The upside to un(der)employment

Our family motto is:

See the good in all things

So with the spirit of staying true to our motto, I'd like to present the top 10 great things about un(der)employment:

10. Thanks to our current administration, we feel rich, even though we should feel poor

9. Affordable health insurance for our children (who can beat $25/month for four children!)

8. Day time dates with Dean

7. Finding jobs from my computer at my kitchen table, watching the gopher make holes in our backyard

6. Spending lots of time with our kids

5. Finding cheap entertainment (We do fun things that we wouldn't have thought of doing when we had money rolling in)

4. More time with friends

3. An increased reliance on spiritual things

2. An increase of gratitude for every little thing

1. An endless feeling of hope and optimism. Anything and everything is possible when looking at a blank piece of paper.

Rejection aka the job search

Recently I brought my car in for its annual pap smear, or what they call it in the state tax world: Safety and Emissions. I knew before I got the results back that our car would not pass. We had a crack in the windshield the size of two mini football fields. The crack started the day after my husband lost his job. Which is, coincidentally, about the same time that our dishwasher and refrigerator broke. From experience I can say that knowing that I’m going to fail beforehand does not alleviate the pain of failing. The same was true for the car inspection. The bolded 150 point text reading REJECTED was on the state inspection paper, but it was really as if it were written on my forehead in a cruel and melodramatic way. As if each letter bored into my eyeballs and the recesses of my brain and burned onto my forehead with laser point accuracy, etched from the inside out. 

That is what job searching feels like. However, the rejection is so much more personal when looking for a job. So much more deep. How can it not be? You’re baring your soul again and again saying please take me. Have me. I’ll give you everything you want. And the person being offered your world just looks at you point blank and says no thanks, there is someone better than you.

Better than me?! How can anyone be better than me? I am confident! I am educated! I am passionate! I am... “intense”? You think that I am intense? You don’t like me because I’m intense? Oh. I see what you’re saying. I am intense. It’s bad to be intense. You have every reason not to want me because I’m intense. Why does anyone like me? Do my friends and family think that? Maybe I should just stay in bed today. Just until my personality changes. I don’t want to be intense.

REJECTED. 

The fact is that I’m right for someone. I was right for my husband, or so I like to think. I will be right for my future employer, because someone will value my intensity. My mom always did say people would like me just as I am (and she was right surprisingly often.) How much do I need to change to fit the needs of some unknown entity? How much do I need to fake in order to get accepted into an organization? How does one fake being non-intense? People do, I’m sure, but I don’t know how (weed probably). I’ve never been one for theatrics. 

So I’ll stay in my warm flannel knee length polka dot pajamas until noon. I’m going to allow my furry pink and white mid-calf length socks to soak up warmth and healing to the very depths of my soul. Yes, even intense people have souls. I’ll don my running clothes and lick my wounds while I burn off my frustrations. I’ll come home, take a shower, then hit the job search market again. Next time I will be less intense, but today I will harness my intensity to shake off my rejection and persevere.

In the beginning

"Never laugh at live dragons, [Amy] you fool!" [s]he said to herself... "You aren't nearly through this adventure yet," [s]he added.

Actually this is what Bilbo Baggins said to himself in The Hobbit, but since I read it, I've been saying it to myself. Life is easy, it's the dragons that are difficult. Marriage problems, money struggles, raising children, finding work, losing a job, death of a loved one, health issues, and caring for aging parents are all examples of life dragons. 

When I was in Junior High a girl wanted to fight me. I accidentally squirted ketchup on her so she threw a red slushy on my sister's white cable knit sweater that I "borrowed". Instead of turning the other cheek or punching her, I yelled with as much gusto as I could muster (which wasn't much), 'What did you do that for?!' She shoved me, I shoved her back, but not with any power. The kids dropped their books and came running yelling 'FIGHT! FIGHT!' My strength failed me. I had spaghetti arms. It was like a bad dream. I wanted to hit her, but my adrenaline booster failed me. I swung at her like a rag-doll being controlled by a drunk puppeteer. Thank goodness a teacher came and broke it up. 

That's how I approach my dragons. I sit there and take it. I don't budge much, I don't punch back very hard, I don't run away very far, I don't scream and yell as loud as otherwise could. I take a few punches while attempting a few weak attempts at hitting back. Then I cry in frustration. Then I laugh at the recollection of my weak attempts at fighting back. Most of the time the narrative in my head echoes the Hobbit:

"It was a terrible battle. The most dreadful of [Amy's] experiences, and the one which at the time [s]he hated the most - which is to say it was the one [s]he was most proud of, and most fond of recalling long afterward."

Because at the end of it all Gandalf turns to Bilbo and says, "'My dear Bilbo [and Amy]! Something is the matter with you! You are not the hobbit that you were.' And then they crossed the bridge and passed the mill by the river and came right back to Bilbo's own door."

"So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending!"