I made plans to go to a Monday meeting, with the intent of “running into” Just-In-Case. Partly because when I actually ran into him a few weeks ago, he told me I should. In anticipation of this (and also, just because I felt like it) I fixed my hair and dressed all nice. I wore this shirt, because Keithers described the color (Fantasia Blue) as “I want to have sex with that.” I recieved several compliments.

Just-In-Case, was of course, not there this Monday. Typical. At least my hair still looks pretty today.

The days are dragging this week. I feel like Toni Collette in Clockwatchers, which is a wonderful and very underrated little film. The movie was made in 1997, so while the internet existed (we had it at my house. My family had internet before Al Gore, probably) it certainly hadn’t infiltrated every aspect of the workplace like it does today. There’s one line in it

Sometimes it hits you how quickly the present fades into the past, and you question everything around you. You wonder if anything you’d ever do would matter.

Which pretty much sums up what I feel some days. I was driving to work this morning and it’s already almost March. 2009 was the year of Just Surviving. Last March, I said that I knew it was going to be hard, that “this year” was going to be really, really, really hard but that I would get through it. And now I have, and it’s like “ok, what next?” and while I clearly have some ideas of what I want for “what’s next,” the present is speeding away as I try to make the future happen.

This is quickly veering towards angsty-existential crises territory, where it seems to go a lot these days. I think back on when I was temping, at this time, five years ago. Sure I’m older and wiser, but I am so jealous of my 22 year old self sometimes. And then I remember what it was like trying to get a job just out of college, practically having to beg someone to give me a chance, and well no, I’m not jealous of that, but then again, is it really that different from what I’m doing now? That I’m offering to answer phones and make copies for an abysmal salary just so I can finally work somewhere that I feel relevant?

That was a major run on sentence.

I guess part of it is that deep down there is still this fear, that maybe This Is It. That all I am ever going to be is a glorified secretary. And while that’s not the worst of fates (or pays) it’s certainly not what I ever wanted or imagined for myself. Maybe I just Don’t Have What It Takes. To do what, exactly, I’m not sure, but for now I use the sentiment broadly. It seems entirely possible that it isn’t going to matter how many carefully crafted cover letters I send out or how smart I am, or how capable I am of doing any of these jobs; I might never get one because of all that is still missing from my resume. And maybe, it’s missing from my resume, not because I choose wrong or differently, but because I am just not the type of person who saw those chances, or opportunities in the first place. David is always pointed out that every ponderance of “what would have been if I had taken another path” requires you to question whether you, being the type of person you are, could have done anything different anyway.

This started out as a lighthearted post. I swear.

It’s funny how doubt hides itself. It follows behind you. It waits in every corner. You never see it coming. But you feel it, on the inside. Maybe it was just that office. Or maybe it was bigger than that, it was all around. A million eyes. Watching. Judging. The whole wide world even. You feel so small.

-Clockwatchers

One of the main reasons I haven’t wanted to get all angsty about the Great-DC-Job-Search (other than the fact that whining is not an attractive quality) is that I don’t want to listen to people tell me that I’m being fatalistic, or that I CAN do it, or making suggestions about what I should try.

Here are the facts: I never had a fancy (unpaid) DC internship when I was in college. I could have one summer, but it would have involved paying for houses and not making any money. I chose instead to go home for the summer and work. There were lots of factors involved in that decision, and at the time, I wouldn’t have been happy in DC, but I am paying for it now. I have NO DC experience, and this is somehow relevant even for non-Hill jobs (I don’t want to work on the Hill). The Libertarian Fellowship was so important to me because it was a back door into DC. A shortcut, so to speak. I knew that the chances of me getting a job in DC the old-fashioned way were/are very slim and that that fellowship would have given me an in.

The other thing is the type of experience I have. I have a Masters degree from a very good university, where I also worekd as a research assistant. But my resume also evidences that I’ve been a glorified (and at times, not even glorified) secretary since college. I was lamenting this with Virginia, a girl who graduated a year before me; job postings want you to have 3 years of experience, and the only experience you can get is admin work, and then that’s not good enough.

Do you know what I would have done, as an intern, in DC? I would have made copies and filed and answered phones. Yes, I recognize that location is everything and there’s more to it than just the clerical aspect. But I hate that that looks more important on paper than what I do now (and I do all those things and a whole hell of a lot more). I hate that my only option is a lateral move into another admin position – that that is my only hope of getting into DC, and that is still a small chance.

I don’t want to hear about how I just have to be patient and try and whatever (yes, I know I sound whiny) because these are not the off-the-cuff ramblings of a frustrated job searcher. These are just the facts. They are something that I have been painfully aware of for a long time. To an extent, this knowledge may have kept me from job hunting in DC in the past – fear of rejection/failure and all. I know the odds and they are not good. Add in the recession and they slip to sub-zero.

So I don’ t exactly know what to do. My motivation is sapped. Writing another cheery cover letter makes me want to stab my eyes out. I know that everyone searching for a job must feel the same way. It’s a disheartening process, to see these jobs that I would be perfect for and not get a resposne to my carefully crafted applications. And then I read the barrage of job hunting advice that’s on the internet about networking and promoting yourself and finding your job through twitter (and how you’ll never find a job the traditional way, not in this world) and it’s even more confusing about what to do.  What am I supposed to do? Blog incessently on my RealName wordpress account (I don’t use it, I just snatched up the name) about the places I want to work and why they should hire me? Because I do have 2-3 places in mind that I would LOVE to work.

I don’t know. I know that my frustrations are the same as almost everyone going through the job hunt. But I feel so trapped. I feel that the decisions I made five years ago are haunting me now and that this is my life. A future something great destined to spend her life answering phones and ordering office supplies. I like my job and for the most part I do way more than that, and there is nothing inherently wrong with those things.

But I want to be something other than a glorified secretary. I don’t want to have to answer someone else’s phone. That’s my dream. Right there.

The utter laziness of this weekend (in which I did not even do laundry) disgusts me. Occasionally the sloth-ness of my existences gets to me and I spend Monday feeling icky about my hardcore indulgence in one of the seven deadly sins. I am hoping to rectify this by doing my laundry tonight and perhaps straightening my room, but the number of hours I spend sitting on my bed with my laptop is really obscene.

I’m getting punchy. Maybe I would also feel better if I cleaned my desk, but instead I am choosing to whine unattractively.

It’s not that I hate the person I am now. I’m ok with her, the girl who has developed an unhealthy West Wing (or more accurately Josh/Donna) obsession, the girl who reloads her email every 90 seconds, the girl who eats far too many of these delicious crispy pretzel-cracker things. She is better off than the person I was a year ago, even if I have to refer to her in third person. But sometimes, I am just so sick of her, and she is so sick of her surroundings, and we are so impatient for it not to be this way.

I know of all the suggestons and solutions , the if you don’t like where you are or what you’re doing then it is up to you to change that. I’m working on that, I am – the Libertarian fellowship was certainly a huge part of that. But it’s a slow process and it feels like a lot of hurry up and wait and go nowhere fast, and so for now I’m just stuck being the girl I am now, who has nowhere to wear all her pretty new one-size smaller clothes.

In April, I will have been in suburbia for two years, when it was supposed to be for a few months. In May, I will be 27, and before I know it, another summer will speed by. Time is going to fast and I’m not keeping up with it, and while I’m doing as much as I can to find a way to get to a place where I want to be, there are only so many avenues and outlets. There’s a recession, there’s reality, and there’s logistics.

I didn’t mean for this to turn into such an existential angst fest, but my whining should be recorded. For posterity’s sake.

Complaining/wallowing is something that I have trained myself not to do in the past 7 months. Part of it has been that if I started to think of everything that I COULD complain about I would never find any time to be reasonably content. Part of ithas been, because I didn’t feel so stuck or so impatient a few months ago.

Part of it is because part of me still wants to believe that I can train myself to feel what I want to/think I should feel, when I want to feel it. It’s a good party trick, one that seems to work perfectly well when one is in decent spirits. The execution sort of falls apart when it’s week number umpteen of the same old-same old, and it’s all you can do NOT to dissolve into a whiny, complaining baby.

I don’t want this space to become an angst-fest. I don’t cry prettily. But I don’t want to coat it with the layer of gloss and veneer that made the entries of my Livejournal shine with alleged contentness time and time again.

Part of me is calculating. I am “grown-up” enough now to know that This Too Shall Pass; to remind myself that even in the depths of this utterly exhausting same-old-same-old there have been some very good things too; to write this and think that one day, maybe one day not too far in the future, I will look back on this angsting and be thankful for it because it got me to the place that I’ll be standing in that one day.

And then part of me thinks that that hope is delusional and misplaced, because how can I know? How can I think that I will get out of here, that I will find something better, that I will be happy, really happy like I used to be? How can I be so delusional as to think that one day I can live in New York City again, that I will fall in love, that I will be okay?

Depression is a tricky thing. In a strange way, I miss the very old days, when I didn’t know it was Depression, when I didn’t know how therapy could work (if I’d only let it) and when I truly did not believe that there was anything better for me out there. It was a dark time in my life, and I would not want to relive it, but I had blinders on, and sometimes I miss tunnel vision. With tunnel vision, it is impossible to hope, but then, it is impossible to be disappointed.

This is the darkness I sometimes find myself in, and I never know how long it will take to find a clearing. And because I don’t know, I’m afraid to let my eyes adjust to the dark and I create these artificial sources of light. I’m afraid to get lost in the woods, because if I get turned around, I might encounter a blackness that goes deeper than the vague grayness that I have known, mastered, and conquered time and again.

So I try not to complain, and I try not to worry, and I try not to angst. I try not to be that melancholy girl that I was back in college, the one who ruined things for herself because of her inability to see beyond the black, for her delusional belief in the terminal uniqueness of her dramatized misery.

But sometimes even the strongest of walls can’t hold what is hiding behind them, and that is why on an otherwise ordinary Thursday, I am angsting my way through an entry, rolling my eyes at myself, thinking about Thoreau’s take of  “lost in the woods” (because I am an overeducated elitist) and thinking of the song “War on Drugs” by BNL, and how I first heard it in January 2004, and how it represented that something, SOMETHING had to give, and soon.

It’s going to be January 2010 soon. Something has to give. And Soon.

I should finish (start) the filing at work. (Filing is the opposite of life affirmation)

I should refamiliarize myself with major foreign policy issues, instead of just the sound bytes. (Just remember it’s foreignaffairs.org, not foreignaffairs.com)

I should organize my email and old invoices and a thousand other things (So I can go back to kicking ass & taking names at work.)

But mostly I just wait for another email in my inbox, another person’s new blog post, and for 5:30.

I should vacuum my room and change my sheets. (I’ve got to learn to not be so slovenly)

I should watch those West Wing DVDs. (I’ve always heard that I’d like the show)

But mostly, I just wait, for 10:00 PM on Wednesday, when the hard part of the week is finally over.

I should go to Midland one of these Saturday nights. (Maybe I’ll run into Scott the Libertarian again)

I should tag along with Katie one Friday night (Getting out of the house is allegedy healthy)

I should call Emily (Even though I think she tolerates my company about as much as I do hers)

But mostly I just wait for the end of November.

I should try again to make friends here. (Even though I like my version of the weekend. Lame, and sometimes lonely, but MINE)

I should try to wear all the new clothes that I’m acquiring. (Even though there’s no dress code, and only a dozen people left in my office)

I should try to mentally prepare myself for not even getting a phone inteview. (Especially since I suck on the phone, and even if I got one, there’s a chance I’d blow it anyway)

But mostly I just wait. For the email, telling me whether I have the phone interview or not, for a day when someone will actually see me in my cute clothes, and for the day that I get out of Jersey.

I can talk myself out of making plans for DC in June and look for jobs in New York, just in case, and I can make believe that I will have some semblence of a plan no matter what, but right now I can’t concentrate on a foreign affairs article, and I can’t drive to hang out with acquintences and leave when I please until I get my license back, and I can’t look for a job until I find out about the Fellowship.

So, mostly, I just wait.

I whittle away afternoons in two minute intervals (games of Wordtwist) and nights with SVU reruns, and buy clothes for the job I don’t have yet.

I wait.

I am listening to the Kelly Clarkson song “Already Gone.” Every time I hear it, I wonder what my life would have been like if The Ex and I had broken up at the end of high school instead of making it almost all the way through college. Because that’s really what I want to be thinking of a Sunday morning.

I’ve mostly spent the weekend angsting over my application. This fellowship is the first thing I have wanted — really, really wanted — in a very long time. Yes, I wanted my current job – I wanted it to go from temp to perm, but if it hadn’t, it would have been due to bureaucratic issues and no reflection on my worth. Plus, there wasn’t such uncertainty – I knew I was doing a very good job, I knew my boss liked me, and so I wasn’t afraid to basically demand the company hire me. (In retrospect, I don’t know when/how I decided to grow a spine, or where that spine has gone since then)

Here, I have no idea if I’m doing a good job on the application. I have no idea if I am what they are looking for. I have no idea how I match up against other candidates.

I’m not good at admitting when I want something. But good lord, I want this. I want this because it would be my dream job in every sense of the word. I want this because it would force me to live in DC, the city I have refused to move to because it’s not New York, but would probably hold much better career opportunities than New York ever could. I want this because although I like my job I don’t want to be here the rest of my life. I want this because I need to get out of suburban Jersey.

I want this. And that in of itself is pretty terrifying to me.

Saturday night, the anticipation of which garnered so many words here in the past couple weeks, was an unmitigated disaster. It didn’t help that it was At-This-Time-Last-Year, and that David wasn’t there to keep me from being stupid. I should be convincted of first degree “doing-that-thing-where-you’re-nervous-about-seeing-an-ex(of sorts)-but-you-want-to-pretend-you’re-totally-ok.”

The only moment I am proud of is the moment he walked into the bar. I met his eyes and held them and didn’t look away. “You look really good,” he told me.

“Thank you,” I replied, and didn’t break the stare.

The rest of the night is a string of awfulness. It may not have been as bad as Chicago this past summer, but it was bad.

Basically I feel horrible right now. I am so mad at myself, because I was doing a lot better – or so I thought. He is a trigger for me, obviously, just like HWSNBN was.  I don’t know how I’m going to get through this day – I know I will, but right now it seems so unmanageable and so much bigger than me.

I am so unnecessarily bitchy and angsty right now. I hate Chicago. I grew up in suburbia and spent a year in NYC, but I am annoyed by my comparatively “street smart” skills. I’ve always been told I look pissed off all the time; just my normal facial expression, and that that’s why I never get heckled. But I’m sick of living in a neighborhood where I can get mugged or assaulted by a 16 year old. If I’m paying this much rent, I don’t want this type of neighborhood.

I hate this apartment; it’s a rip-off, and its directly over the trashroom so by the time its pick-up day the smell permeates, and it faces a giant Soviet style apartment complex that is full of sketchy tenants who are loud at night.

I hate what Uchicago has done to me. 9 months ago I was happy. I wouldn’t qualify myself as unhappy right now, but I’m all angsty and unsure about the future and that nonsense, and its like WTF was the point of an MA program, when all its done is left me  behind my peer group in terms of job experience?

I woke up hating the universe this morning, and subsequently hating myself for hating the universe. I hate feeling this way, and a large part of why is because I know how it is to feel differently.

I just miss being so ridiculously happy. I miss feeling high on life — it’s a hard high to come down off of. And feeling like this segues into a whole other mess of random tangents and insecurities and blah.

I derive a weird form of comfort from the fact that I can just admit all this nonsense instead of painting pretty pictures. I’m Not. Happy. It’s so much easier to just admit that rather that expend all my energy trying to pretend I am, because then I can just go about my day and feel more normal, or something. I’ve gotten over taking myself seriously on Depression. It’s just another one of my quirks that pops up occasionally and has to be dealt with. That attitude keeps me from getting too sad and nonsense, forces me to laugh, and reminds me that I’m still pretty okay.

Positive Thinking/Things That Make Me Happy
-I’m wearing navy today. Navy makes my eyes look pretty
-I’m meeting up with some people from my Methods class for lunch/study group today. We’re going to try and make it a regular thing.
-In doing my reading for another class, it was nice to realize that my OCD habits in my IR class paid off — three years later, I still remember useless things like what the Treaty of Aix-Chappelle settled and the significance of the Conference of Berlin.

I’m having a really hard time here and I’m not happy.

That was really, really, really hard to admit.

And as much as I hate that I’m not happy and “able” and as much as I hate that two months ago my life was absolutely no holds barred phenomenal and now it’s not and so I feel like a failure… and I also hate the fact that I’m being so whiny and angsty. 

I’m having more trouble than I would like to admit and as much as they are white-bourgoise-privledged-meaningless problems, I think I need the help.

So deep breath, while I admit this. I need to get some help.

And so I apologize to the world for being so privleged and so lucky and so fucking bourgoise and yet still needing the help. And perhaps even the pills. And while I know any therapy will try to talk me out of this mindset, right now I feel like I really suck at life because I have no excuse to not rule at life.

That’s true friendship people.