've been, y'know, sick as hell all day, but it may be promising. From what I can tell, it's not a teaching position, but some sort of tutoring position. I'm skeptical that it would pay me enough money to justify moving to Iowa, but again, I'll have to look into it more once I feel better. It's about all I can do right now to sit here at my desk, let alone fill out more applications and/or forms.

I'll keep you folks updated if it gets better or worse, but for right now, there's not a lot I can do one way or the other except see if this thing (whatever it is) is going to run its course. At this point, I don't even know if I'm going to be feeling well enough to make the trip up to Omaha. Yes, this may pass in a matter of hours, but I don't know if it will or what it even is aside from a now-roaring headache and lethargy. Regardless, it may be a few days before you hear from me again one way or the other.

A New Season of Hopelessness

I'm restless to a certain extent; the vast majority of my waking hours yesterday was spent doing chores and taking care of other important household stuff -- I cleaned the cat room, I washed/replaced the bedsheets, I did all of the dishes, cooked dinner, unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, and vacuumed the entire house...yet, I'm restless. I feel like there's something missing, something I should be doing. Or, conversely, I sort of have this sense of dread and/or anticipation that something -- good or bad -- is going to happen.

I can't chalk this up to fatigue; I've been sleeping remarkably well as of late, really. Well, remarkably well for me, anyway. Any night I can sleep for eight or nine hours straight without my back hurting, sweating so much I soak the sheets, my allergies going nuts, or having to get up to pee due to excessive fluid intake (due to the heat) is a good night. I suppose, anyway.

I'm in a bit of a funk, to be honest with you. As you know if you read my last post, I'm past that point of no return now when it comes to teaching jobs -- there's no point in looking for anything for the fall anymore. Today is July 1, and with July comes a new season of hopelessness: looking for work that isn't academically-based, and more than likely a job in the private sector someplace.

While in the bathroom tonight, I went down the pros-and-cons list, in my head, of filling out an application at Arby's. I'm not kidding. When I was mentally finished, it boiled down to something like well, it wouldn't be good, but it wouldn't be *that* bad. And when I came across this realization, I wanted to cry. It's because I've already, on some level, resigned myself to being forced into some sort of unskilled labor, fast food, service-industry job just to be able to pay the bills. And I did it unknowingly, as well. It's as if somehow, subconsciously, I've already accepted my fate as a loser, and the downward spiral began without me noticing -- it just took me working out the pros and cons of being a fast food roast beef clerk that made me realize it.

Throughout graduate school -- actually, throughout undergrad as well, but mostly through grad school -- I always told myself that I'd be the guy who succeeded where others failed, the one who actually would have enough luck to land that good teaching job or that good writing job after graduation, pulling myself up with my two degrees and experience to make something of myself despite all the odds against me. I didn't want to be the perpetual student, continually putting off trying to figure out life in order to dive back into academia for yet another degree, buying/wasting more time in doing so. When I graduated six weeks ago, I was full of hope and optimism that I was finally done with schooling, that I would be able to break out of that daily grind and press forward, moving up, starting a new life. After all, I'm engaged to a wonderful woman, I've got my health, and I've been on this planet for but a short thirty years. My entire life is ahead of me.

And yet, even though I only graduated six weeks ago, six weeks has been enough for events to come full-circle, and for cold hard reality to come crashing back down upon me. I've got maybe enough money in my bank account, barring any new employment or windfalls, to last me until Thanksgiving. And that's with me being somewhat frugal. After that, it's all over. Ironically, around Thanksgiving is when my first student loan payments would be coming due. Daisy is trying to plan our wedding, and is trying to budget for everything involving that, and here I am trying to budget for simple survival and nothing else. There's something not right about that. There's something wrong, something lopsided about that scenario, and yet...there's little else I can do. In the span of six weeks, in my mind I went from being a success to rapidly becoming a failure. Six weeks.

To make matters worse, this afternoon I received a call from a teaching position I applied for in Omaha -- one of the very few teaching positions I applied for in Omaha, since it's not like any others are open -- and one that wasn't for a college-based position, at that. The lady on the phone told me that she loved my credentials and CV, and wanted to offer me four hours a day at eight dollars an hour.

You're fucking kidding me, right?

Why even advertise a position if it's only four hours per day (two in the morning, two in the afternoon -- not even all together -- for eight dollars an hour? Yeah, sorry, I can't live on $32 a day. Even working five days a week for four weeks a month, that's $640. A month. Before taxes. Daisy gets paid much more than that every two weeks at her current job.

That's, frankly, an insult. A big insult. That's a position you give to a retired senior citizen looking to fill a few hours of time, or someone looking to work a second job when they already have something that actually pays the bills. I deleted the voicemail in disgust. If that's all these people think I'm worth, then they're clearly not worth my time or energy. Working that job for a year would pay me almost $1000 less per year than I made as a GTA. For me to even consider a job like that, they'd have to at least triple or quadruple the hourly pay...or the hours themselves.

This is what I have to deal with, folks. This is where I currently am. I've got nothing. I've redesigned yet another copy of my CV/resume for office/administrative work, something that I clearly don't want to do, but am forced to pursue, and in doing job searches in almost all areas find nothing but sales jobs. I am not a salesman. I do not want to deal with sales. I could have done a sales job with no degree whatsoever. I am not an entitled little shit or an ingrate when I say that I know I deserve, and can do, better than that. I've worked too fucking hard over the years to work a sales job or anything related to that.

And yet apparently I've resigned myself to an Arby's position? A roast beef slinger? A purveyor of curly fries?

The one plus is that working at Arby's would pay more than that teaching position I mentioned above. And that makes it even sadder. 

At this point, my only real hope is to wait to hear from some (or any) of the places and positions I've applied for in the past six weeks, and hope that the ones who contact me allow for enough time for relocation if I am hired. Those are some big hopes, some big ifs. There's little else I can do other than searching through the job postings everywhere to see if there's one that's not a sales position, and see if that one is something I could actually do with the degrees I have.

In the meantime, the 4th approaches. Daisy and I, over the few days I'll be in Omaha (I'm not even sure when we're leaving and/or coming back yet) will have a few days together and with the parents where I can temporarily, at least, push a lot of this shit out of my head.

Of course, I've heard nothing else from the department, either; I don't know if I'm going to be hired on as an adjunct or otherwise for the fall. The budget is apparently being cleared sometime this month, and I'll know one way or the other later in the month about what's going on, if anything. Again, I'll have to go pick up my diploma after the 17th anyhow, and will have to drop off my keys on that day if I'm not going to be hired on in any capacity, but apparently at least one of the office administrators there has left the department, so I don't know what's going on. I've had no communication with anyone in the department since the end of May.

Daisy has told me that (obviously) she would greatly prefer me to get a job in Omaha, or somewhere around the Omaha area, so that she can continue working where she is (even though she hates it) and stay close to her parents. I understand this, of course. Her reasoning is that there's no reason to work "some shit job" somewhere on the opposite side of the country if I could get a comparable job here or there. She's right, of course, but that heavily depends on whether I can even get a "shit job" in Omaha. What's worse is that in about two months or so, regardless of whether I have work or not by that time, this entire cycle of looking for teaching jobs is going to restart as I begin heavily looking for places to start teaching starting in the spring semester, in January. No, I don't want to move during the winter, but if I run out of money, I'm going to be forced to anyway. When it gets to a certain point, it'll be sheer necessity that I take anything thrown at me regardless of how degrading or awful it may be. Again, enter the roast beef slinger.

I want to reiterate that all hope is not lost, though it is certainly waning a bit. I do have hope that those positions I've applied for since graduation will at least contact me, or the majority of them will, anyway, and that something may happen with the university. Daisy has told me that if I get hired on at the university, she will make the move down here to Kansas, though we'd still be moving out of my current place and into a different one -- and she'd have to find work here as well. There's no need for her to do that if I'm simply adjuncting for a semester, of course. As much as the thought of adjuncting makes me shudder because of the work involved compared to the pay, it's more pay than I'd get slinging roast beef or pushing curly fries.

I'm also getting to the point where I'm desperate enough to start looking into teaching in high schools. I haven't started looking yet, however. Daisy's mother teaches high school and hates it -- but the money is good and the healthcare benefits are as well. I don't want to come home every night wanting to blow my brains out, but if it comes down between being able to eat and having a position in which I may actually be able to use my degree, as depressing as that position may end up being, I'd much rather not starve and be able to keep the lights on in my home. I was a licensed substitute teacher for a year, as you may or may not know, in 2009-10. The license cost me an outlandish sum of money to obtain, and even though I was "on call" every day, I never got a single call to sub. If nothing else, it may be worth it to renew that license either here or in Omaha, one way or the other.

In other news, there's not much going on. It's been rather nice here weather-wise -- last night it was down into the 60s, and today the warmest it's gotten is 84, which means it's rather pleasant in my house and I'm not sweating profusely for once. This much-cooler weather trend is supposed to extend throughout the next ten days or so both here and in Omaha, so it should be somewhat pleasant while I'm up there (and it also means that the cats won't cook in the house while I'm gone, whenever I'm gone). I have to go to Walmart tonight to get cigarettes and stamps, and tomorrow morning before it gets warm in the sun I plan to mow the grass and clean up the yard as much as possible so that when the tree-removal city crews come through to get all of the branches and the like after the storm we had, they can get them without issue. All the bills I already had for the month have now been paid, and anything else can wait until after the 4th (as it probably won't come in until long after then anyhow).

As for any trip back home to visit my parents, I don't know if that's going to happen this summer either this month or next month, and whether or not Daisy would get to go anyhow. I've not discussed it with my parents for several weeks, and due to tight scheduling when it comes to their vacations and/or the vacations of people in their offices, not to mention if I get hired someplace and/or need to start adjuncting again in August for the university, I don't know when or if it's going to happen. As it's the 1st of July, there's time to plan it, but that doesn't mean anything if I get called for a job tomorrow and have to spend the rest of my summer (and money) frantically uprooting myself for a cross-country move.