Affirmations

The past two days have been very long, but very nice. Here's what's been going on.

Daisy got into town on Tuesday evening -- relatively early, at that. Like, before dark. I was impressed. It was only after she'd been here for an hour or two when I learned that she hadn't slept. At all.

"You mean to tell me that you got up last night, went to work, worked all night, came home, did stuff around the house, went shopping, hung out with mama, and then got in the car and drove down here without sleeping a wink?"

"Yes," she said.

"Honey, that's dangerous," I told her. "I thought you said you were going to nap for a while?"

"Well, I was, but..."

Oy. I made her some food because she hadn't eaten, either, and then made sure she went to bed. By the time she went to sleep, she'd been awake for something like 28 or 29 hours straight -- she was fighting off being tired and needing sleep because she wanted to spend time with me, and wanted to be awake as long as she could because she'd just gotten here. I did, of course, make sure we spent time together, ate together, talked about her job, etc. But I also made sure she went to sleep and stayed asleep, because she needed it. Badly.

I, on the other hand, stayed up until 3AM finishing up watching the rest of the first season of Orange is the New Black. This was probably a bad idea, as we'd planned to go to campus in the morning so I could pick up my diploma and meet up with the folks in the department.

When I finally awoke, it was after 10AM. Daisy was just waking up as well, at least waking up fully, anyhow, and I got dressed and ready to leave the house when I heard a really strange noise fairly close to the house -- like a droning, a buzzing of an engine. I looked out the window to see city street crews had drawn chalk lines on my street and were using leaf blowers to clean out the sealant cracks on the street. This meant that they were going to do the "slurry seal" operation.

What is slurry seal, you might ask? Well, I thought it was the black tar-like sealant they you see applied to cracks and edges of roads and streets to keep the road in one piece -- like, patch-job stuff. I'd seen them doing this around town, putting down the tar on corners and on segments of roadways, and knew they were supposed to do it to my street eventually as well. Okay, I thought. This isn't a big deal. It'll take a few extra hours before it dries, and then we can go to campus.

It was then I noticed that the street had been entirely closed off. As in, shut down, nobody allowed on it or off it. There were barriers set up at each end of the street (including one completely blocking off my neighbor's driveway, which I'm sure he wasn't exactly happy about). I got on the city of Newton's website to see what their schedule entailed and how they'd go about doing the sealant operation (read: how long I'd be stuck in the house).

It wasn't good news.

Apparently when they do this, they shut down entire streets from 7:30 AM to 5PM. And when I say "shut down," I mean shut down. Like I mentioned before, they block everything off, they close down the street -- nobody gets in or out. As the street was blocked, I wasn't going anywhere. I sent the department people at school an email telling them that I wouldn't be able to make it down, but I'd make it down there today, and went downstairs to tell Daisy -- who had laid back down for a bit after breakfast and a shower.

"You may as well relax, love," I said. "We're not going anywhere today. Street's going to be closed off until 5PM while they do this stuff. Nobody gets in or out. That's why the barriers are up."

And that's what we did. We relaxed.

Somewhat.

Let me tell you, it's somewhat maddening to have somewhere you need to go and/or be at a certain time and cannot actually fulfill that obligation, physically or otherwise. Add to this that of all of the days I've been here this summer, of all of the days I have never ventured outside the door of my home, they chose the one and only day where I had something important to do.

Chalk that up to bad luck, I suppose.

I also found it supremely interesting that they're supposed to place a notice on your door 48 hours prior to the time when they're going to close off your street. I never got any sort of notice. I go in and out my doors several times a day -- I'd been out there just the afternoon before to get the mail and to take out the cats' dirty litter, and had nothing there. This will come into play later, I assure you, so stay tuned.

So, really, we were stuck at home. While I was downstairs with Daisy, we heard loud machinery and grating noises, and I looked out the window to see a crew of about ten guys with a very large steamroller-like machine. They weren't simply putting down a bit of that sticky black tar on the road where new seals were needed, oh no -- they were completely re-paving my street. 

"Holy hell," I said to Daisy. "They're re-paving the entire street. I have no idea why."

My street is in relatively good shape. There aren't any potholes, there aren't any cracks or broken parts, etc. It's not been paved since I've been living here (probably not since long before, actually) but, really, there's nothing wrong with it. And they re-paved it. All of it. They also re-paved several other streets around my neighborhood as well.

Mind you, these are residential streets. Far-off-the-path residential streets as well, not heavily-traveled main thoroughfares. Some of those, obviously, do need paving. But okay, whatever, so they want to pave my street. I don't own my house, I rent it. The landlord, who also owns all of the other houses on this street except for two, pays all of those taxes, and as he was the city commissioner for a long time, including when I began living here, well, it's not like I have anything to worry about in that department. So, really, it's not like my city/county/property tax dollars are paying for the streets to be paved. I just found it interesting more than anything else.

Daisy and I played cards, cooked lunch, watched TV, and generally killed time. I felt like I was trapped. Not with her, mind you, but trapped in the house in general. Finally, I wanted to be able to get out and sort of celebrate the fact that I would soon be employed again, would soon be able to worry about money a little less and have a reason to get up in the morning, but, of course, I was stuck there. And so was Daisy -- as long as they were paving the street.

"Want to go see The Wolverine?" I asked Daisy in passing.

"Sure," she said. "But I thought you didn't really want to see it, since you said there were bad reviews and all?"

"Eh." I said. "I do want to see a movie, and it's a comic book movie, and it may be at least mildly interesting if it sticks to the comics it's supposedly based on."

I really had been sort of lukewarm on seeing The Wolverine. I've always been a much bigger Marvel nerd than DC nerd, and I do like Wolverine, but eh. The first Wolverine movie was good for 40 minutes, and then after that it became utter dogshit, but Marvel has put out some good films recently. If nothing else, it would get us out of the house and we could have a date night after being stuck there all day.

So, plans were made. We couldn't make the early showing (4-something) because of the street, but the 7:15 showing was fine. Neither of us had any plans, and since I'd been in a sour mood and really depressed for the past few weeks, I needed something to take my mind off of things and immerse me in a world that wasn't my own. When Daisy and I see movies together, it's not as much about the movie most of the time as it is us going out and doing something together, something fun, something as a couple. Okay, well, for Man of Steel, it was totally about the movie.

Anyway.

Around 4PM I saw cars coming in and out, and the kids were riding their bikes around the street again. This was interesting, I thought, as my end of the street was still barricaded and closed. When I saw people coming and going, though, I knew the street had re-opened, at least to in-and-out traffic. So we got ready and were out of the house by around 6. Our plan was to go to the Dollar Tree first, since I'd been needing to go for a while, and because Daisy always likes to go with me when she's here. Part of that is because she can find a lot of awesome stuff there when she comes with me, because Daisy is all about kitschy cool things, to the point of borderline tacky (example: she seriously considered purchasing a headband with a neon highlighter green flower in it, and planned to wear it in all seriousness, not irony). This always gives me an amusing trip instead of a quick in-and-out, get-what-I-need-and-go Dollar Tree excursion, and thus I love going there with her.

By the time we got out of Dollar Tree (where our cart was filled, and I ended up spending $53 on stuff I needed/wanted for around the house) it was too late to take it home and put it away, so we stuffed it in the trunk and went to the movie.

The Wolverine was fine; it's by no means a perfect film or even a great film, but it's definitely entertaining, thoroughly watchable, and a serviceable film for Wolverine. It's (at times loosely) based on the Miller/Claremont mini-series of the early 80s, and has a lot of nods to the source material there while updating it and changing around a bit of the plot and pacing -- and, as it is, it's a pretty good stand-alone Wolverine picture that ties into the other films as well, if (again) loosely. Worth the money to see it, at least, but don't bother with the 3D treatment, as there are only about three scenes that would be at all interesting to see in 3D. After reading some of the reviews, I thought it would be godawful, and I was pleasantly surprised. It's held up pretty decently on Rotten Tomatoes, as well.

Oh, and stay for the post-credits scene if you see it -- without being spoiler-y, it's a direct lead-in to Days of Future Past.


So. We saw the movie, stopped at Walmart to get some stuff I needed, since we would've done that earlier had the street been open, and came home. By the time we got back home, settled in and had all the groceries put away, it was almost midnight. Daisy went to bed, and I joined her about two hours later (after a shower).


I probably should have gone to bed when she did; I was so tired and by the time I actually went downstairs, I was beginning to get a little dizzy/loopy. I've not been staying up late as of late; I've been in bed between 9 and 11PM most of the time, and have been getting up between 7 and 9AM or so. I can't remember the last time I was up as late as I have been the past few nights. Add to this the effects of my allergies and the fact that I've not been sleeping well and I feel like I'm wandering through a constant thin fog for most of my waking hours if I don't have something to do in order to focus myself.

When we returned home, by the way, I found a door-hanger notice of the street re-pavement operation on my downstairs door. It must have been put there that morning, mere hours (or even minutes) before the work started -- since it had not been there the night before when Daisy came down.

This morning, since we'd been delayed by a day because of the street, we had to go to campus. I awoke in a daze around 10AM and went upstairs; I let Daisy sleep. I saw that she'd been upstairs herself at some point and had come back down; she'd eaten breakfast and had moved some stuff around in the kitchen/bathroom, so I figured I should let her rest if she was tired enough to go back to bed. I didn't wake her until around 11:20, after I'd already gotten dressed for the day and was basically ready to leave the house. Daisy, for as much of a girly-girl as she is, is also really fast to get dressed and made up to go out. She can go from bed to fabulous in about 20 minutes, roughly, if she's in a hurry. I know because I've seen this transition many times over the course of our relationship. Once she got up and got ready, we were out the door by noon and on the road to Wichita.

The drive down there was strange; I haven't driven to campus since graduation day. Now, with all of the new construction both on the interstate AND on campus, everything feels...well, alien to a certain extent. I told Daisy that I felt like an ex-pat returning to his home country after a long absence. As I mentioned here before, my normal parking lot has been destroyed, as a new dorm is being built there now. They've also closed off the main entrance I usually go through, and they've razed one of the soccer fields and paved it to put in new parking spaces. This makes it a massive pain in the ass to get on and off of campus now, and even today -- the last day of summer sessions -- the lot wasn't full, but it was over half full. I can't imagine what proverbial shit will hit the fan when the fall semester actually starts in a few weeks and everyone has to fight for parking spaces everywhere. It's going to be a nightmare, and remember -- I drive a land boat.

Still, campus was (mostly) deserted; there were only four people in the entire department, and I gave my greetings and salutations to all of them, obviously.

Here's what's going on with my teaching and the fall -- at least what I know now, anyway:

1. I have one class right now -- Tuesday/Thursday, 9:15AM, West campus, room unknown at present. This is not yet officially scheduled in Banner, but it's mine. The office administrator is working to get me up to three more, if possible, and I told her I would gladly take whatever I could teach. She took my old office key, gave me the new books I needed (the updated versions of the 101 books, of which I don't have copies), and told me optimistically that she'd be in touch over the next few days with what popped up.

2. No word on the continuation of the Engineering English program when I talked to the chair, but it didn't come up in conversation, either. I'm guessing that as I'm not scheduled to teach any of those classes, it's officially on hold indefinitely right now, but I don't know for sure.

3. If I do get other classes to teach (which seems likely, given my reputation in the department, ability to teach, and willingness to help), they won't conflict with the class I teach on West campus and I'll have enough time after that class to get across town to the main campus beforehand.

4. I may receive (enthusiastically receive, mind you) one or more night classes to helm. Night classes are easy to teach and are fun, and generally have much lower enrollment (which means less work to grade).

5. Right now I don't have an office anymore -- I turned in my key today, as I said -- but there is apparently office space on West campus if I need it, and I also don't necessarily have to keep strictly-regimented office hours since I'm no longer a GTA, but actual faculty. This basically means that, if I wanted to, I could say "office hours are via email. use it." or something to that effect. That may not gain me a whole lot of popularity with the students, but I can't exactly hold office hours if I don't have an office. My old office is now property of the new GTAs they'll stick in there.


These are all the updates I have. I thanked them profusely, as I wanted them to know how grateful I am to even be able to teach one class this fall, even if I don't get any others. You folks here know how stressed and depressed I've been over the past few weeks, of course. Getting some affirmation that I am useful and helpful in some regard when it comes to my talents does ease those feelings a bit. In turn, they thanked me as well -- they didn't have anyone who could teach the West campus class and were really glad I could take it. Again, I love the West campus -- it's shiny and new with a massive parking lot, is a complex that is all one floor, and is out in the middle of nowhere, so the drives there will be peaceful. I do, however, eagerly await further communications to see what else I can get. Teaching one class will cover my rent (with maybe a little extra) for the four months of the semester, but every other expense will still come out of my savings. Obviously, if I get even one more class, I double my pay for those sixteen weeks and life will become a little easier. Two more, triple the pay, and so on. Adjuncts are paid by the class. I told the chair that I could helm as many as necessary, because it's not like I have my own papers to write or stacks of books to study for comps now -- it's just me, teachin' and makin' money.  Not a lot of money, but more than I have now, which is the main thing.

On our way off campus, Daisy and I stopped to get my diploma from the registrar's office. It's pretty, actually. My WVU diploma is massive, and still resides in the envelope in which it came, tucked away in a safe place in the top of my closet. This one is smaller and is in a leather binder under a sheet of protective plastic, and it's formal and elegant. It's also still sitting in my bag across the room from me, as I have no idea what to do with the piece of paper I call my "debt certificate." But, I suppose (if that whole, expensive-gown-wearing graduation ceremony wasn't any indication) that with the diploma in my hands and an adjunct professorship lined up for me, well, I guess I really do have a Master's degree now.

Daisy left this evening to go back to Omaha -- she was debating on staying until the morning, but if she had done so, she would've had to get up really early to be able to get everything packed up, put in the car, and to make the drive to Omaha before needing to immediately crash and sleep the rest of the day away before her work tomorrow night, something that probably wouldn't be the best idea in the world since she's spent the past two days running around with me, even if I do try to force her to get sleep when she desperately needs to.

All in all, I'm in a much better place than I was a few days ago. Getting offered that class -- even if, for the moment, it's just one class -- eased a lot of my fears. Spending the past two days with Daisy and being able to relax with her, go to movies and go shopping with her (enabling me to get almost all of my important groceries and other needed goods in the process) helped quite a bit as well. Not having anything pressing, soul-sucking, or must-be-done-now-important things to do this weekend helps even more -- it'll allow me to try to relax a bit and rest, to sleep without fear or depression upon waking up, and on a practical level I can clean the house and do laundry. I'm more centered, so to speak. I still have problems, of course, and some of those problems are fairly large, looming ones, but for now, I have a bit of much-needed perspective.

There is one other thing, however, though it's small. I got an email today from my editor at the paper. My story ran last week on schedule, but it apparently never got put on the website (which is why I could never find it). I have to drop by the offices tomorrow morning to fill out the payroll forms in order to get paid for it, which will put me back into the system and will allow me to get semi-regular checks from them when and if my stories run. I can do this easily, and as an adjunct I don't have to worry about running afoul of the administration on any sort of GTA work contract I might violate by having a second job -- this means that as long as I have time to do so, I can continue to write for the paper with no issue. The problem is having that time. Some stories take a while to develop (one of my contacts for my second story I have, I haven't heard any more correspondence from for over a week, and I need to check back in with him, for example). If I'm teaching three or four classes, I totally won't have time to write for the paper anymore. If I'm teaching two? With no other student work of my own to deal with? I could feasibly continue with them with no problems. This is something I'll have to tell my editor tomorrow when I go over there, regardless of when that may be -- it depends heavily on when I wake up and roll out of bed, though I would like it to be early.

Stopgaps

It's July 30, and I have finally been offered a teaching job for the fall through the department.

Right now it's just one class, on the West campus in Maize -- I've taught there before, last summer, for my ten-week summer sessions. It's a nice building out in the middle of nowhere with a lot of parking and easy access. I accepted it without question. I will be teaching 101 again, apparently, for the first time in over two years. Upon acceptance of that class I may -- may -- also receive 1-2 other classes to teach for the fall as well, which I will find out about soon. Right now, enrollment for the class I've been offered is five students -- but more should be joining as it's a class a lot of the high school students take for dual credit, apparently, through the west campus.

Money is money. A job is a job. At least I'll be doing something I know how to do, and something I like doing, something I've done before.

In the big picture of things, though, this means little -- this is simply a stopgap measure. It's something that will slow my hemorrhaging of money, but will not stop it altogether. I'll be able to live, and survive decently enough (as decently as I've been surviving this summer, I suppose) on the income, though it won't stop my money loss. It will only slow it, like a band-aid over a deep gash. Still, it is much better than nothing.

Daisy, upon hearing the news, was ecstatic, and asked me how I felt. I shrugged.

"Eh. I'm happy to be teaching again, but..."

Really, that's how I feel. My second-to-last-ditch backup plan had to become my real plan (the last-ditch plan, as you may remember, was fast food) and while it guarantees I'll be employed through December, it also locks me down here in Kansas until at least then, slowing any real progress of the wedding or any other Omaha moving plans. As for any of those other positions I've applied for over the course of the past two months, if they're in academia and want to hire me, I'll have to tell them that I can't possibly start until January now. Same goes with new positions I'll find between now and then as well.

I suppose I should be grateful, and I am, but this is a small victory at best. Yes, I'll be teaching. Yes, I'll be using my degree and will once more be broadening young minds. But, in two months, my car registration will come due again. In about four more, my student loan payments will begin coming due. In five more, car insurance. And not to mention the need to pay bills, keep gas in the car again, and get food for myself and the cats during all of this time as well. I'll still have to budget. I'll still have to budget a lot. I'll still have to try to find a way to help fund the wedding, move out of this house, and find something to do after December. This is, simply, a small stopgap.

My mental state, however, is a bit calmer. A bit looser. I've been really angry, frustrated, and depressed for the past several weeks, as you know, and that isn't something that just up and disappears. It has to slowly wear off, slowly dissipate down to normal levels. I do feel a little more relaxed and less hopeless, but still overall unsatisfied. The good part about being kept busy with teaching work is that after a while, said work becomes routine and is taken care of first, leaving little other room in one's mind, or time, to worry about things like depression or hopelessness. I have a feeling this is why people who work almost constantly never become depressed -- they don't have time or the spare mental processes for it. Yes, teaching at times can be miserable, but you don't get enough free time that's not focused on the job to become aware of the misery of it.

I sent an email to the now-former chair (who requested I friend him on LinkedIn as well) to tell him I had been offered that section of classes, at least, with the opportunity for more, and told him that I'd be on campus sometime tomorrow to pick up my diploma and venture through the department if he's around. I'll have to be in the department anyway; I haven't taught 101 in over two years, as I mentioned before, and all of the books and lesson plans for 101 have been updated since then, to the point where only about 30% or less of my old lesson plans I used for the class will be at all applicable. Obviously, I'll have to get new copies of the books from the office as well, and a good chunk of time between now and August 19 will be spent creating new lesson plans and schedules for the semester. But, as I said before, at least I'll be in my element again.

I am trying to be optimistic about the coming semester; nothing is ever set in stone about teaching in the English Department until you see your name on the teaching schedule and you begin teaching, so any of this could fall through at any time. Therefore, I am cautiously optimistic at best. I would imagine I'll get some of my questions answered tomorrow, but that's about all I can hope for right now. 

Daisy is coming down this afternoon; she worked last night, got off work and went to Whole Foods to make me a "Cheer-Up-Brandon" care package, and is now taking a short nap so that she can drive down here.

"Two things," I told her this morning. "One, everywhere is flooded from all the rains. You need to check all of the maps for road closures and the like before you drive. I know the interstate exit at North Newton was closed because of flooding, because I read that this morning. They've been closing down a lot of roads and interstates."

"I will, babe," she replied. "Don't worry."

"Two," I said, "you can't be doing any of this 'I'll get there in the middle of the night' shit. I've been going to bed early and getting up early. If you don't get here until midnight, my ass will be asleep. You actually have to leave and get here when you say you're going to leave and get here."

Not to mention that I can't be up late tonight anyway if I'm going to be on campus for a good chunk of the day tomorrow. I won't get up in the morning to go otherwise.

"I'll leave around 2 or 3 and I'll get there at 7 or 8," she said.

"I'm holding you to that," I replied. "I'm serious."

I will, slowly if I have to, eventually break Daisy of that Daisy Standard Time, I'll-get-there-when-I-get-there shit. Very, very few things drive me up the wall more than someone who operates on their own schedule when that's not an option. She's told me before that she doesn't follow the "American standard definition of time." I am an incredibly punctual person -- if I say I'm going to be somewhere or do something at a certain time, I'm there an hour early or it's done by the time I'm supposed to be starting on it. People with no concept of time or no regard for the time of others absolutely infuriate me -- it's one of my biggest pet peeves. Daisy knows this and she's been working on it...with me, at least. Little by little.

Other than tomorrow's trip to campus, we really have no plans for her visit. There aren't any movies playing that I'm particularly interested in aside from The Wolverine, which I've read both good and horrible reviews for, and neither of us have any money to go pleasure shopping or do anything like that. My house is a wreck and I have no real time or energy to clean it before she arrives, and my allergies this morning are killing me anyway. The storms over the past two days have really wrecked my sinuses, lungs, eyes, etc. They've moved off now, and it's just cloudy now, but I'm still not exactly feeling better physically. When my allergies attack, I lose almost all physical energy and become a lump.

Nothing else is going on, really, which is basically the same status quo as I've been dealing with for the rest of the summer beforehand. I will have to go grocery shopping with Daisy while she's here at some point (either tonight or tomorrow) because we need stuff she can eat and I need other supplies and the like, such as cat food, but for now, I suppose I can allow myself to relax in a little relative peace.

Dreams, Part II

Who the fuck is reading my blog in Cadillac, Michigan?

Not that it really matters, because my visitors widget doesn't work properly half the time anyway. One of my friends says it keeps saying he's in Oklahoma when he's actually in Ohio, and it doesn't register anytime anyone (such as Daisy or anyone else) reads my blog on their smartphone. As an aside, I really wish there was a way I could disable mobile access to my blog.

Ahem.

Anyway. My thoughts continue.

Daisy is excited about the wedding, all things considered. She's planning to book the location this week, if it's still available, and after that we can send out all of those "Save the Date" cards, despite the fact that we haven't yet created them. For some reason she's been talking about those cards for a long time, and is excited about sending them out. I don't know why, really -- don't normal invitations do the same thing, basically? Why send out what amounts to two different invitations?

I don't really get it. I think invitations are a waste of time/money anyhow; the people who we want to be there will be there anyhow. Anyone else isn't really worth sending a card to, other than maybe a thinly-veiled "send us money" announcement after the wedding is over.

Daisy has her entire bridal party ready and assembled, consisting of her best friend, her two sisters, and perhaps one or two others (if necessary). I, on the other hand?

Eh.

I'm really not sure I want to even have a best man or any groomsmen. Seriously. I don't want to involve any more people in the wedding than necessary; it's not about them, it's about me and Daisy. Furthermore, well, I really don't have any friends anymore.

No, I'm being serious when I say that. Most of my friends in this area are women, and if they're men they've already graduated (or will graduate before the wedding) and are/will be no longer in the area. Parker is still around, but I've talked to Parker twice since my own graduation -- who knows where he'll be or what he'll be doing after he graduates himself in December. Nobody else out here will still be around either, save for maybe one or two people who I don't know well enough to ask to be in my wedding, nor would they be people I'd necessarily invite anyway.

The longer this process goes on, the smaller, faster, and more intimate I want it to be. Really, to be honest with you, I just want to get it over with. I hate pomp and circumstance and big productions. I hate that I really don't have any say in most of the guest list. I hate that it has to be a "big wedding" that will cost money. 95% of my family is so apathetic to me and to my upcoming marriage that even if I invited them, they wouldn't come. When I can't get more than three people in my entire extended family to even send me a congratulatory card for getting a Master's degree (when most of them only have high school diplomas, if that), it's fucking depressing. I told Daisy long ago that even if I invited most of my close friends and close family members -- even those who already live out here -- I'd be hard-pressed to get anyone but my parents to show up. And even getting my parents to actually come out here to show that they care about something I'm doing or something that's going on in my life will more than likely be an ordeal in itself anyway.

I swear, when I moved to the midwest it would've been easier for the majority of my family and friends back home in West Virginia to give me a card that said something along the lines of Au revoir! We wish you joy, but good luck getting any of us back here to care about anything you do or accomplish ever again, because we've written you off! At least I wouldn't have to set myself up for continual, constant disappointment. For example: well over a month ago (read: over a year in advance) I sent my brother a message asking him if he and his wife/kids would be able to make it to the wedding, and I gave him the date -- which, of course, hasn't changed. He said he didn't know, and that he'd keep me posted. I never heard back from him about it ever again. My own brother. When I told my parents I was getting married, my mother sent me an email a few days later telling me not to schedule the wedding during certain months of the year, because they were going to be traveling during those times.

Can anyone tell me what's wrong with asking something like that?

Uh, we'll schedule our wedding whenever we want to, thank you -- that's our choice. If you come, you come. If you don't, you don't. That's on you.

In short, it's all a mess, and I made a silent vow to stay out of most of it after every suggestion I had about themes, locations, food, decorations, colors, and even my own fashion choices were each systematically shot down when I made any suggestions about any of them. It was brought to my attention very quickly that I have very little, if any, say in anything involving the wedding, and am simply along for the ride. None of that, of course, sits well with me, but it's not like I have any choice in the matter. I want to marry Daisy, right? Well, this is how it is then.

"I told you you could wear your tuxedo t-shirt for the wedding," she said. "I told you, you can wear whatever you want as long as you take it seriously."

"No, I can't," I said in reply. "You shot down my other ideas."

"Your other ideas were costumes," she said. "Be serious."

I had previously requested that I be able to dress as Han Solo, complete with vest, gun belt, and pants with Corellian bloodstripes on them, which she denied me. I then suggested that I be able to dress as a Browncoat, something else which she denied. Both ideas were proposed in complete, stone-cold seriousness.

"I was serious," I said. "Just because you don't think something is serious doesn't mean I don't."

She was sort of taken aback by this, like she thought I would suggest something of this nature in jest. It was almost as if she'd felt like she'd wounded me, or herself, by denying me something that was important to me.

And, again, to make matters worse, I'll probably have about ten people who will actually show up if invited. Probably less. This is compared to basically all of Daisy's friends and extended family. The thought of that really irritates me -- not that Daisy's friends/family love and support her, and want, to see her get married, some of them coming from Canada, even -- no, that's wonderful, and I'm very happy for her that she has people in her life who genuinely love her unconditionally and who care about her. No, it's the fact that most of the friends and family I myself have, and would care enough to invite, will more than likely not care enough in return to even send back the "not attending" RSVP card, because they can't be bothered to do so -- I'm not important. I'm also willing to bet that several of my friends who have told me they will be at the wedding no matter what will come up with an excuse as to why they can't attend it between now and then. Alas, the wedding is -- very much -- a show for Daisy, not me. I'm just there.

Also keep in mind that -- not to sound like too much of a hypocrite here -- I don't even go to weddings I've been invited to. Not that anyone invites me to any, of course. For example, one of my colleagues in the department got married last year, and I found out about it the week after it took place...when everyone else I knew was there and had been invited, including professors. I was not, obviously. Interestingly enough, I would've actually gone to that wedding had I been invited. I didn't even end up meeting my colleague's wife (who is a very sweet, beautiful girl who suits him perfectly) until the graduation party in May. The last wedding I attended was my aforementioned brother's wedding...easily fifteen years ago, if not longer.

The reason I don't go to weddings is quite simple, actually: I don't like seeing other people happy. Call it selfish, call it shortsighted or mean-spirited, but that's the reason. I've been lonely and/or miserable for most of my adult life, and seeing people happy and ready to start a happy life together, in turn, makes me deeply depressed. It's a horrible way to go about life, of course, but that's just the person I am. It's very hard for me to be happy or congratulatory towards someone else when I almost never feel that way myself.

I also don't like not being a guest of honor or the center of attention if I do attend some sort of social gathering or event -- one of the main reasons I wanted to go to the graduation party was that it was a party thrown for us, the graduates. The other reason was to get incredibly fucking drunk, which I also accomplished to a tee. The only reasons I let my mother hold big party-like gatherings when I come home to visit is because I'm the guest of honor at them, and there's free food/beer. Even then I still hate these gatherings to a certain extent because I'm forced to be social, though it's good that I don't have to worry about being sober or presentable around my own friends and family.

Speaking of those sorts of gatherings, my parents still want to do a reception for us back home, I suppose, after the wedding. I've barely talked to my parents about anything regarding the wedding because I really don't have anything to report to them. My mother keeps asking me about the location reservation and I have nothing to tell her, since that's not even done yet. Who knows when it will be, or if we'll even get the place Daisy and I both want.

As far as I know, Daisy is coming down on Tuesday. She'll be here on the days she's off and then will go back home on Thursday night or Friday morning, depending on when she wants to, as she works on Friday night again. While she's here, of course, we'll try to go to campus (if the chair is back from vacation, of course) so I can get some answers, hopefully, on whether or not I'm going to have a job this fall -- and if I'm not, I can turn my keys back in and pick up my diploma before leaving that university for good, never to return. It will either be a good day or a really bad day with a few good qualities.

In other news, I've been in pain for most of the weekend. Aside from the depression, my allergies have been killing me and I've suffered a low-grade headache all weekend long, not to mention body aches as well. My sleeping problems have been somewhat remedied by the weather, though -- it didn't get out of the 60s all day today and it's been pouring rain, which seriously helps with comfortability issues while sleeping. However, I've also found as of late that simple comfortability is really hard to come by for some reason -- it's like I can no longer get comfortable in bed for longer than, say, an hour or two before my arm/hand/leg falls asleep and goes numb or begins to ache. Positions I once found exceedingly comfortable are now painful, and my sleeping positions are limited anyhow because of my large frame. I can't sleep on my back because it hurts my back and neck, I can't sleep on my stomach for the same reasons, and if I sleep on my side my arm falls asleep or the shoulder gets hyperextended, muscles pull, and/or it falls asleep as well. I have to sleep at an angle, almost, between stomach and side, with a pillow under my body to somewhat prop me up at the stomach/chest level. That's my normal position, and even that is, for some reason, becoming painful and/or uncomfortable. I don't know why.

Maybe I'm just getting old and my bones/muscles are worn out. I've pulled muscles while sleeping before, sometimes pulling them so badly that they didn't completely heal for months. With everything else, it wouldn't surprise me if my body has basically told me it's giving up and that I'll never really get a comfortable night of sleep ever again. I certainly abuse my body enough, what with all the crap food, cigarettes, and coffee I put into it.

It's even harder to sleep when Daisy is here, as well -- since when she is, I not only have to compete with the cats for space, but her also. It's not her fault or anything like that, it's just that I don't sleep much when she's here. I never have.

We talked for a while tonight about my previous post here and about the wedding, as evidenced from the snippet of conversation above -- and she did predictably pull the "you're not a failure" card by saying that all of my life's choices, regardless of what they were, led her to me, and she is incredibly happy and thankful for that, etc. Isn't she a reason enough to get up every day? Etc.

"Not everything is about you," I told her, point-blank. "It's not. That post has nothing to do with you; it's about me. I'm glad you don't see me as a failure. It doesn't change the fact that I see myself as one."

That's the truth, really. That's the rub of it.

She found this difficult to understand, difficult to accept. It's almost as if she doesn't think I can have her, and have our relationship, and still be absolutely miserably unhappy in every other aspect of my life. She doesn't understand how the two things can be, and are, separate from one another. Sorry, but they are. I don't seek Daisy's validation or reassurance on anything; I already know I have it, and I've never taken that for granted -- but having it doesn't change anything else external about my life. As much as I love her and as much as she means to me, having Daisy love me doesn't fix all of my problems. When I write about how much my life sucks, I'm obviously not including her in that. As much as I wish it did, love doesn't fix everything.

Last night, after I went to bed, she sent me a message:

Baby, I just want you to know that I realize you are suffering from depression right now, but, I love you and will always love you. I know my love doesn't make everything better, but, I just want you to know it's there.

She's right: I am suffering from depression right now. Anyone possessing an IQ greater than that of a glass of water should be able to see that, and she's also right that her love doesn't magically make everything better. I have to look at the two situations very separately -- I do love Daisy, very very much. I'm going to marry her. I am very happy with our relationship. But, whether anyone can perceive it that way or not, our relationship is absolutely separate and completely different than the rest of my private and professional life. Our relationship can survive damn near anything, but if I can't convince the rest of the world that hey, I deserve attention, hey, I deserve a job based on my education, experience, and qualifications, I see myself as a failure as a person -- not in my relationship as a fiance and future husband. Separate.

Everyone else in my life, the few people who are left in it, are either blissfully unaware of my current situation and mental state, or they wear rose-colored glasses when they talk to me and refuse to discuss it. I can't remember the last time anyone aside from my parents actually asked me how I was doing and really meant it or wanted an honest answer. Everyone else I know is too wrapped up in themselves or their own lives, or if they're not, they simply don't care about mine. I can't really fault anyone for this. I've retreated into my own shell this summer and have become a hermit since graduation; I've stopped telling people happy birthday on Facebook, even. I've stopped talking to anyone anymore because it just feels like a chore and feels like I have to put on a happy mask to interact with them, and as I'm a brutally honest person in all aspects of my life, I don't want to lie and say that everything's fine. Even more frustrating or depressing to me are all of my friends who have graduated in recent months or years and have immediately been able to land a fulfilling, high-paying and stable job doing something they love, and have thus been able to move on with their lives and marriages and children happily.

And here I am, stuck in Kansas, rapidly running out of money despite all attempts to save myself from a fate of bankruptcy, homelessness, and default on student loans, going fucking nowhere. And, really, nobody cares -- nor should I really expect anyone to. Each day that nobody cares, I get a little more angry at the world and a little more angry at society. Each rejection I get for positions I applied for, positions that would save me from being homeless in a few months, I get even more angry. Each time I have to go shopping for commodities like toilet paper or coffee and find that the prices have risen on those items while my bank account has not -- because I'm waiting on someone, anyone, any company, business, or avenue of higher education to recognize my worth -- I get even angrier.

I dread Daisy's visit this week because she's not going to find the man she loves when she arrives; she's going to find a shell of the man she fell in love with, a man who is broken and beaten down and has nothing left. A man who has lost hope that he'll ever make something worthwhile of himself, a man whose dreams are forgotten and dead. I love her, but I don't know what to tell her. I don't have any answers for her, or anyone else for that matter.

Dreams

I've been sleeping poorly lately, as you probably know. Yesterday morning I got up before dawn, even when a thunderstorm had awakened me and kept me awake for about an hour in the middle of the night. By the time yesterday evening had rolled around, I was very fatigued and exhausted -- to the point where I told Daisy, who had just gone to work, that I needed to go pass out and that I wouldn't be able to talk to her in the overnight hours like I normally do.

I went downstairs and went to bed, and again slept somewhat fitfully. When I finally awoke this morning, I had an epiphany. I realized something big. And that realization made me really think about a lot of things.

When I awoke, I had been dreaming. I can't remember the dream or what it was about, but it doesn't matter anyhow. What matters is that as soon as I awoke, I knew I was awake -- awake in my bed, in my house with the cats, and that real life had resumed. And that realization made me cripplingly depressed.

I don't consider myself an unhappy person; yesterday I even had a conversation with Daisy about how being unemployed right now has its good and bad sides -- yes, I can sleep when I want and how much I want to (when my body lets me, anyway), and if I choose to, I can play a video game or spend time writing, I can shower and eat when I want, I can leave the house when I want, and I can have the time to actually do necessary things like cooking, cleaning, mowing the grass, etc. The bad sides, of course, are obvious -- I am slowly running down the money in my bank account, I am frequently restless and bored, I'm lonely, and every rejection letter I receive from employers I've applied to (three more this week alone) makes me feel that much more worthless and unemployable.

The epiphany this morning was that my life is much better when I'm asleep, dreaming or otherwise, than it is when I'm awake.

And I can't tell you how depressing it is to realize that. I never realized before just how truly unhappy I actually am until waking up put it into that perspective.

Waking up meant that I actually had to rejoin the real world, the world that has so progressively, little by little, made me hate it. The world where I am, once again, sorely underappreciated and mostly worthless. The world where, really, the only people who care about me are hundreds, if not thousands of miles away, and every day I awaken in a dark room, alone, with three cats staring at me -- with a beat-up car in the driveway, silence filling the house, and bills and debt looming over my head.

I hate it.

I hate that moment of waking up to realize that no matter how good it felt to be asleep or to be dreaming, that everything crashes back down upon the moment I open my eyes, and nothing has changed. That sleep, those dreams, they were fantasies. They weren't real. Waking up and being forced to go on with your life during the day as if it actually means something? That's reality. And reality sucks. Just plug me back into the Matrix. I don't care if it's not real. It's better than this.

I almost started crying. What the fuck is wrong with you, Brandon? Seriously.

I laid there and, in my just-awakened state, thought about all of the ways my life could've gone differently. By differently I don't necessarily mean "better" or "worse," just differently. It was more of a how the hell did I get to this point, where even being awake is fucking miserable?

I mean, I tried to trace my steps backwards to see if there was any situation in which I would not have ended up in a similar situation as I'm in now by a similar year/age.  Like everyone else, my life has had a series of branching-off points, points at which where I came to a fork in the proverbial road and I had to make a choice between two or more different options of what to do. I don't know if I've had more of these branch points than most people have, but I've certainly had a lot. And, in my thinking back on all of the bigger ones, I seemed to have clearly made the right choices...but if that's true, why is the sum result exactly what I didn't want to have happen?

Picture this -- the sum result of my life's choices was me, on a Saturday morning, laying in bed alone with my cats and staring at the ceiling. I didn't have a reason to get up; no job, no real tasks to take care of for the day, no goals to accomplish. I was totally and completely alone and forgotten in most real senses of the term. My fiancee is a few hundred miles away, my parents are over 1,000 miles away, all of my friends seem to have either forgotten about me for the summer or have graduated as well and have moved on with their lives, including a stipulation of never setting foot in Kansas ever again, and the only thing I can do to even attempt to make money is write a freelance story here and there for the newspaper -- one of which, I might add, was supposed to see print on Thursday, apparently never did, and it is now out-of-date (as all of the events that I wrote about took place on Friday and Saturday). I get rejected from or ignored by every job or teaching position I apply for, I have enough money left to last me maybe three more months if I budget every dollar, I don't know whether or not I'm going to be teaching or doing anything during the fall semester, my car desperately needs an oil change and other routine maintenance work (work which would be incidental and an afterthought if I had an income of any sort, but I don't) and my cats will be out of food in less than a week. I smoke like a chimney and drink gallons of coffee because they're the only two things that make me feel (somewhat) normal, and unless I have to, I tend not to leave the house -- I wake up, I go about my day (an extremely boring exercise in quiet desperation) and I go back to bed.

As I mentioned before, most of my major life choices, had I chosen differently, would not have me in any other situation than the one I'm in right now. I still would've been laying in bed yesterday morning -- perhaps not the bed I was actually in, but more than likely a reasonable facsimile -- wondering where everything went wrong.

And that's the most depressing part of it all, really. It's not just that I'm unemployed, it's that I'm unemployable. It's not just that I think I'm basically worthless, talentless, and useless, but the world thinks that too, and it doesn't matter. If the opposite were true, I would've been able to make something happen by now -- I would've been able to actually make use of myself and my life, something sustainable, something important enough to make me actually want to get up in the morning. It's not for lack of trying. I've ventured into many fields in my life -- laboratory work, fashion design, retail work, repairing computers, writing, teaching, etc. None of them have fulfilled me. None of them have brought me any recognition or stability. I have two degrees -- very expensive degrees -- and the only job offer I can get is a teaching assistant position in some before-and-after-school program for $32 a day? For fuck's sake, why even try anymore?

 

I can't support a wife and kids on that, let alone support myself. I can't pay the bills or pay my student loans back on $32 a day. I can't help finance a wedding or put gas in my car with that. It's easier and more peaceful to just go back to sleep.

I've written here before that I am so sick and tired of having to fight tooth and nail for every little thing in life, that the universe or the fates or what-have-you in charge (as I am a very passionate atheist) won't just give me a fucking break enough to feel comfortable or secure in anything. ANYTHING. I can't start up my car to drive three miles to go shopping without worrying that it won't start when I leave the store to come back home. I can't run my air conditioner unless it's over 100 degrees outside because I can't afford the monstrous electric bill that would create. Even little things, like when I tell people I don't have Netflix, or a smartphone, or wireless internet, or a game system that isn't over ten years old, and they all look at me like I'm insane, all of that adds up and feeds into my hopelessness. Even my poorest grad student friends all have Xbox 360s and smartphones -- why don't you, Brandon?

Because I have bills to pay and too many other things to worry about, to the point where I've never, ever been able to enjoy my adult life, or any real aspect of it. That's why.

I can't even fully enjoy any of my time with Daisy, because in the back of my mind I am always thinking about how much money she's spent in gas to come down here and/or on whatever foods or goodies she brings us when she should be spending it on her bills and other things, and if it's not that, I'm always thinking about how when we got together she thought I would be a really smart, successful person fully able to provide for both of us, happy, and with a secure job and future ahead of us -- and how thus far, and for the foreseeable future, I have and will end up sorely disappointing her.

I mean, it's time for me to really face facts. I'll turn 31 this year (in about six months, actually). Eight years ago, upon graduating from WVU, I thought I had a bright future ahead of me. I didn't. I had to work three jobs at once to even be able to save enough money to move out of my parents' house. Three years ago, I thought I had a bright future ahead of me -- I had a long-term girlfriend, I was working at a newspaper as a reporter, and I was about to enter graduate school in order to start teaching, earn a higher degree, and finally start the rest of my life. I didn't. That girlfriend left me, and I worked my ass off for three years, putting myself into debt and spending many sleepless nights grading papers, writing papers of my own, reading countless books that I absolutely hated and writing wholly mediocre poetry for what? Nothing. For a piece of paper that I haven't even picked up yet from the registrar's office. Now, two months after graduating and earning that degree, with nothing to show for it, I'm right back where I was eight years ago -- though now I am considerably less naive or hopeful about the future. The facts that I must face, really, boils down to one simple statement: I am a failure.

Now, mind you, I can already picture people like Daisy reading this and telling me things like "you're not a failure!" But, really, I am. I don't care who says otherwise -- other people's opinions don't matter in this particular statement -- it's about me and how I judge myself. And I judge myself as a failure. I'm really sick of people trying to point out my good points and things I've done and trying to tell me that I matter, that I've done good things, meaningful things with my life, things that have had long-lasting effects. While I have, and I already know this, it doesn't change anything. Those things won't magically land me a high-paying job so that I can get myself out of debt, buy a car that I don't have to worry about breaking down, or provide me with enough liquid assets to where I'd never have to worry about paying a utility bill ever again. I can't call up some college or university and say "give me tenure, because I'm a good person and I've made a difference in some people's lives occasionally" because that isn't what matters. I can't go to DC Comics and say "hey, let me write Batman because I have two degrees and am a nerd," because that isn't how it works.

You may find those to be ludicrous examples, so I'll offer another:

 

The above is an example of a cover letter I've written for almost all of the teaching positions I've applied for this summer. This is the barebones version, of course; I tailor it to the positions I'm applying for and usually personalize each one quite a bit based on the position at hand, but read it. It lists my education and experience. It lists that I helped to design a course, and I named said course. It is formal and reasonable without being too needy (or, for that matter, too formal). And, just like the letter says, I provide all of those documents (if possible) for each position I have applied for  -- a teaching statement, list of references, transcript, and my vita, which is seven pages long and has been written via various guides and instructions (such as those on Monster.com) to the letter as to what to include in it and what not to. 

With all of this formality, including those credentials, requisite references, teaching statements and transcripts, I have applied for over 100 teaching positions this summer. About ten or fifteen of them have sent me rejection letters or emails, and the rest of them I have never heard back from. Ever. And the postings for said teaching jobs were quickly removed. 

I have also sent heavily-edited and changed versions of this letter and other required materials in applications for non-teaching positions as well, including office work (which I would hate) and administrative work both inside and outside of academia. Of those positions I applied for -- probably twenty or thirty over the course of the past month or so -- I have received no responses whatsoever.

So no, I am not simply unemployed. I am apparently unemployable. And at this point I really don't care what others might think -- I have deemed myself a failure. If my accomplishments academically as well as in experience and knowledge cannot even get someone to notice me enough to send me a rejection letter or email 90% of the time when I apply for a position, I have clearly failed at life. Don't tell me that's just how these sorts of jobs work or they probably have thousands of applicants or anything like that -- those things are of no consequence because, if I were good enough, they wouldn't matter. This is no longer just shooting at the moon, or trying to follow pipe dreams -- this is me actually trying to make something of myself, to better my station in the world, to end this long cycle of unhappiness and daily misery -- and it's clearly not good enough. Clearly I've been bypassed and overlooked, or deemed not good enough by a large number of universities, community colleges, private colleges, and other jobs. This is the best I've got, folks. This is me really, really trying.  I wouldn't be so discouraged if anything had come of any of those applications and/or inquiries -- even an interview or a phone call, even if it didn't end up getting me the job, would be better than being silently and immediately dismissed offhand, because at least then I'd know that I had been considered for something based on my skills and experience, even if I hadn't been chosen.

And no, the $32 a day teaching assistant job doesn't count.

As an aside, I felt smug satisfaction about a week ago when I saw that exact job posting -- which had previously been taken down after its ending date -- reappear on the job board, because even really, really desperate people aren't going to work for $32 a day, four hours a day for three days a week (or whatever it was). I really hope nobody is stupid enough to work those hours under those conditions for that amount of money. A full day's work wouldn't even be enough to fill the gas tank of my car once, to put that into perspective. $32 is less than a carton of my cigarettes cost, and I smoke the cheapest kind I can get. $32 isn't enough to get two bags of cat food and a jug of cat litter for my furry little children ($12 per bag, $10 for the litter). So, yes, I hope they remain understaffed, desperate and clawing for help until they actually decide to pay a teacher a living wage.

I'm pretty sure I'm only this bitter because it's the only offer I've had all summer out of all of those applications. 

So, anyway, I've realized I'm a failure. But that doesn't mean I'm going to stop trying, nor does it mean that if I find something that I won't still think I'm a failure. Even if I am so dismally depressed and jaded that I don't know why I should keep trying to find work, I don't really have a choice in the matter if I want to be able to, y'know, survive. And, even if I do eventually find some sort of passable, liveable job, it's not going to quell any fears and/or hopelessness I have about the future -- no, that's going to take a hell of a lot of comfortability and "fuck you" money, and several years of it at least. I don't know if I'll ever be able to be fully comfortable in any work I do because I know that if it ends or something happens to it, I'll be right back where I am right now. 

Again, I hate this. I hate my life and what it has become. It's a series of days and nights where nothing gets accomplished because no time, effort, or good deeds are ever rewarded, where experience and knowledge is no longer respected or, apparently, desired, and where I get up every morning despite having no reason to do so and continue to be lonely, listless, bored, and hopeless. It's been said many times by many people much more intelligent than myself that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. In this case, the "different result" would be "any result." Does that make me insane?  Do I even know why I'm doing it anymore, why I'm even trying anymore, aside from simple survival?

I can't answer these questions, at least not fully. 

What's worse, and more troubling, is that I think I've lost any and all ability to actually be happy, or even satisfied, with anything. When I've never been handed anything, when I've had to scrape by and fight for anything and everything I've ever gotten, it's made me bitter and angry. Very bitter and angry, compounded by many years, to the point where I don't think I'll ever be able to get over it. I don't think I'll ever be truly happy or satisfied with anything I have or anything I've earned because I will have turned myself into a slave or soulless cog in some horrible capitalistic machine to earn it. I won't be able to enjoy it, because I worked too hard to barely scrape by to even live. And I don't want to be that person. I really don't. At the same time, I don't take things for granted and I am grateful for what I have, but that doesn't equate to being happy or satisfied. I do know I have it better than a lot of people on this planet do, and I'm not trying to pull some "poor me" routine, not at all. But, as you could probably tell, I am constantly angered, frustrated and hopeless because it is a slim-to-none shot that I'll actually get to be comfortable or happy in this life, or be able to fully follow my dreams -- which, at this point, I couldn't even tell you what they are anymore. 

But what does any of this matter anyway? These are just words on a web page. Most of you reading this are probably just going to roll your eyes and say "oh, he's whining again" and close the tab. Fine. If you're going to be one of those people, you're free to do so. Close the tab. Leave the page -- actually, leave my life. And don't come back. I already have enough negative people in my world, and if you want to be another one, it'll save me the trouble of excommunicating you sometime in the future anyway. I don't write here for you. I don't write here for anyone but myself. 

Applications, Part III

"Are you going to call and follow up with the advising position at [college]?"

This is a question Daisy has asked me no less than three times in the past 24 hours. It is also a position that, mind you, she has applied for as well. My response, all three times, has been the same:

"...honey, it's been like three days since I applied," followed by "I will if they don't contact me in a few days."

Daisy, though she is able to keep her cool about a great many things (seriously; how that woman remains so calm in situations where I'd be freaking the hell out is beyond me), is beginning to show a bit of her own nervousness and panic about money and survival. Yesterday she found out what was wrong with her car -- the brakes needed to be completely replaced -- and she had to pay a large chunk of money to get that fixed. This put even more of a wrench in the plans of saving up for the wedding and being able to reserve a place to do it. Both of us have been dealing with many setbacks in that department, lately. It seems that if it's not one thing which requires money, it's another. And, of course, my hands are rather tied since I'm currently unemployed. Or mostly unemployed, I should say, since I did just write a story for the paper (it appears tomorrow).

While I was sleeping last night, however, she did send me links to three different jobs she'd found in her searching, jobs in the Omaha area which she thought would be good for me. One of them was a content writer job of some sort, and two were teaching positions at universities (why neither of them have popped up in my own daily job searches and emails is beyond me). One of the teaching positions was remedial adult education (read: GED) and ESL, neither of which I can do, but I applied for the other teaching job and the writing job. I doubt I'll get either one of them, but who knows. I won't get anything if I don't keep trying.

The teaching position is at another university that operates on the quarter system; apparently the first day on the job would be October 1st, from what I read in the application. That's exceedingly good; it means that if I get it, I have over two months to get everything packed, get out of here, and get a new place to live in Omaha. That would be wonderful.

As for the other position, it didn't have a date on it except that the posting would close on the 29th, which is Monday. Okay, fair enough.

Daisy is, if she can afford the gas to do so, planning to come down after her next set of days off, which would be Tuesday. Unless I get a job in Omaha soon, it will be the last time we get to spend any real time together for a while; if I do begin adjuncting for the university this fall, the first day of classes is August 19, and I'd have to be on/off campus a few days in advance, more than likely, to set up my office (whether I'd be in the same one or a different one) again, doing things like taking in my printer/laptop/books once more. If I'm not adjuncting, I don't have to worry about that, but I will have to worry about finding some other employment pretty quickly afterwards, obviously.

Again last night, some bad storms rolled through the area. Lots of heavy rain, a bit of wind, and a ton of thunder/lightning bad enough to reset my modem and router twice up here, but no hail or any damage. West and south of me got it pretty rough, though; there are close to 4,000 people without power in Wichita and Park City (just north of Wichita), and there was apparently some bad hail/wind damage to the west of me around the Hutchinson area. I just got the rain here and the power flickering a few times, but nothing else. By midnight it had moved through, and I went to Walmart to pick up a few things I needed. It's only supposed to reach 90 today, and by Friday the high is only supposed to be 81. We're getting the cool-down with rain that I'd so hoped for earlier this month, thankfully. And, I'll add, since the rain started and the temperatures stopped being 100-110 every day, I have neither seen nor killed any spiders in the house. At all. Not a one, not even new ones in the traps (though I haven't checked the traps in a few days).

The traps are working well, as an aside -- before I left for Omaha a few weeks ago, I put out three new ones in places where I've actually seen spiders in the house (around the furnace, in the cat room, in the dark corners of the bedroom behind the bed and dressers, etc) and they've been filling up with all sorts of leggy things for the better part of the month. The one under the furnace is filled with recluse, crickets, and other beetle-things, for example, and since I put the new traps out, the spider population in the house has virtually disappeared. Again, I'm not sure if it's the weather or the traps, but I'm not complaining either way. Let 'em all get trapped and die; it lets me actually get some peaceful sleep without worrying if I'm going to get bitten in bed (which, of course, to the best of my knowledge has never happened in the four years I've lived here).

It really is four years now that I've lived in this house; my now-ex and I signed the lease on July 22, 2009, and moved in the following week. Two years later when we ended our relationship, she signed sole ownership of the lease over to me when she moved out, and I've been living here alone since. It doesn't seem like two years just off-the-cuff, but it has been. And, over those past two years, I've lived a mostly peaceful, quiet life.

Two years from now, where will I be? Who knows. Probably living in yet another house in another state with my wife, Daisy, getting up in the middle of the night to take care of an infant (as I told her I'd do that when we have kids, no matter where we are or what job I'm doing). Whatever works, you know? It's always been hard for me to think about or plan for the future when 95% of my life is, and has always been, lived day-to-day, month-to-month.

A year ago at this time I had just started my relationship with Daisy in earnest, and had just finished teaching my summer sessions. Two years ago, I was just ending my relationship with my ex. Three years ago, I was getting ready to work my last few weeks at the paper before I would start graduate school. Four years ago, I was moving into this house.

Crazy. 

I've been meaning to go over to the Dollar Tree and to the discount grocery store several days in a row now, but most of the time by the time they open in the morning, I'm either asleep or too tired to bother to get dressed, go downstairs to the car, drive over to the place, go shopping, bring the shit home, take it upstairs, and put it away. If I'm awake when the sun comes up, it's usually because I'm suffering from summer insomnia, which leaves me awake but basically too physically tired to go do anything. I was tired when I went over to Walmart in the overnight hours, and only actually went because I basically had to if I wanted the cats to be able to eat and shit comfortably over the course of the next few weeks. As such, I only bought the bare necessities and came home, figuring that anything else I can get more cheaply at the discount place or at the Dollar Tree...whenever I actually go over to either place, of course. I usually go to the Dollar Tree only when Daisy is with me these days, and if I have to I can wait until she comes to town next week, if she gets to.

I told her that for the sake of comfort and companionship, I do want her to come with me to campus when I go, so that we can take her car and have air conditioning and better fuel economy (I also told her I would fill her gas tank as well). To a certain extent, even though it shouldn't, that campus feels cold and alien to me now. Even though that feeling will undoubtedly pass if I end up teaching there again this fall, right now it's just strange. If she can't come down, yes, I'll go it alone, but it'll feel weird. Oh well. Gotta see what happens, I suppose.

In addition to my halfhearted Walmart trip, I paid the rent in the overnight hours as well, chopping another good chunk of money off my bank account balance. At least it's done. When I came back into the house from sticking it in the mail, the cats were staring at me funny.

"It's okay," I said, "I only went outside to put the rent in the mail, ensuring that you three little shits have somewhere to live for the next month worry-free."

Like any of them can understand me, of course.

Still, I probably speak more to the cats than I do to Daisy, as I am their God-figure, the food-giver. Right now, behind me on the floor, Maggie is rolling around on the scratch pad I keep in my room.

 

Yes, the same cat who decided to do this when I was on Skype yesterday morning with Daisy. I had to rub her chin so that she wouldn't move and would keep staring into the camera while I took the screenshot. she purred furiously and lovingly the entire time, the little shit.

Of course, I do have other things I need to do around the house -- as mentioned previously, I need to mow the grass again as it's become a goddamned jungle, but that's not exactly something I can do when the sky wants to open up and rain half an inch every 18 hours or so. The yard is basically grass-coated mud at this point and needs a full day or so to dry out without clogging up my mower. Sigh. It looks like it could start pouring again any second, too, though it's not really supposed to do anything today.

Why am I still up? Eh. Again, summer insomnia. Even when I have slept over the past several days, it's not been for long intervals of time. I either sleep for twelve hours or more, or less than six. There's really no middle ground anymore. I can't do a whole lot about it, and because of this I've frequently been awake for more than 24 hours straight many times over the course of the past week or so. Being tired but not tired enough to sleep is torturous. It feels like you're in purgatory. I try to completely mentally and physically exhaust myself to be able to sleep, and when I do, sometimes I can still barely rest. Don't ask me why; I don't have the answers. I'm not any more stressed or anxious than I usually am -- in fact, I'm somewhat relieved right now since I've applied for several more positions this week, have the rent/bills paid and have the majority of my shopping done, and it's (for once) not balls-sweatingly hot. My allergies aren't keeping me awake and neither are my cats or neighbors; the neighbors have been really quiet as of late, and the cats sleep with me. I've even been drinking less coffee than usual. I don't know what it is. 

On that note, I'm going to actually try to get some sleep now. I don't know if I'll succeed, but at least I'm going to try.

Applications, Part II

Less than 36 hours after applying for the teaching position in Omaha, at the college associated with the hospital, I received a very kind email reply that the position had been filled, and not by me. 

Okay. Well, it was worth a shot at least, right? I don't know what to think of it other than that. My guess is that it was one of those positions that, as Daisy's dad told me about, was posted as a formality but they already had someone lined up to fill it. Really, though, I couldn't tell you.

Yesterday morning, I called and interviewed a guy for one of the story assignments I'd been given for the paper, and then wrote up the story in a little over an hour before sending it off to my editor. The deadline was tomorrow, so I got it in there a day early. He replied while I was asleep this afternoon and said that they're planning to run it on Thursday, and that if I get anything else before then (such as photos, which my interview subject offered but wouldn't be able to send along until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest) to send it along as well. I've still not gotten a reply yet on my second story, about a movie being filmed in the area. My interview subject for that one hasn't replied to my interview questions yet, though I did tell him there was no major hurry on it.

At the very least, I'll get $30 for the story I just completed. That's not bad. That's a trip over to the Dollar Tree or close to a full tank of gas in my car.

I'm at the point of my month where there's a bit of a lull before other bills and the like start coming due. I have to write out the rent check this week (probably Wednesday or Thursday) and stick it in the mail, but that's about it. My finances have been at a standstill for the past five or six days or so since I've not gone anywhere, had any bills left to pay, or had anything to purchase in a shopping trip. I've been eating out of the freezer and pantry, the cats have food and litter enough for the time being, and no other bills have yet come in. It feels good to be able to have a few days at a time where I'm not spending money on something, though I do rather dread my electric bill when it arrives in the mail sometime this week -- even though I was in Omaha for a week with everything turned off and shut down, I have been forced in the past two weeks or so to run the air conditioner for a few hours almost every day. It's July in Kansas -- not much can be done about that. I'm also thankful, at least, that it's not been 110 degrees every day this summer, and that we're actually getting a normal amount of rain for once. There were some pretty strong rainstorms that swept through yesterday morning for a few hours, and more coming now in the overnight/early morning hours. It's supposed to rain or storm, or there are strong chances of either one, every day for the next ten days.

Then again, you know how little I actually trust the weather forecast.

There has been a fair amount of other stuff going on as well. My grandmother, by all accounts, isn't really recovering well from her recent fall. Or, at least, that's the way it sounds. Apparently, though she's supposed to be moving around to help her shoulder heal (something that I don't really fully understand, but whatever), she isn't doing so, and hasn't even done as much as gone to the bathroom in a few days according to what my mother tells me. She has fluid in her lungs, and has a machine that's supposed to help her do breathing exercises so that she doesn't get pneumonia again (she's had it several times over the past few years) but apparently refuses to do those exercises as well. It all sounds like -- and I hate to say this or even think it -- that she almost just wants to give up and say "fuck it," or something to that extent. Of course, there's nothing I can really say or do with me out here in Kansas, so my hands are tied.

Daisy hasn't had it much better, either. A few days ago, her father had a mild stroke. He's okay now (or relatively okay, at least) after spending a day or two in the hospital, but he's being monitored closely because there's something like a 90% chance he'll have another stroke in the next three weeks. The doctors have some sort of monitor on him that he has to wear for a month, and he's now been put on a cholesterol-restricted diet and blood thinner meds. By all accounts, though, he's in good spirits -- he went back to work as per the usual yesterday, and says he's just happy and lucky to be alive. All of us are still worried about him, though, at least passively -- if not actively.

I didn't write about any of this before because I wanted to make sure it was okay to actually write about. I don't like being all gossipy on my blog, nor do I ever want to give out any more information than I'm allowed to (or should). As you folks know, Daisy and I both lead very private lives where not everyone is privy to everything going on in them -- she sometimes much more so than myself, and vice versa.

I wanted Daisy to come down this week on her days off -- we haven't seen each other in two weeks or so -- but her car is in the shop right now getting checked out and getting an oil change. It's been making a whiny, squealy noise similar to my own car. With my car, when it squeals it's because it's old, and when it's growly it's because of the old belts and a wheel bearing going out, yet it still runs and performs admirably, and old cars are going to rumble, growl, whine, and make a lot of noise. Daisy's car is only four years old and is in mostly immaculate condition, so she's getting the noise checked out. I told her it was more than likely a belt or wheel bearing that's making it sound funny, just like my car, but because it's still relatively new, she should probably get that checked out soon -- especially when every few weeks she'll make a 10-hour round trip to visit me. She took her mother's car to work tonight, and whatever her car needs done to it, if anything, it will be done tomorrow.

I still haven't heard anything back from the department about whether or not I'll be teaching this fall; the chair, as far as I know, is still on vacation. I won't be able to meet up with him, obviously, until he returns, and when that happens I'll have to go to campus during the day (yuck) at some point to pick up my diploma. That's another reason I wanted Daisy to come down soon -- so that she could come with me and I wouldn't have to run all of these errands alone in the heat, sweating my balls off and driving a car with no air conditioning. I'm guessing that I'll be taking care of that stuff next week. It's almost better that I do, as I don't know when the summer sessions end at the university, but they're almost always done by the end of July in order to have a bit of a break before the fall semester starts in mid-to-late August. This means that I'll actually be able to find a place to park on campus, since the parking lot I used to park in for three years has now been razed and cleared and a new dorm is (needlessly) being built there.  If I am hired on as an adjunct for the fall, I'll need to figure out a new place to park, and, regardless of when I teach, I'll have to get there early enough (again) to be able to get a spot. My car's a boat, you know -- it's not like I can fit easily into small parking lots.

As for the foreseeable future, there's not a lot else going on. I'm looking up administrative and advising positions around Omaha, as well as basically anything else in that area that I could do, and so is Daisy. In the meantime, I'm working on newspaper stories, writing here, and occasionally sleeping or eating.

Applications

Tonight I applied for two more positions -- both of them, shockingly enough, in Omaha.

I know, right?

There has been a dearth of actual positions I'm qualified for and/or could do in the Omaha area, save for positions involving the words "sales," "insurance," or "retail," of course.

One is yet another English instructor position, this time for a small college there that appears to operate on the quarter system, and one that apparently has close associations with one of the hospitals in the city (for some strange reason, anyway). Because of this, that particular application took for-fucking-ever to fill out, and it was one of the excruciatingly-detailed ones they give you when they need to do extensive background checks and credit checks. You probably know the kind I'm talking about -- they ask for your last seven years of addresses, your last seven years of employment, your driver's license number, etc etc. I had to do all of that shit for another place as well...the place that offered me four hours a day at $8 per hour.

I guess if you're applying for teaching work in an institution that's closely connected with the medical system in the city, they want to make sure your record is spotlessly clean and you're who you say you are. Aside from a speeding ticket a year and a half ago on the way home from work (a ticket that was complete bullshit anyway), I am one of those people who has never had a blemish on the public record -- and my credit score is in the high 600s, last I had it checked.

Anyway, that one took forever. It also required me to cut-and-paste a cover letter, resume, and any other documents I wanted them to have, instead of being able to just upload the actual PDF files. I really dislike applications like that...especially after you've already filled all of the fields of where you've worked and what you've done and where you went to school, what degrees you have, etc. What's worse is that they all said a statement akin to "if you write 'see resume' in any of these fields in lieu of filling them out, it will affect your chances of employment," etc. Look, employment sites, especially higher education employment sites...do one or the other, seriously. It's a waste of my time as well as yours to have to see/do everything twice, especially in the exact same order.

"It's a test of your ability to follow directions," Daisy told me. "And it also hopefully discourages or weeds out the people who aren't serious or who don't have the patience to fill everything out."

Okay, I get that to a certain extent, yes. It's just a huge pain in the ass. And coming from a guy who gets the occasional hemorrhoid, I know what a pain in the ass is both figuratively and literally.

I don't know what the pay scale is for the teaching position. For something so intricate and detailed to apply for, and for a position that's somehow connected to the local hospital, I'd expect it to be fairly high. The main reason I applied for it, however, is because it is a teaching position in Omaha, and even though it would be extremely hectic and crazied to do so, it is at least very feasible that if I were hired for it, I could start teaching there in less than a month. It would take much longer than that to get everything moved out of this house and into a new place in Omaha, of course, but as I mentioned before, that can be done in chunks on weekends and days off, even if it costs me a lot of sleep, time, and money to do so. Also, if this school operates on the quarter system (which it may) instead of the semester system, it might not even start until September, giving me a bit more time.

In all of my applications to numerous higher learning institutions, I never considered that some of them, especially the smaller ones, may operate on the quarter system. I've been so frenzied with actually finding places to apply to that the thought never even crossed my mind. That's how frazzled I've been, folks.

I do know the pay scale, however, for the other position in Omaha I applied for, and I do know that the second position is an institution of higher learning that does operate on the quarter system.

I also know that the job is a union job and that the starting pay is $38k a year. Starting pay. It's an academic advisor position at one of the community colleges that, ironically, Daisy's mother first told me about when I was visiting after graduation. They don't have any teaching positions open that I can do, but they do have some pretty lucrative work in administration, such as this job. I wrote a brilliant cover letter and filled out the (again, very long) application, sending off my professional references, transcript, and CV, and crossed my fingers. Daisy applied for the same job also, as she has a lot of experience that would allow her to do it pretty well (dealing with people, accounts, and communication skills) and I have the experience dealing with students and privacy and academia. If either one of us at least gets a call for an interview for a position that cushy, I'll consider it a small victory at the very least. It would be a huge raise in pay for Daisy, and an amazing job for someone like me to land fresh out of the gate of graduate school. And, again, quarter system, which means I'd more than likely have a little more time to get everything packed up and moved out of here if I were to get it -- especially since it's not a teaching position.

I've got a little more hope tonight, at least, which is good compared to before. Am I still stressed? Yes, of course. But I'm also a little relieved as well. Just a little. I don't know; applying for more positions seems to make me feel like I'm not completely wasting all of my time waiting on balls in the air to come back down and land me a gig. All I can do is keep trying for whatever I find, though, whether or not any of it pans out. Even with as much of a pessimist or fatalist as I can be on some fronts, I have to be at least a bit optimistic on others -- otherwise there's not really a whole lot to live for, is there?

Daisy, at least, is proud of me and has been incredibly supportive and understanding all summer long about my hunt for work -- more so, I think, than anyone else ever has been for anything involving me and my life's goals. Daisy is my number one fan. She believes I can do anything. She has been in my situation before and understands all of my thoughts and feelings all too well, much better than I can probably articulate in a simple blog post. It is that love and support I get from her on a daily basis (a Daisy basis?) that keeps me going, that keeps me getting up every day and working to do whatever I can to better myself and better my station in the world, even when I'm feeling particularly strung out and frazzled. As depressed or hopeless as I get at times, I still know in the back of my mind that all of this is temporary, that obviously I'm not going to be unemployed or frustrated/angered at the world forever, and that less than a year from now, good times or bad, I will have a wonderful wife to share my life with. Occasionally I forget about some of these good things when I am so overwhelmed with defeats, setbacks, and other frustrations stressing me out.

I have decided to make it a point to casually ask Daisy "Marry me?" on a regular basis. Not to actually propose over and over, but to remind her that I love her, very very much, and that even when we're both strung out and sleep-deprived on a frequent basis (she much more so than me, usually) I still want, and will always want, her to be my wife. Yeah, we have our differences. No, we don't always completely agree on things. Yeah, we do occasionally have little spats about stupid shit. So does everyone else. But we love each other. And I am very, very lucky to have her. I will never take that, or her, for granted.

It is 5:41 AM on a Sunday morning, and it's still pouring rain. I have just showered, rinsing all of the sweat and ick off me in order to sleep more peacefully. My plans for the day are simple -- I shall go to bed soon, get up when I get up, and take care of my tasks in an orderly fashion. I need to take the garbage down to the road, I need to clean the cat room, run the dishwasher, and keep working on a long letter to my ailing grandmother. I also need to see if one of my interview subjects has answered my questions so that I can put together and finish one of my news stories to send it away to my editor, and I'll need to eat something eventually too. I need to talk to Daisy before she goes to work, as that isn't a simple want but a true need these days when we see each other so little. Finally, before I go to bed once more, I need to keep looking for and applying for, if possible, more jobs in the Omaha area.

Metering out my tasks this way makes everything seem so simple, as if there's a time and a place for each little action, each thought, each movement. There's a certain kind of peace in that, honestly. It's a relative peace, a peace I don't feel very often, but I'll take it.

I'll take it.

Further Updates

It has been a tumultuous week.

I have begun working on two stories for the newspaper; hopefully, and with a little luck, I can finish them by Monday, send them off to my editor, and create an invoice for them. Neither one should take me incredibly long to write once I get the information for them from my interview subjects; when I was working at the paper as a real reporter, I would sometimes write three or four stories a day. Even when I was freelancing before I would tackle stories one after another until I had exhausted the list of them. I must've written thirty or more freelance stories in the span of two or three months before I became a full reporter and webmaster at the paper. Pages upon pages of invoices, let me tell you.

The problem is the stories themselves; I've been in contact with one of the interview subjects via email for the first story, and he seems like a cool guy. Once he answers the few questions I asked him, I can put together and write that story almost effortlessly. For the second story, I've been shuffled around to three different people now to get information from, none of whom seem to know what the hell I'm asking, and I have to call one of them from my own phone on Monday to even see if I can get the information out of him that I need.

This doesn't really make me feel like I've accomplished much; really, it feels more like a hollow victory more than anything else. I'm doing something, but it's not a lot, and a drop in the bucket when it comes to finances.

I've not been eating much and I've been trying to drink more water due to the fact that earlier this week, for some reason, by the time I went to bed at night (or in the early morning hours) my feet and ankles were swelling up. Not painfully or anything like that, but it was definitely noticeable. I've not really changed my diet recently, nor have I injured myself or gone outside my daily, normal routine, and I feel perfectly fine and normal -- yet for some reason my feet started swelling from my ankles down. They swelled slowly, and when I went to bed at night they went down, because upon awakening, they're perfectly normal again. Daisy mentioned that it might be because I consume a lot of sodium, which is true -- so I've been trying to eat less and flush what's in my system already out with extra water. She also thought that it might be because of the heat, and I reminded her that it's barely been above 90 for the past week here, and it's certainly not been as hot as it was, say, earlier this summer.

Also, don't Google "feet swelling" if you're a hypochondriac or at all able to be swayed by the worst of the myriad reasons your feet might swell, because fuck, I made that mistake, and would rather not believe that I'm somehow dying slowly because I have swollen feet.

Anyway, eating less and drinking more water seems to help; all I've eaten today is a bowl of Cracklin' Oat Bran and some coffee, and tonight (so far) they've not swollen up to any noticeable level. So who knows. I think some of it may be attributed to my new computer chair, which was the spare I had to switch out of the spare room when my old one broke -- it sits higher and at a different angle than my old one, and therefore puts pressure on my legs and ass in different places than before. I am not yet used to it.

I had to go out to Walmart -- as much as I didn't want to -- last night, and spend yet more money on things for around the house. The cats go through litter so very quickly that I can barely keep up, and unless I wanted to eat nothing but cereal, coffee, ramen, and homemade waffles with peanut butter on them for the next week, I needed to get some actual groceries. As it's not been entirely sweltering hot recently, I actually have the desire to cook some food as well, since if I try to do so when it's 100 degrees outside, the kitchen gets so overheated that I almost pass out. I ended up getting some hot dogs/buns and some chicken nuggets (yay, more sodium!) because both were on sale and will provide me with something different to eat for once.

It's also rapidly getting to that point where I need to make a "big" shopping trip again sometime soon -- and when I say "big" I mean "over $300 or so" to get everything I need around the house at once. Unfortunately, it's not like I have the money to do this, so I have to part-and-parcel everything I purchase until I can find reliable, sustainable employment again -- the search for which, if you read my last post, isn't exactly going well at this juncture. I've thought about going over to the discount grocery store and purchasing absolutely everything I might need or use in one big trip, spending about $100 or so, but I'm usually not awake (or awake enough) to make that trip during their normal business hours of 8AM to 7PM. I say "awake enough" because, if I'm awake early during the day anymore, it's usually for a reason. I got up early yesterday morning, for example, to work on those newspaper stories, search for more work, and get an update from my mother about my grandmother's current condition (I'll get to that in a bit). When I was done with that -- or as done as I could be, really -- I went back to bed until around 8PM, as I was tired from getting up and being mobile during the morning hours. If I land a reliable job sometime soon -- even if it's adjuncting for the fall -- I'll be able to go out and get all the groceries and items I need without worry. But, for right now? Budget, budget, budget. I still have to pay next month's rent, and I still have about $250 or so to pay off on my credit cards next month. It appears that ordering pizza last week will be about the only "indulgence" I'll be able to afford for a while.

I'm starting to get to my "nervousness point," as in, the point where the money I have will seem to go much more quickly than it did before when, really, it's going at the same rate -- there's just much less of it. This is part of why I desperately want to know ASAP if I'm going to be teaching this fall in any capacity, because if not, I should probably be filling out a Walmart application at their computer terminal the next time I'm over there. I don't want to do this, of course, but I have to find something to stop the money drain, and soon -- at this point, foreseeing the bills I have coming over the course of the next several weeks, as well as expenses such as food, I won't have enough money left to be able to move out of this house and into a new place after, say, the end of August or so, even if I were able to get hired on somewhere closer to here (such as Omaha). It takes a lot of money to rent a moving truck and to pay first/last month's rent plus deposit on a new place, any place. Taking into account all of my expenses, I've got about another six weeks before -- if that scenario were to occur -- I would no longer be able to afford it on my own.

If that scenario doesn't occur, and I'm stuck not teaching this fall and simply writing a few articles a week for the paper, if that many (read: the worst-case scenario), then I will completely exhaust my savings by late October, or mid-November at the latest. And I mean completely exhaust, to where nothing at all will be left in my bank account.

Now do you see why I'm nervous or constantly stressed and in low-level "panic mode" all the time? It's fucking terrifying.

On some level, I can't believe I'm in this situation again. I went off to get another degree, got it, and it seems in many ways that I'm right back where I started in late 2009, early 2010: technically unemployed, with many financial responsibilities that drain me of all the money I do have, and with nothing sustainable on the horizon. It's one of the primary reasons I went to graduate school in the first place, as I've written here before -- a guaranteed three-year job with the ability to get an advanced degree that may save me from the hell of being otherwise completely unemployable.

Apparently that second degree, and the three years of work I put into getting it, didn't really raise my overall worth to employers by that much. If anything, it upgraded me from "completely unemployable" to "only mostly unemployable." Fuck, really?

And now, of course, I'm saddled with a bunch of student loan debt that the clock is ticking on. Debt that if I hadn't taken on, I wouldn't be paying bills right now.

To make matters worse (at least marginally so), I received this email yesterday:

Dear Brandon,

This is to acknowledge receipt of your application for the position English Faculty (Reg FT 10 month, with benefits) Job Slot # 2006, 2272, 2468 at the Community College of Allegheny County. Your application has been carefully reviewed with those of the other applicants, but has not been chosen for further consideration at this time.

We sincerely thank you for the time and effort you invested as an applicant and for your interest in the Community College of Allegheny County. We encourage you to visit our employment website at www.ccacjobs.com often to explore other opportunities as they become available. The website is updated every Friday with the latest openings. We wish you the best in your employment endeavors.

Sincerely,

Human Resources
Community College of Allegheny County

Allegheny County, if you're unaware, is Pittsburgh.

I'd really like to know what other applicants were better than me for a community college English teaching position. Especially since people with doctorates don't generally apply for employment at community colleges, and I doubt that many more applicants than me, if any, have three years of experience teaching three different courses under their belt, one of them being a course they basically designed (which is stated quite clearly in my CV).

I will, however, give them the props for actually emailing me to tell me I haven't been selected for any of the positions they had. Note the job numbers above in that email; I applied for not one, but all three of the English faculty positions they had open. Took me a good 90 minutes or so to do that.

You know how much I would have loved living in Pittsburgh? A lot.

After reading my previous post here, Daisy was upset and thought that somehow, it insinuated that I was suicidal, since I referenced the MFA graduate suicide rate and made several references to not wanting to work a job where I would come home every night and want to eat a bullet or drink myself to death.

Well, yeah, I don't think anyone wants a job where they'd come home every night wanting to fucking die, duh. But I'm not suicidal (also duh). I have too much shit to take care of in my life and too much life ahead of me. Even if I'm depressed and feeling stressed, strung-out, and fairly hopeless at this point (which, yes, I am) it doesn't mean I want to off myself. It means I'm angry and frustrated at the world, the economy, my lot in life, and the now-broken promises of "you can always keep teaching!" I was told before I graduated with my Master's degree.

I'm angry and frustrated, not suicidal. Big difference. I don't want to end up stuck in a position that would make me incredibly depressed and actually suicidal. Bigger difference. I have a wedding and a family in my future -- those two things are all I've ever wanted out of life. But, obviously, I want to be able to survive and support myself as well. That's a rather big thing, you know.

I mentioned my grandmother's condition before because, earlier this week back home, she fell and broke her shoulder and wrist. My grandmother is frail, 85 years old, and has terrible osteoporosis and heart conditions. Obviously, she was rushed the hospital where they kept her overnight because of the possibility that she might need surgery on the shoulder (and they wanted to make sure she was okay, of course), and I got bits and pieces of details from my cousin and from my mother in the meantime. The doctors there set her wrist and put it in a cast, something that according to my mother was gruesome to watch, since she was there, and the doctors decided that she didn't need surgery on her shoulder but would have to wear a sling until it healed up again. They sent her home, where several of my aunts and uncles have been taking care of her day and night.

Quite obviously, this alone has caused me a lot more stress this past week than usual. I've mentioned here in the blog before that every time I fly home to visit friends and family, I wonder if it's the last chance I'll get to see my grandmother alive. As I've not been able to fly home this summer when I really wanted to, I was even more stressed by the entire situation. It gives me a bit of solace that she's at home and recuperating now, but it doesn't truly ease my worries.

It also doesn't help that, all of a sudden, many other friends and family are all having problems at the same time. Like, everything was fine, and then bam, a ton of people close to me start having health issues, personal issues, people or pets dying, money problems, etc. All at once. Just as many other friends who I was once close with have seemed to drop off the face of the earth now that it's summer. Some of them I'll probably never hear from again.

All of this stuff -- all of it -- makes me want to crawl into a proverbial hole until it all resolves itself. Is July an unlucky month, or something? Who knows.

Rae gave me the advice that I should look for jobs in childcare. Like, in daycare centers and the like, because places like that are always thrilled when men apply (apparently, most daycare workers are women). Also, she said, "some of them pay pretty well."

"Wouldn't these places consider it creepy that a large, bearded burly man was applying to work with children?" I asked.

Because, honestly, that's a legitimate question. As a child, I was in daycare for a long time. The facility was owned and operated exclusively by women. In the facility across town (owned by the same company; we used to do pool days with both groups of kids combined in the summer), there was one guy working for them, and I'm pretty sure he was gay.

"A lot of these kids need father figures," Rae said. "Any man will do. Maybe lose the beard and start baby talking."

While I'd love the money, and it would probably be a relatively easy job, I don't really think the childcare field is for me. Especially as most children tend to drive me up the wall very quickly. When I say that, people look at me with a surprised expression because it is no secret that I want children, and they ask why I want them if they drive me crazy.

My answer is always the same: "Because I can't discipline other people's children, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let my own run around screaming like idiots and be little terrors without rules or sense."

As an aside, this has been a huge point of contention in conversations with Daisy in the past; what it boils down to, essentially, is that she really doesn't believe in disciplining children or raising your voice to them, ever; she thinks that you can sit down and have a reasonable explanatory discussion with a toddler about why they're tearing ass around the house screaming and being a little asshole. You can't; they're toddlers, they don't have the capacity for reason. But I told her that was fine, we'd do it her way when we have kids, and I will silently watch and wait to see how quickly she snaps. Daisy doesn't have a temper; she's one of the most balanced, cool, and level-headed people I've ever met, but watching how she will eventually take care of our children will be a supremely fascinating psychological study.

As a further aside, Daisy is wonderful with children; both of her sisters have several children already (one has two; the other has three, with a fourth on the way). They all adore their Aunt Daisy, and she's great with them. I've seen it in person. So, maybe I'm wrong.

But getting back to the point, I really don't think a job in childcare is for me. I know my temperament; I'd snap too quickly. I will, however, suggest such jobs to Daisy in the future, so that she may possibly get out of the horrible job she has now. Part of why I don't think I'd do well in childcare is the same reason I really don't think I'd do well in teaching at anywhere but the university level -- I have to be able to interact with people who actually have some sort of logical skills, and people who will actually follow directions when I issue them. People who will learn something, who aren't there just because they have to be. Etc.

It's finally cool and rainy tonight; right now, it's 73 and pouring rain outside with a good breeze. I've been trying to cool down the house somewhat by opening all the windows and running the fans, and it's working -- but very slowly. It was stifling hot upstairs this afternoon when I woke up and came up here, and there's only so much I can do to keep it cool. Again, unless it's below freezing outside, good luck on ever getting the temperature in this house to stay below 80 or so. And, additionally, when it's super-cold outside, good luck keeping the temperature in it above 65. Old house, poorly insulated, inefficient (and insufficient) heating/cooling/ventilation system. Go figure.

I have a long week ahead of me next week; at some point I have to go to campus and pick up my diploma, and see if I can meet up with the chair of the department (if he's back from vacation). If he's not, I'll wait until he is. I'll also have to get at least one of the stories to my editor by Tuesday morning if at all possible, and see what the status of the other one is or if they have more they want me to do. And, of course, I must continue looking for/applying for other work, pay my rent, do the normal upkeep of the house (including mowing the grass again, as it'll grow like crazy after tonight's rain) and try to keep cool and hydrated so that my feet don't swell up again -- they've been fine for the past two days or so.

As for the rest of my night, though, I'm going to make something to eat and probably watch a movie or something downstairs where it's cool and I don't have to worry about being too hot all the time.