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maybe i do
Today was both delightful and inexplicably depressing, although obviously that is untrue as I am blogging it in the hope of explicating its depressingness.
I bitch about staffing agencies being variously useless and vampiric but the person I went to see this morning might be the best interviewer I've ever had. Professional recruiters tend to remind me a little of professional photographers - their job is, in part, to bring out the best in people, and that gives them a veneer of smarm that's hard to get through and which becomes a cause for frustration after the billionth time. This one was totally straight-up, realistic and full of good advice about what I should & shouldn't do academically and what I can and can't do professionally, and she swore the recession was still ongoing, and said she knew how to get people with my 'profile' hired. I took up all of twenty minutes of her time but it felt like more got done, more got covered, than at all the other interviews I've ever had.
I took that grain of hope home with me, because nothing is as hopeful or inspiring as seeing competent people working, then I studied for a while and made lunch and went out to interview #2. Which lasted for an hour and a half, primarily because the dude really liked the sound of his own voice. We established that I understood what the job involved and had done vaguely related things in the past, and I eventually managed to ask the most important question - is this gig temporary or permanent? - and didn't get a straightforward response. I gather June is their super-heavy-workload month and they need another pair of hands but have no idea how long for. He said he'd call later to talk about 'money and stuff'.
What really gets me is, I would have totally gone for this as recently as a year ago. I was applying for similar things. It's local. I don't know what it pays but it'll be a damn sight more than I was earning in GA. It's flexible enough to study around. It's even in an industry that interests me. And my brain is whining in pain at the thought of doing unchallenging & unstimulating pink-collar monkeywork that has nothing to do with the career I want and will allow me to learn roughly nothing of relevance to said career, and which will dump me in a social trap between two self-important local businessmen. I mean, suppose I pass the fucking SEE - it would not, as far as I know, confer upon me superpowers but being one of America's ~35000 admitted tax practitioners would make me highly fucking unsuitable for your pink-collar generica of form-filling and client contact for $12 an hour. idk I should not be this terrified of wasting my time; god knows it's what I've been good at over the years.
A few best-case scenarios; this dude does hire me and is okay with me hightailing it at the end of June, ish, if anyone else wants me by then. Or, one of the agencies pulls something more meaningful out of their ass (the Useless People emailed today saying they might have come up with something) and I can politely hightail it now before anything ever happens. Or, I am being overentitled and what I actually need is a meaningless place to work while I keep on studying things for another couple of years. idk idk idk, i just want each choice to be another step up and this is distinctly not looking like one of them.
Later, we went to Boston for no real reason; I wanted to wander and see how the streets fit together, and we passed the shrine of running shoes and cuddled for a while by the hare-and-tortoise statues. And I tried to recognise something, feel something, as we walked, and couldn't. I haven't known Boston long enough to be friends with it but I have known it more than long enough to know I'm not in love with it; there's no romance, just the odd flash of attraction on Memorial Drive; I like them taller, darker, not so fussy about age but I like them to look as smart and bad as they can be. I like the ones I can't afford to be with. I was feeling impermanent again, but I've never had cause to feel otherwise. I don't know where I'm going; I know where I am.
I bitch about staffing agencies being variously useless and vampiric but the person I went to see this morning might be the best interviewer I've ever had. Professional recruiters tend to remind me a little of professional photographers - their job is, in part, to bring out the best in people, and that gives them a veneer of smarm that's hard to get through and which becomes a cause for frustration after the billionth time. This one was totally straight-up, realistic and full of good advice about what I should & shouldn't do academically and what I can and can't do professionally, and she swore the recession was still ongoing, and said she knew how to get people with my 'profile' hired. I took up all of twenty minutes of her time but it felt like more got done, more got covered, than at all the other interviews I've ever had.
I took that grain of hope home with me, because nothing is as hopeful or inspiring as seeing competent people working, then I studied for a while and made lunch and went out to interview #2. Which lasted for an hour and a half, primarily because the dude really liked the sound of his own voice. We established that I understood what the job involved and had done vaguely related things in the past, and I eventually managed to ask the most important question - is this gig temporary or permanent? - and didn't get a straightforward response. I gather June is their super-heavy-workload month and they need another pair of hands but have no idea how long for. He said he'd call later to talk about 'money and stuff'.
What really gets me is, I would have totally gone for this as recently as a year ago. I was applying for similar things. It's local. I don't know what it pays but it'll be a damn sight more than I was earning in GA. It's flexible enough to study around. It's even in an industry that interests me. And my brain is whining in pain at the thought of doing unchallenging & unstimulating pink-collar monkeywork that has nothing to do with the career I want and will allow me to learn roughly nothing of relevance to said career, and which will dump me in a social trap between two self-important local businessmen. I mean, suppose I pass the fucking SEE - it would not, as far as I know, confer upon me superpowers but being one of America's ~35000 admitted tax practitioners would make me highly fucking unsuitable for your pink-collar generica of form-filling and client contact for $12 an hour. idk I should not be this terrified of wasting my time; god knows it's what I've been good at over the years.
A few best-case scenarios; this dude does hire me and is okay with me hightailing it at the end of June, ish, if anyone else wants me by then. Or, one of the agencies pulls something more meaningful out of their ass (the Useless People emailed today saying they might have come up with something) and I can politely hightail it now before anything ever happens. Or, I am being overentitled and what I actually need is a meaningless place to work while I keep on studying things for another couple of years. idk idk idk, i just want each choice to be another step up and this is distinctly not looking like one of them.
Later, we went to Boston for no real reason; I wanted to wander and see how the streets fit together, and we passed the shrine of running shoes and cuddled for a while by the hare-and-tortoise statues. And I tried to recognise something, feel something, as we walked, and couldn't. I haven't known Boston long enough to be friends with it but I have known it more than long enough to know I'm not in love with it; there's no romance, just the odd flash of attraction on Memorial Drive; I like them taller, darker, not so fussy about age but I like them to look as smart and bad as they can be. I like the ones I can't afford to be with. I was feeling impermanent again, but I've never had cause to feel otherwise. I don't know where I'm going; I know where I am.