130 applicants

I'm online searching out a job. Almost any job. I've been underemployed (on and off Unemployment, plus I took a pay cut at my job) for over a year now. My Unemployment benefits have just dropped by a significant amount due to the underemployment of this past year. Crazy isn't it? I do what I'm supposed to do and it all just keeps sliding downhill.

So I'm looking around to see what possible work is out there. I'm not sure what I want to do, but I know what I'm not willing to do (call centers? Been there, not yet willing to go back). I see an ad for "Stall Cleaner/Ranch hand", and I think, "huh, I wonder what that entails." Not that I'm really interested in getting that job, but I figure I'd look it over anyway. The person who posted it one day ago has added an update: he's received over 130 applications for that position and is overwhelmed.

130 applications. To shovel shit. We are indeed living in strange times.

Las Drogas!

I am coming to terms with my chemical imbalance. I had a therapist a few years back who suggested that my depression was partly hereditary, and that has mostly been proven true. Lately that has been a bit of a comfort to me. Since I no longer have health insurance, I can't afford to see a doctor to get any meds, so I am stuck dealing with my feelings au natural. For a long time I've assumed that it was just me. If only I could change my point of view, be a bit more positive, just get over myself, I would feel better.

But now I think that's bunk. Yes, I could help myself by not being as negative as I've been lately, but there's only so far that will take me. To get the rest of the way (or closer at least) to healthy, I need chemical assistance. And although that feels a bit like Loserville, it also takes a huge burden off my shoulders. It's not completely up to me. I can't fix it all by myself. I don't have to be perfect.

So I will do what I can. Eat healthy, exercise, smile more, think good thoughts, banish the negative. And when Obama finally gets this health insurance thing worked out, I'll get back on meds.

Time to look forward

Rob Brezney says to we Taurus' this week:
"The old saying "You can't have your cake and eat it too" suggests that maybe it's not a good idea to go out on dates with a variety of lovers while you're engaged to be married. Nostradamus scholar John Hogue has taken the spirit of this idea and created a variation that I think applies to you right now, Taurus. "You can't have your past and your future, too," he says. In other words, you cannot fully embrace the exciting and daunting possibilities that loom ahead of you if you also insist on immersing yourself in the pleasures of the past. You can either have the old ways or the new ways, but not both."

So, future, what have you in store for me?

Ok, enough.

I'm over this "economic downturn" shit. I've been semi-employed since December of last year and it's really making a mess of my financial life. Tomorrow I have to talk to my boss to see if he can cough up any more money for me. Not only am I semi-employed, I also lost all my benefits and took a 15% pay cut.

Ouch.

We've survived so far, and I'm sure all this will be a (crappy) memory someday in the future, but at the moment it feels like forever. Scraping together $2 of coins so I can buy a cup of coffee and use the free wifi at the cafe. Tap dancing to pay all the bills I can, on time if possible, late if not. Better than not at all, I guess. Although some of my creditors are falling into that category too.

I can't really find enough anger to care that the bigwigs at the financial companies we've bailed out are now back to their same old salaries and up to their same old shenanigans. I grew up in the 80's - I expect all those folks to be corrupt and rich.

But like the bumper sticker says: "where's my bailout"?

Montana

We just got back from a long motorcycle trip to Montana for a cousin's wedding. It was gorgeous up there. We were right next door to the Glacier National Park, so we got to spend some time in the park. The drive up, which we did in one day, was good. I was less exhausted than I thought I would be. Of course, after getting off the motorcycles and having some food and a beer, exhaustion sank in.

Driving back to Portland was another matter.

Right around Spokane we noticed an increase in the wind. Turns out we were in a high wind warning zone, although we didn't hear that officially until much later. We were buffeted around from all sides. It was a repeat of West Texas for me. My shoulders took the brunt of it, although it seemed like all my muscles were firing for most of that portion of the trip.

Crossing the Columbia at the bridge at Umatilla was scary. The wind was free to flow over us as well as under us, so yet another dimension was added to controlling our motorcycles. I felt the bike pushed left and right as I crossed. All I could think was, "get me the hell off this bridge"!

Once we were down in the gorge the winds continued, but at least they were mostly coming from one direction. We stopped to rest at one point and even the seagulls were staying out of the air. Some were even sitting on the ground to avoid the wind.

It was a great time, and I'd do it again. But not until my muscles recover!

The Right Frame of Mind

Sometimes I think, "oh, I should just grab my camera and go out and take photos." Or, "I should just sit down and write some of this stuff that is in my head that I think is pretty readable". But the reality is that it isn't that simple.

I remember when I was in art school, being "in the zone" at times. So concentrated on whatever I was producing that my consciousness actually felt like it was in another section of my brain. One that was reserved for this type of task, one that wasn't used in normal everyday tasks.

I've been feeling that section of my brain again lately. Like I need to revisit it - it's been too long. I've let other parts of my life take up too much space in my brain. Finances, job drama, house drama, avoiding it all by watching too much tv. It's so easy to sink into the mire of these things.

Today

I woke up late today. Nine am. Odd dreams of traveling and losing access on my iPhone. Didn't get out of the house until 2pm. Have a thumping headache that has been hanging around all week.

i've been reading Anthony Bourdain and Bill Bryson. thinking about traveling again. i wonder if i could do what they do. travel and write. more interesting than building cabinets.

something's gotta change. this on again/off again work shit is annoying. not that my finances were all that hot before, but it's messing with them more than i want to think about. it amazes me how many people i know who are not only able to pay all their bills, but to travel as well. what are they doing that i'm not? am i just in a shitty industry that can't support me? did i waste precious finances while i was in mexico? did i give in when temptation asked for further financing? is the world just messing with me (and a few million others at the same time)?

but all is not lost. i feel the creative juices simmering. something will come of all this.....

AC erases my brain.

I'm here in a cafe, taking advantage of their AC on this second 100 degree day in Portland. I had thought I'd get online and write a bunch. I've had things swimming around in my head for a while that need to be written up. But those things have dried up in the cool air here.

Maybe I should step outside for an hour or so. See if the heat melts the thoughts back into my head.

Monday Buzz

I'm floating thru the day today, half asleep, half not totally here. Buoyed by the endorphins of four "harder, faster, deeper" races this weekend, and a healthy dose of Mazzy Star influenced music in my headphones. A lay day, the sun has just decided to wake up, but seems as hazy as me.

There is someone sitting nearby that apparently doesn't believe in deodorant. The scent of his body odor is somehow comforting. Like the scent of a hard day's work, or the aftermath of sex. The world is oddly unscented, falsely scented. A strong scent brings me back to the texture of the world. Sweat, cigars, cigarette smoke, diesel fumes, freshly cut grass, the sizzle of dust rising off a hot sidewalk when a summer storm comes through.

Home after a good dragonboat practice. Now a movie with The Man, then sleep.

Oh it's so unfair!

So my previous co-worker is hogging some work that could be mine. He was the manager (of all three of us - like his was a necessary position!), but since the economy tanked, he was demoted and I was laid off. So now there are two employees at the company - one is more full time, said co-worker is on a "come in when we need you" status. And he has been a baby about it all. Like somehow his suffering is more important, more desperate than anyone else's. Get over it dude!

He finally gave in and started job hunting, and lo and behold - found a job! As a car salesman, of all things. I wish him well. And I wish he would go on to the other job already! He gave two weeks notice - which is commendable - but his new job wanted him to start sooner. He has been trying to work it out so that he gets as much work as he can without cutting into his unemployment check. That means he is sticking it out at my former company in order to eek out the last few remaining hours before he moves on to working on commission. Which, I also understand to a point.

But there are those of us - meaning me! - waiting in the wings for him to move the fuck on so I can move up on the "on call" list and actually make some fucking money!

People like him will always give people a bad name.

I am fragile.

This isn't usually a thing I say about myself. But today, this past week, this past month, and who knows how far into the future, I am fragile.

I have a tendency to over react in some scenarios. When I am under stress, when I feel abandoned, when I am tired, when I feel powerless. All of these apply these days.

I feel like giving in. Like saying, "I give up. I can't do this anymore. Someone else is going to have to step in and take over." I want to collapse and let the chips fall where they may. Someone else can clean up. I'll just lay here where I fell. I just don't have the energy to do it alone. I'm not even sure if I have the energy to do it with help. Let someone else do it. Leave me alone. Someone else take responsibility.

But this too shall pass. I've been here before. I'm sure I'll be here again at some point. Just kinda sucks to be in the middle of it and not on the far side.

My Life circa 1995 - 2009

So... MindSpring. What can I say about that place? Everyone who worked there knows how wonderful it was, and how painful it could be. We worked hard and played hard to make up for it. I met too many fabulous people there to name here. You know who you are.

I started out as employee number 44 in the Tech Support department. That was painful for me - and quite possibly painful for some of the callers on the other end of the phone line - but I learned a ton and eventually got out of that department. I landed a gig maintaining the company website. Up 'til that point it was the job of some of the engineers to update the page whenever something of importance came up. I put my art school learnings to it and made it pretty.

I was put into Mike Strutton's department with Ty Allen, Keat Seong Chan, and Elizabeth Strickler. We had a great first year, and taught MindSpring to put a limit on the year-end bonuses (we had a 90% bonus that first year). Eventually it was decided that a Web Design department would be beneficial to the company. I told them that I was the best choice to head it up, and they agreed.

I ran that department on my own for a while. I did a passable job, I guess. Then Susan Nicholson was brought in to make the department more than a side project. We got bigger, the goals got bigger, the budget didn't. I eventually left the department, and the company after some slimey political manuvering left me in a position where I had to either swallow my pride or get out. I wasn't in the pride-swallowing mood, and I was quite burnt out after almost 5 years in the Internet business, so I opted to leave.

In the meantime, the Olympics had come and gone from Atlanta. People from all over the country, and probably the world, also came to Atlanta. Property values had skyrocketed. I had been fortunate enough to have bought the house I had rented for five years. And I had bought it at about half the going rate of the other houses in the neighborhood. So I saw my cash cow, and a way out of Atlanta. But what the hell did I want to do now?

I ended up getting a job at Cox Enterprises, along with Galen, and stuck that out for a few months. But my heart wasn't in the Internet business anymore.

I sold my house, rented an apartment, and worked at Highland Hardware for a few months. I was at work on 9/11/01. Someone pulled a tv out and we stood on the sales floor watching in disbelief. Then my boss walked by and said "we still have work to do". I knew it was time to be moving on.

I found a furniture making school in Maine that had a 3 month program. I got accepted, used some of the money from my house sale, and went up to The Center for Furniture Craftsmanship. Of course, the 3 months were November, December and January. Brr. But we had a good, mild winter. And, again, I met some great people. One guy was from Atlanta - and he lived just down the street from me! I made some cool stuff, learned a lot about wood and how to work it. And at the end of the three months I went back to Atlanta and stayed with a friend. I still didn't know where I wanted to go, so Atlanta seemed the most logical place.

Pretty soon I decided to move across the country (again) to Portland, Oregon. My plan was to move out here and see if I could find work as a furniture maker, or an assistant, or maybe a cafe again if I needed to. As it turned out, I got a job as a cabinetmaker. The first company I worked at sucked. Crazy boss, asshole manager, moving deadlines - you know the type. But I stuck it out for close to two years. I put my time in on the ground level, with the goal of finding a better quality place to work.

And I did. The day I quit my first job I didn't have another job lined up. I had been interviewing, but no one had made an offer yet. I went home that day, took a shower, and walked down to the corner shop to buy a beer. My phone rang. And Mike Smith was on the line offering me a job. Perfect.

I've worked for Mike now for a total of about 4 years. Sadly, because of the crappy economy, he has had to lay off all but one of his staff, and I'm afraid he may have to close his company. I hope not.

In 2004 I changed my job, bought a house, and met my current boyfriend. The house is an old house - built in 1896 - but is in fairly good condition. We always have big plans for the place, but for the moment I will make small updates as they come along. The boyfriend is named Luis. He is from Mexico, but has been in the States since he was 16, more than half his life.

It's been an interesting relationship. He still retains some Mexican traits, which are sometimes hard to deal with, but he is nothing like your typical Mexican. In late 2005 we moved to his hometown of Tuxpan, Jalisco, Mexico. We planned to go down for 6 months to a year. We rented the house out, put our stuff in storage, and drove two cars loaded to the gills with our stuff the 3000 miles from Portland to Tuxpan.

I ended up staying there for 14 months. It was hard. And I probably would have done better to come home sooner, but we have all made choices for reasons we don't always understand. So many more details can be found about this time of my life earlier in my blog, starting here. No need to rehash it here.

Luis came back to Portland in June of 2007, about four months after I returned. Since then we have gotten back into our lives as they were before we left. And now that I have been laid off, I am back to wondering what the next phase of my life will be. Any suggestions will be happily accepted, although not necessarily followed.

And you, where have you been in the past 10 or 20 years?

My Life circa 1985 - 1995

So I've been running into so many people on Facebook that I figured I would post a little history just to save myself from having to cut and paste the same story into a slew of emails. This will be in two parts as some folks haven't been around me for 20 years, others for 10.

So, I graduated ETHS in 1985 and went out to California to attend Occidental College in Los Angeles. Why Occidental? Well, it was the closest decent college I could find to whatever school Jeff Favre had decided to go to. Yup, I chose it based on a crush! That and the amount of financial aid they gave me. And the fact that it was far away from Chicago and I wanted to try a new city.

Jeff dropped out of his college after the first semester, and I remained at Oxy for two years. I hated it. I didn't fit in. I tried to do the theatre thing there, but it was no match for Croo. The best part was that I took a photography class at the near-by Art Center College of Design, and had my very own darkroom on Oxy's campus. And I took a piano class, which I enjoyed but never practiced for.

After two years, I decided to transfer. Mimi Purviance was attending the U of C at Berkeley, so I made my way up there. I lived in a co-op and met some great folks there, but only lasted at the school for one semester. I realized that I had no idea what I was doing in college, aside from wasting my money, my parents' money, and my time. So I dropped out and got a job in a cafe called The Edible Complex. I met and dated a great guy named Gary Escobedo. But two years in Berkeley and I was ready to move on again.

So I ended up back in Chicago, living with Chris Blasingame, first in Rogers Park, then in Evanston, right next to the main post office. Chris' dad hired me to work at his print shop, so I learned how to run an offset lithography press.

Yet another two years and I was ready to go back to college. This time I wanted to study photography. It was 1991. I applied to, and got into, four different art colleges. RISD was one of those schools and I was so excited to attend! Alas, they had no financial aid for me and I couldn't afford the $9000/semester fees on my own. So, second choice Atlanta College of Art became my first choice. (They have since been swallowed up by SCAD.)

I drove from Chicago to Atlanta with my mom, who had flown into Chicago for the trip from her home at the time in Raleigh, NC. It was raining when we arrived. I remember thinking within the first hour of being there that I hated it. Not good. I had a long three years ahead of me before I got my degree. I'd better start liking something about the town, and quick.

I eventually found a house to rent, and met some great people there. School was cool. Although I was generally older than most of the students, I found people to relate to. I dated Mike Skutchan (now Eaden) for three years. Although that relationship went down in flames, we have now come to some level of friendship via Facebook, which is nice.

After I got my BFA in Photography (1994 - nine years after graduating from ETHS), I did what all good art students do - I got a job at a coffee house. The owner was a people-user, but it kept me afloat financially for the most part. It helped that we served food which wasn't tracked. I got really tired of the menu there. Eventually the free food wasn't cutting it, so I quit.

I met another boy, and developed a crush on him. He was working at a small ISP called MindSpring and they needed someone to answer phones while their usual guy was on vacation. It was a two week gig, but it would pay me better than the cafe. And I'd get to work with Kevin. So I took it. I had also applied at another tech company as an HTML coder. But their environment seemed toxic to me. MindSpring, on the other hand, was heaven. I had to convince them to hire me (I had no previous tech experience), and somehow I landed a job with them after those first two weeks.

I was hired into Tech Support and had a perfectly vertical learning "curve" to deal with. Thank god for people like Norbert, Galen, Tripp, Sudish, and John Nixon. I never would have gotten as far as I did at MindSpring without their help.

So that ends the first 10 years out of high school for me.

I love Greens!

For those of you who haven't lived in the South, or eaten in a southern style restaurant, "greens" are any of those yummy leafy green things you hated as a child: spinach, kale, collards, etc. When I lived in Atlanta, I was turned on to collards. Yum yum yum.

Now that we are on the "greens and beans" budget, I have rediscovered recipes for greens. My body probably loves me for that right now.

You dropped a bomb on me, baby...

Luis has two kids - one is his biological son, the other is his ex-step-daughter who was all of 2 years old when he married her mom. Her biological dad has never been in the picture, so Luis is pretty much the only father she's ever had. She is turning 17 this week, so we took her out for dinner this past Friday. Luis hasn't seen her in about two years (for some stupid reasons, but that is a different story altogether), so she had lots to fill us in on.

As we drove to the restaurant, she dropped bomb after bomb on us. "This happened, then this happened, then this happened." Luis was a bit dumb-struck. I was curious, but knew that this was not the time to talk about all that had happened in her life. She is healthy and happy now, so we can review the past in more detail later.

I am constantly amazed by Ashley. She seems so very self-aware for her age. She sees certain situations in her life more objectively than most of us would be able to. And she seems fairly grounded considering all that she has been through. She is one of my heroes.

Not today

I'm just not feeling it today. I have returned from Mexico, unemployed and broke. I've missed a handful of payments already and now have the un-fun task of calling my creditors and asking for extensions on those already late payments. I started yesterday. Made three phone calls. Got two straightened out, and one is supposed to call me back (right... so they are back on the list). That was all I could handle for one day.

Today I figured I'd tackle two more calls. That's enough for one day. But I dawdled and lazed about the house until noon, finally leaving the house to come up to some trendy coffee house on Alberta.

And I can't do it today. I feel horrible about not being able to pay my bills. I've never missed payments (knowingly) in my whole life. Never mind the fact that I'm unemployed (along with the other 4 people I used to work with, as well as tons of other folks in the country) and haven't started getting Unemployment payments because I was in Mexico. In my little pea-sized brain, I am a Bad, Bad Person. This all goes along with my irrational belief that I need to be Perfect All The Time. So this set back isn't easy for me to deal with.

Maybe going to Mexico wasn't the best choice. But it was pointed out that if I had stayed here, I may have gotten my UI benefits, but I'd still be in the same position I'm currently in. Better to have gone and had a good time.

Alright. Two calls. Tomorrow.