The most frustrating part of job searching is the necessity of taking on jobs that have nothing to do with the career that I want. I've done tons of work in food service, and a little retail work on top of that, and now that I'm unemployed again, I'm getting broke enough that I think I'm going to have to work in that field again.
Let's be clear: Working in food service sucks. Even working as a manager in food service sucks. It's extremely difficult, extremely low-paying, and everyone you work with is like you: Just doing it to get by until they can do something they actually want to do.
And the main problem with me taking another food service job is that it's sort of expected that I stick around after being trained. This is always explained to me very carefully in the interview, that I would be doing a terrible thing to leave after only working there a week. Now, I know that in the real world, turnover is high in foodservice (read above: the job sucks), and that it's not a terrible thing to still look for work even after being hired, but I still stupidly feel obligated to stick around for at least six months.
Now, all that is on me and my brain, but because I am that way, it feels sort of immoral to apply and interview for jobs that I know I don't really want. Built into that conversation is a lie, and I really don't like lying. At the same time, I'm really sick of putting my life on hold.
This week, I'm listening to My Brightest Diamond's "This is My Hand" and Mika's "The Origin of Love". While these are not similar artists, they are similar albums in that both have signaled a shift towards less vibrancy in their melodies, and a stronger focus on rhythm focus. Now, my inclinations against dance music and rhythm heavy tracks have initially led me to like these albums less than the artist's previous work, but it's worth noting that their identities as an avant-garde classically inspired songwriter and pop aficionado respectively still stand out very strongly.
I often read and comment on Reddit's writers sub, /r/writers, and I am consistently surprised to find myself arguing that some work has more literary merit than others. There is a strong belief among a lot of people, apparently, that all creative work is of equal quality and standing. While I admire the democratic appeal of such a statement, and while I do agree that the merit of any given peace of work is almost always debatable, it has always seemed clear that there is a distinct difference between genre fiction and literary fiction. While there are artistic merits to the former, and writers who transcend the former into the latter, (I think as many do that Stephen King is capable of this) more often than not they don't. If that's a position you find snobby, well maybe it is, but I can only say that it's a result of reading a lot of fiction that was very rich thematically, and reading a lot more that wasn't. Let me phrase this in more diplomatic terms: I think there's plenty that genre writers can teach me about writing a story well, but a great novel will open my eyes to a lot more than that.
I've been using the IF This Then That app, IFTTT, to fill me in on updates on daily senate votes in my email. This has resulted in a couple of outcomes, the first of which is that my Email inbox has been even more flooded than usual. The second is that a lot more sneaky voting happens in the senate than what I've been aware of. Everyone knows that the Senate is currently debating the Keystone Pipeline, but they've debated some interesting (if useless) amendments. Democrats have been trying to add an amendment to the bill that simply expresses the sentiment that the Senate is aware that Climate Change exists, an apparently contentious topic among our nations political leaders, if not our scientific ones. Why do I find this interesting? Well, mainly because it seems such a meager compromise to happen in the same week that another pipeline spilled 50,000 gallons of oil in to a national park. "Can we at least agree to say that the environment matters? Not to do anything about it, but just say it?" say the Democrats. "Nah", say the Republicans. That kind of stuff really says everything you need to know about the parties as they currently stand.
I don't know if I'm going to write a lot here, or what my main focus will be. I hope I do. All the same, David Simon's blog is much more worth a read.
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