Looking in the full-length mirror this morning at my golden yellow wrinkled dress I wondered if it looked like I didn’t take the time to iron it, or if it could pass for looking like I took great care to get ready for my (12th? 25th? 8th?) interview and it was the car ride over that caused the multiple creases. By the time I decided I should iron it, it was too late. I had to get my stuff and get going. This is what I do: think and think and think, and then decide when there’s no time left to make a choice that really matters. I wonder if this somehow comes out in my interviews: “takes too long to decide and then it’s too late.”
I don’t know if it was really my 12th, 25th or 8th interview, as I’ve lost count. I started interviewing for jobs back in March. It is now October.
It’s been 6 months and I’m still tediously churning out cover letters and resumes and sending them to anything I slightly qualify for, less hipster barista or bartender jobs, which I don’t actually qualify for. I’m not hip, don’t have a single tattoo (that anyone knows of anyway), and I know nothing about being a barista or alcohol except that my dear friend Maureen liked tequila, not the vodka I bought in her honor to drink the night many of us gathered to laugh and cry about her passing. Even my kids knew I had it wrong, despite both being clear liquids in a glass bottle that they should know nothing about at their young ages.
We made the choice to move 2500 miles across the country, almost not far away enough from our previous life, yet too far away from our friends and family, except closer to other family and friends we like better. Just kidding. We don’t have favorites.
The actual physical move alongside the emotional move has been a long and hard journey, but one we don’t yet regret, even while watching our savings slowly dwindle day to day, week to week, and now month to month.
I have made it to 2nd and 3rd round interviews but have yet to get an actual offer. It’s been both frustrating and humbling in ways I did not know I needed. It’s been a test of faith of sorts. The sucking dry our bank accounts and self-esteem aside, it’s been as good as it has been bad. I have to keep reminding myself that it is in the tension between the frustration and humility, the good and the bad that something else will appear, and hopefully it will be a kick-ass job.
Why did we move with no job prospects and so far away from everything we equally loved and hated?
In the simplest of words, we wanted to.
In the more complex of words, we wanted to.
In the substance of those same words and those of poet Eli Siegel:
substance
is what remains
when everything you can think of is gone
The long list of reasons we kept spouting off when people asked us why the heck, hell or “f” we were doing this were not the real whys. They were what we felt we needed to say for it to make sense to everyone else. They were the substance-less whys. We couldn’t seem to remember that the only people who have to understand is ourselves and when the deep-rooted need for others’ understanding fades away, what remains is the substance of our souls that is buried deep under all the b.s. and is longing to rise to the surface of our everyday lived lives.
I have another interview next week. I’m not sure if I’ll wear the same dress or a different one or if I’ll iron anything or nothing. Or, if I’ll spend too much time looking in the mirror wondering what I should do.
Why do I keep putting myself through this? Not because I want to, but because I need to if we want to feed ourselves and our kids long-term. We get to have both the wants and the needs and the only ones who have to understand any of it is ourselves. We wanted to move, and I still need a job. Despite what others may think, it all makes perfect sense to us.
