Saturday, August 27, 2011

Jiminy Cricket Meets B.B. King

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fk2prKnYnI&ob=av2e

Just to start off one should go to this B.B. King classic that tells it all tonight.  Maybe it was just a matter of time although friends and family are all scratching their heads.  A bad relationship that has been going on and on and on while they all watched me struggle and fall in love time and time again.  They all watched because they were in love too so who could blame me?  Such a bright, shiny package and always looking so good, looking so good.  Maybe it was just the energy or the quiet but I reached that point tonight and made a double-fisted salute as I walked out, vowing to never return.  Yes, the thrill is definitely gone. 

I have applied to Whole Foods Market 90 times since last July.  They never offered me anything outside of the deli and yet I qualify as a former team member(read big deal) though I am not a buxom young girl of 20.  I have excellent references and I have been tenacious about getting back in the door professing my love for all that is bright and beautiful.  Well, the thrill is gone baby. 

In fact, I might just try to get to 100 for fun, but I stopped dreaming of you long ago.  Tonight, it was quiet in my neighborhood Whole Foods and there was a new muscle bound dude in produce who hasn't got a clue what luck he has although if I just had a set of testicles, maybe they would consider me.  Could be fun for Halloween.

I am angry and rightfully so but I won't let that overpriced grocery store stop me from knowing what I know about myself.  I am an exemplary employee with the ability to focus, stay present with customers until their needs are met, represent my employer with friendliness, honesty and strength, show up for work not just on time but early every shift,(I left my previous employer with 4 1/2 months of sick time on the books) maintain a positive, infectiously humble attitude for an honest day's work and still be my true, loving, commitment to my fellow humans with grace, veracity and fun loving spirit self. I am a gem and yes, I was born under the sign of Gemini to prove it.

I stepped outside to empty the garbage and it is already dark here at 8:30 PM and another sign of the coming fall season.  The crickets are playing their pulsing symphony for those of us who long to hear it.  It is the song of my childhood where everything was wrong in our house and it was a dark childhood indeed.  It is the symphony that kept me hoping for a miracle that my mother would sober up.  The crickets pulsed and never stopped and I slept in my little twin bed listening with both windows open all night.

There was hope in their composition and I came to know that my spirit was clear and true no matter whether Mom was drunk tomorrow or not.  Today, the same is true for me as an older adult and that sound of Jiminy Cricket and his friends buoys my sagging spirit and my quest for an employer, in this messed up and broken down world, who will see the gem in me, passed over but still very much glistening in the light.

Don't give up on yourself fellow unemployed brethren, don't give up and pass it on!


Friday, August 26, 2011

Not A Laughing Matter

I haven't felt like writing much this week and my writing seems very flat and lifeless to me.  Regardless of the bent of our economy and our lives, one has to survive.  It is just that sometimes, whatever you do, nothing works.  First they tell you "it isn't what you do but who you know."  Then they tell you you have to be able to stand out, market yourself, become a dancing carrot too if need be.  The rules keep changing and it just made me feel defeated this week.  I paid more attention to that feeling this week than I should have and I did my best to stay afloat. What about you?

Today, I applied for a job at the State Of California and a department store.  The department store job may start as early as 4 AM and I would do it just to move from this spot of earth that is as dull as a kitchen knife.  Who knows.  Actually, a friend whose friend had a job opening up told me, when I asked her why her friend had not replied to my resume, "We can't know some things."  That is such a helpful thing to tell me. Thank you so much for your help.

Replying to a resume was once a given and considered good business practices.  However, it seems with our advanced devices that seem to rule our world, we have become incredibly rude.  I guess there are some things we can't know. 

Tonight, we are going to see some comedy and I can sure use some laughing out loud right about now.  Kathleen Madigan is brilliant, funny, bawdy, truthful and honest about our not-so-funny state of affairs.  I am looking forward to getting out of my head because the inside of my brain is not a laughing matter.

                                                    http://www.kathleenmadigan.com/

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Ghost Of The Past And The AIDS Crisis

Once again, I wrote the perfect blog and the site glitched.  It reminds me of looking for work.  Too close to it actually.

Today I had lunch with a friend at the Santa Rosa Rural Cemetery.  Once downtrodden, weedy and beleaguered with broken, vandalized headstones, the graveyard was taken under the wing of a stalwart group of volunteers in 1994.  The scary place where my two childhood friends and I rode our bikes, vulnerable to the ghosts we imagined still haunted, was transformed into a sweet place in the middle of a historic area of Santa Rosa,  my hometown.

My friend and I had lunch on an ancient bench that is part of a cemetery plot.  This place is now revered and people walk their dogs or take a noontime stroll.  In September, a group does Lamplight tours in the dark with period costumes and vignettes about Sonoma County history and the people and families buried there.  It may sound cheesy and it is incredibly fun with some great actors.  Today, sitting under an old oak, it was quiet and strangely beguiling. 

We spoke of our lives, his promotion, my continued search for work and shared our thoughts and feelings.  My friend reminded me of a time in the 1980s when so many of our friends died of AIDS.  We both watched people from our youth come down with a virus that then killed them very quickly.  We were young people losing our community.  Today, many of the men that I know live with HIV and they have had to worry about living rather than dying.

I came home thinking about how our lives have changed since HIV came to stay.  I thought about death and what it means to live with purpose and with compassion.  I still worry about all of that and try each week to find a job that means something somewhere somehow.  For me, today, I know that I am fortunate to be healthy and agile and full of energy.  However, I would be elated to bid this time in life adieu and consider unemployment just a ghost of the past.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Swimming In The Twilight Zone

My Wednesday swim, a day of ritual where I pretend that I am not unemployed but rather just having a day off, felt strange.  Time seemed to stand still and the clock seemed to move slowly.  I swam laps and time seemed to stand still.  It felt odd as it never had before.  I felt trapped inside a Twilight Zone episode. 

The day moved forward and I pulled weeds as a volunteer at a wonderful place where I would love to work.  Residents and staff passed by as I sweated and spent time in that wonderful place.  Sometimes when I volunteer, it is only later that I realize that I feel sadness that I cannot seem to become an employed part of a workplace as sweet as that campus.  However, when I am there, I work as if I am an employee, paid or not, I give it my all.  I know that effort shows. 

In the past year, with hundreds of applications on file and sent into the resume oblivion, I have come to feel trapped and unseen. That is why I stay active and of service, to stave off that panic. In fact, as I wrote the perfect blog, this site glitched and I lost it.  Hmmmmmm.  Rod Serling may be narrating my life someone in a different dimension. 

It feels odd to say goodbye to the wishes and yearnings once held, then build them again, then let go, then take it back.  I feel as though I am trapped in an episode, somewhere on an abandoned asteroid.  Did you see that one?  Could be my life.  I could be trapped in....The Twilight Zone.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Lara Croft And Penny Candy

People have been known to say where is Superman when we need him?  Okay, old people of my particular generation.  Those of us who came home from school and turned on the T.V. to watch George Reeves as Superman.  We all need heroes though for me, they are an eclectic group.  Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Harry Potter, Meryl Streep, Golda Meir and Madeleine Albright are just a few of mine.  I need to know that humans with ethics, fictional or real, exist in the world to uphold values of truth and justice because the world often needs their help getting that right.

I had some adventures today, looked for work and had coffee with a friend who has been unemployed for a year as well.  For each of us, an entire year has gone by without something to call our own. Each of us is bright, compassionate, present and real.  My friend is someone whom I deeply admire and cannot imagine the world passing her by on its way to chose another.  She sees me in the same light and it feels like the sun is shining on me in a special corner of the kitchen with the cat purring in my lap.  And yet we each remain unemployed.  Not unemployable.

I am old enough to remember penny candy though many of the people that I see working in the grocery stores where I have applied think that is a YouTube video.  I am also old enough to make a difference, serve others and remain constant like my friend.  However it appears we need our own kind of hero to make our point.  We need Lara Croft.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Raising The Bar Or Simply Cutting Off The Exits

Good news came along with the trough on the other side.  Ups and downs.  The job that I was hoping to gain has been posted in the local paper and they claim to want someone with much more experience.  That was one of the potential answers.  I volunteer at this blessed location and I have grown to love it there. It is a place where a person can be themselves and still be appreciated as part of the greater good.  Not many places could assert such a thing.  Most of my professional life has been spent conforming and that has taken so much energy. 

I was very disappointed to find out that there will be an avalanche of applicants for this job as this employer decided to post it to the entire community.  Employers, as we the unemployed know all too well, select potential candidates who are overqualified because they have so much to chose from and they do. The pool of qualified candidates is larger than most people with jobs can imagine and it is very, very frustrating to try to set yourself apart and be noticed. You have to be a dancing carrot too at least.

I volunteer for this employer and dutifully so.  I have some experience and I have excellent references.  However, that was not enough to be considered before they posted the position and they get to do that.  However, I wonder if they are raising the bar in order to gain access to a specific group of applicants or simply cutting off the exits.


Sunday, August 21, 2011

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall

I am one of those unemployed people who have a hard time accepting just sitting with it.  I need to move and I do that daily.  I have three volunteer situations weekly and one of them had an appreciation afternoon today.  It was held in a lovely country garden estate replete with sculptures, secret cabanas, fountains and whimsy.  They fed us great food from a caterer who is also a volunteer.  Pretty slick.  I saw a friend who moved to San Francisco and that was a wonderful surprise.  He is doing really, really well.  He has done lots of hard work to get there.

And then the speeches and the volunteer awards were given.  That is where I may have veered off and felt myself sag a bit.  Many volunteers have been part of this organization for double digit years and they give so much.  It is a blessed thing to see.  Especially given the HIV diagnosed clients that are served from those efforts.  For me, I am there to be of service and yet somehow the wonderful west county location still out of reach for my partner and I, country quiet and country dirt, and the accolades seemed to come to be equated, in my selfish mind, with success. I can make any bright event into a dark one if I begin to judge myself against the tapestry of what others have or do or get. 

And then, I came across a blog by who has made the decision to not look in a mirror for a year as a test to gaining acceptance of herself.  I have a similar need and yet it is the mirror I hold up to other's lives that causes me to reflect something that is not true about myself.  I do need to see myself yet not through the reflection of others.  Not that easy actually given our capitalistic culture.

A job equals success or maybe a type of job or just not being unemployed.  For me, this continues to be my struggle.  Where am I going and how am I gonna get there?  Certainly not by viewing myself in someone's mirror.  My wish is to celebrate the success of others in a loving way that holds the mirror for them to see themselves clearly.  Loving kindness for me is the key to my own happiness even when they have something that I yearn to feel, have and do.

Take a look at the blog that I mentioned: http://www.ayearwithoutmirrors.com/