Under Construction

Any good Minnesota resident knows - if the roads aren't covered with snow and ice, then half of them are being ripped up and repaired in some manner! It seems I can't get anywhere these days without merging, or detouring, or both. It is kind of how I would describe my life in general right now.

Nothing is easy. Nothing is a straight shot. No task can be completed incident-free. Or at least this is the way things seem. Now it could just be my crazy brain is giving me this skewed interpretation....and it is extremely likely that that is the case...but it is still causing me angst. So I am going to take things back, to when I shared everything with you guys. I'm going to be honest - not that I was intentionally trying to not be honest  - but I've gone off the grid. So here we go...here's my vomiting of facts: (that paints a really pretty word picture, doesn't it?)

• My slacking has been completely unacceptable for the month of July. There is really no other way to put it. And because I am going to earn that iPad - I am now in big trouble for August! Lots of ground to make up. But I will do it.
• I have been eating like absolute crap. Not just a little. A LOT. Lite on the veggies, heavy on the grease. It is not a recipe (pun intended) for success.
• I have actually had a few interviews/phone interviews over the past couple of weeks - and hopefully they'll turn into something. Someone has to realize how magnificent I am - right?
• I have allowed my obsession over my job-hunt completely derail everything else. It made a really handy excuse to be lazy as hell.
• One bright spot right now is that a book is printed, with my name on it, and that is pretty frickin sweet
• I have determined that alcohol is not my friend. It makes me walk into pools with my clothes on. It makes me sing karaoke. It has even caused a victory dance to be choreographed, and performed, by me. It basically gives me the green light for all things jackass-like. I need to go back on the wagon. (Please note that I don't have a drinking problem - I've gone over-board twice in the last month, and that's a lot for me over the past couple of years. It is just one more thing I've let slip.)

The one in the blue is me last Saturday night!

 So that's what I've been up to. Just derailing and obsessing. I had made a comment, or at least thought about making a comment, in a previous post about how job-hunting is like dating. It is true. Or at least it's like my form of dating. Or what I can remember of dating ... it's been a while. Here are the similarities, as I see them:

• Sending out a resume is like giving out your number. You wonder if your resume will get them interested enough to pursue you. With a guy it's like: Will he call? Did he like what he saw of me enough to make the effort to learn more?
• The interview is like the first date. With the interview you get kind of nervous. You try to be yourself, but it's a guarded version of yourself. Same way on a first date. You get butterflies. Some friends need a cocktail or two before, just to settle their nerves. (hey - maybe I should have been doing that before my interviews?) You try to be as honest as you can without over-sharing. You try to be witty, and sound smart, and smile. With the interview, or the guy, you don't want them to see all of your crazy up front! You want to ease into it over the next few (or few thousand) meetings.
• Post-Interview and Post-first date: will they call? Was I what they were looking for? Did I say too much? Should I have shared that story? Did they think I was qualified - to be their office bitch, or their girlfriend - because everyone has a bit of a checklist? Did I scare them away? Should I have laughed at that? I was basically just being myself - - was that too much for them?

And I've discovered a negative of this cell-phone carrying, always in touch, day and age! (I can't even believe I'm saying this - because I LOVE MY GADGETS!!) But if you were starting to date before the world had cell phones you might be able to relate to this - - you got sick of staring at the phone, and willing it to ring. You could feel yourself going batty, hoping he'd call. So what did you do? You got the hell out of the house! For any reason! I'm going to go for a walk. I'm going to run to Target, and wander for an hour. This would be the perfect time to buy stamps! Whatever you could come up with to kill some time so you didn't just sit there, gradually losing your mind. But now there are cell phones, that we carry with us at all times. And we get our emails directly to those phones. I am so grateful for technology most of the time - but now it is a bit of a curse!  No matter where I go, it's with me. Taunting me with it's non-ringing and non-email-indicating-buzzing. The good news is that I leave it in the car when I'm at the gym. So I talked myself into going today. It was a nice break. =) And hopefully I'll be able to do it tomorrow. And the day after. Until something fantastic comes my way, and this nuttiness can subside.

So there you have it. Job-hunting is the new dating. And cell phones, for all of their great perks, can be the devil.

I hope you're all having a more productive month than I am! I promise to be more inspiring going forward. Enough is enough!