Employment

Since I've been back in Eugene, I've have to confront the inevitable fact that I need to find a job. It's really been fascinating a experience, given that I've spent the past five years of my life using every single resource I possess to evade the so-called real world. And by "fascinating," of course, I mean "ego-shattering." Getting a job necessarily means that I will be rejected again and again--probably upwards of millions of times in this economy--before I succeed. And I have not yet succeeded. I sent an e-mail to eight professors at the university asking if they needed research assistance, and six of them politely rejected me in just one hour. Two responses to my inquiries have been scams, and I will never forget how blatantly dismissive a manager of a café became when I told her that I didn't have any experience as a barista. Even worse, perhaps, is the silence. I've spent a fair amount of time in the past couple of weeks wondering what will become of the resumés that I have dropped off at local businesses. Will they slowly rot in forgotten drawers alongside the resumés of a thousand other job hopefuls? Do managers and business owners crumple their innumerable useless resumés with a wry chuckle? Maybe their laughter is maniacal. Maybe they actually eat the resumés.

There was a low point today, after I picked up a job application at community credit union. Everything felt bleak--not only was I considering working directly for the Man who fabricates the illusion we call "money," but I also needed to buy a watch. (My watch broke a few weeks ago, and I had taken it as a sign that I was free of linear time... but now it's become apparent that I actually need one to keep appointments and such things.) So I was marketing myself to a bank, I was shackling myself into time, and it was also starting to pour so that the ink ran on my warped resumé. Bleak indeed.

But then, when I started the engine of my car, this is what was coming out of the radio:

"Music is on the radio – I notice that as I listen, I think of my mistakes, ill words, wasted time, and the next note I think of who I love and who I hate and the success I've had at both and of my tomorrow's chances. And I feel like a singing god riding on a cloud snapping my fingers and ruling a universe."

Pete Seeger spoke with deep reassurance as he strummed his banjo, and I remembered that I love the rain. I remembered that I chose to come back to Eugene because this place is my home. I am not trapped--even in this conventional urban 'wasteland' there is music; an intensity of the human spirit that makes my skin crawl. Here there a long conversations over coffee, mountains, community, and my family. I am always free, wherever I am. 

Maybe I can face the job market tomorrow. Reject me, I dare you.