and then it's ok.
Over the weekend I felt pretty good. Nothing major happened, but by the end of it I was feeling pretty optimistic about life. I got together with Stephanie on Saturday morning for a late breakfast (we didn't eat until after 12noon). Afterward, she headed out to do an overnight relay race from Mt. Hood to the coast, and I decided to walk around the city for a while. I went to Powell's finally. It's a huge used/new bookstore that takes up a whole block in the city and it has at least 4 floors. I took the opportunity to do some research into the Art Deco style for a project that I'm working on. I went over to my cafe, World Cup, and sketched out some ideas. It was fun to sketch for an actual purpose again.
On Sunday I again met up with Stephanie, and Justin as well. Most places in the city have all day happy hours on Sunday, and we went to this cool bar that had and outdoor seating in the courtyard in the back. I fully intended to be productive when I got back, but something in the food must have knocked me out. I was overcome with tiredness, and all I could do was lie down. It was one of the best naps ever. When I woke up again I didn't even feel all weird and out of it. It was just a good Sunday nap.
That night I worked on a letter that I was asked to write for my cousin, to help her with some drama she's dealing with down in Mexico. I also finished re-wording and re-structuring my resume to make it more "admin friendly" over all.
I finished up the resume Monday morning and sent it to mercurialdawn to look over. Then I got a little more embroiled with my cousin's drama, and ultimately I decided that I had to remove myself from the whole situation. It's nice to help when I can, but I realized that I didn't agree with everything she wanted to say, and I didn't want her to get herself into a more difficult situation because of the letter I wrote.
I'm not sure if that whole ordeal brought my mood down or what, but by Monday evening, I basically hit my low point.
WARNING:
I didn't intend for this to get so long, but it does, and it's mostly full of the emo-moments I've experienced over the last couple days and I think I even start to wax poetic while looking back at the last few weeks. , but be warned that this post was good for me in that it was cathartic, though maybe not so interesting to anyone who is not me.
I wasn't in turmoil, crying while in my car or walking down the street, I was just done. I'd decided that I was tired of all the shit I'd been doing lately, when I was getting basically no positive results. After nearly 5 weeks, I had nothing to show for the countless rooms and apartments I'd looked at, the networking events I'd gone too, the resumes I'd sent out, the temp agencies that I'd painstakingly signed up with. I figured that Portland just didn't want me, and I would finally get the message.
I was ready to throw in the towel and go home and cuddle with my wiener dogs forever.
The pesky thing was this trip to Hawaii I have coming up. My ticket is out of Portland, so I couldn't really go back to MD now and then fly back here in a few weeks just to catch my Hawaii flight.
So I half-heartedly agreed with myself to take the month of September to look into possibilities up in Seattle. In my mind I'd written off the room that I was still waiting to hear about in NW, I'd decided that the next day's interview with the staffing agency would go nowhere, and I decided that Portland wasn't really all that great after all.
Tuesday morning, my mood might actually have been worse. Not only had I "given up" I was also kind of pissed off at everything. I grudgingly got ready for my interview. At some point I checked my email, and I got another non-committal note from my potential roommate, and I got in such a tizzy about it, I was again near tears, and I sort of wanted to just call the whole thing off. Luckily I knew that I was also PMSing, so I asked for some advice from mercurialdawn. She was very level-headed and pointed out that the letter in and of itself really wasn't so bad, and besides it's a month to month lease. Through the hormonal cloud around me, ray of sunlight broke through. I decided that I'd tell the girl what she wanted to hear, alleviate her concerns, and make a strong case once and for all as to why I should get the apartment.
Bolstered, I finished getting ready for my interview, and nervously made my way over to their office. Why nervously? Well, I was not only going for an interview, but to take tests. Yikes. I had to take computerized tests for Microsoft Office and Word. I imagined that they'd be asking all these things that were really advanced involving merging and splicing and collating and other big fancy admin words. But it really wasn't that bad at all. They show you your scores at the end of each test, and although I thought I took a long time, I got all the answers correct.
When I went out of the testing room to announce I was done, the lady guiding me through the process asked, "you finished both tests already?" That's the moment when I relaxed. The written test was ridiculously easy too. I scored well on my spelling, math, and alphabetizing sections. I even aced the safety and office etiquette parts.
At the end of the interview, my reviewer was very excited. She said that she's already put me into the system and wants to try to get my references and background checks done a.s.a.p. She even said she could float out my resume to my contacts for Graphic Design related jobs, which I thought was cool.
Maybe it's silly, but after so much disappointment lately, this small achievement felt like a huge triumph.
My spirits were then utterly lifted, and hope was restored. I again had hope that I would get the room in the NW area of the city. I again had hope that I would eventually find a job, whether in Portland or Seattle. There was a small part of me, like the black little devil sitting on my shoulder that warned me about getting my hopes up. That they'd eventually plummet back down, and I'd feel disappointment again. But this time it felt good to hope, and so I went with it, and hoped again for everything that I wanted before I came out here.
And then it was today. Wednesday. I had to wake up early to move my car to a different zone. I also had to be prepared that I might have a phone interview at 10am, which actually didn't happen, but I knew that was a possibility. So instead, I cleaned up around the studio, had some breakfast, took out the trash, and took a shower. It was nearly noon when I checked my email. And there it was, the email I'd been waiting for.
I was stunned. After such build up, to receive the news in such an unceremonious manner seemed a little anticlimactic, but there it was anyway, in black and white on my computer screen. The proof that as of Sept. 1st I would have my very own room in an apartment in the neighborhood where I wanted to live from the get go. Joette wrote back and said that I was definitely the person she wanted to live with! I guess my powers of persuasion had worked.
I made a flurry of calls, sent out several emails, updated a few "statuses", and chatted with a couple of friends about the news! Finally some news! Some good news!
Last week, when I'd been here for a month, my mom remarked, "how odd; to think you could have flown out there a month later and would still be in the same circumstance." At the time I agreed with her that yes, that fact was total crap.
Of course now, looking back, if indeed I had flown out here on Aug. 22nd instead of July 22nd, then I would not be about to move into the apartment that I now know I will be. If I look at the process I've gone through, it all led me to this conclusion. I started out looking at 1 bedroom apartments with zero luck. I decided to consider having a roommate, so I looked for room shares and resigned myself to the fact that I'd probably end up on the east side where most of the ads were from. That search also ended up being pretty dry, and while I grew more familiar and somewhat fond of the east side, I still didn't like it all that much. Then one day I just happened to see a posting for a room in NW, and the rent was cheap for the area, and I thought, "what they heck, might as well go for it," and I did. And then she gave me the run around for 2 weeks and I figured I'd hear from her eventually that she chose someone else, but she didn't. And now I have a place to live, and things are ok again. It's amazing that I can condense that whole experience down into a paragraph.
I talked to my mom on Monday before I knew anything good about anything and remarked to her, "you know, it's only been 5 weeks which really isn't that much time. But when you are doing something like this, out there every day, trying to find your way, not knowing what to do, and not having even a glimmer of success, then in that case, 5 weeks is excruciating. It's tiring and draining and frustrating. It makes you angry, it makes you cry, it makes you numb, and sometimes it even makes you laugh because that's really all you can do." She completely understood, and we both had a good laugh about how ridiculous things seemed to be.
Anyway, this has been a long and mostly emo-laden post, but the point is, I'm glad I didn't go home. In and odd way I'm even glad that this experience has been difficult; makes me feel like I've earned it or something.
On Sunday I again met up with Stephanie, and Justin as well. Most places in the city have all day happy hours on Sunday, and we went to this cool bar that had and outdoor seating in the courtyard in the back. I fully intended to be productive when I got back, but something in the food must have knocked me out. I was overcome with tiredness, and all I could do was lie down. It was one of the best naps ever. When I woke up again I didn't even feel all weird and out of it. It was just a good Sunday nap.
That night I worked on a letter that I was asked to write for my cousin, to help her with some drama she's dealing with down in Mexico. I also finished re-wording and re-structuring my resume to make it more "admin friendly" over all.
I finished up the resume Monday morning and sent it to mercurialdawn to look over. Then I got a little more embroiled with my cousin's drama, and ultimately I decided that I had to remove myself from the whole situation. It's nice to help when I can, but I realized that I didn't agree with everything she wanted to say, and I didn't want her to get herself into a more difficult situation because of the letter I wrote.
I'm not sure if that whole ordeal brought my mood down or what, but by Monday evening, I basically hit my low point.
WARNING:
I didn't intend for this to get so long, but it does, and it's mostly full of the emo-moments I've experienced over the last couple days and I think I even start to wax poetic while looking back at the last few weeks. , but be warned that this post was good for me in that it was cathartic, though maybe not so interesting to anyone who is not me.
I wasn't in turmoil, crying while in my car or walking down the street, I was just done. I'd decided that I was tired of all the shit I'd been doing lately, when I was getting basically no positive results. After nearly 5 weeks, I had nothing to show for the countless rooms and apartments I'd looked at, the networking events I'd gone too, the resumes I'd sent out, the temp agencies that I'd painstakingly signed up with. I figured that Portland just didn't want me, and I would finally get the message.
I was ready to throw in the towel and go home and cuddle with my wiener dogs forever.
The pesky thing was this trip to Hawaii I have coming up. My ticket is out of Portland, so I couldn't really go back to MD now and then fly back here in a few weeks just to catch my Hawaii flight.
So I half-heartedly agreed with myself to take the month of September to look into possibilities up in Seattle. In my mind I'd written off the room that I was still waiting to hear about in NW, I'd decided that the next day's interview with the staffing agency would go nowhere, and I decided that Portland wasn't really all that great after all.
Tuesday morning, my mood might actually have been worse. Not only had I "given up" I was also kind of pissed off at everything. I grudgingly got ready for my interview. At some point I checked my email, and I got another non-committal note from my potential roommate, and I got in such a tizzy about it, I was again near tears, and I sort of wanted to just call the whole thing off. Luckily I knew that I was also PMSing, so I asked for some advice from mercurialdawn. She was very level-headed and pointed out that the letter in and of itself really wasn't so bad, and besides it's a month to month lease. Through the hormonal cloud around me, ray of sunlight broke through. I decided that I'd tell the girl what she wanted to hear, alleviate her concerns, and make a strong case once and for all as to why I should get the apartment.
Bolstered, I finished getting ready for my interview, and nervously made my way over to their office. Why nervously? Well, I was not only going for an interview, but to take tests. Yikes. I had to take computerized tests for Microsoft Office and Word. I imagined that they'd be asking all these things that were really advanced involving merging and splicing and collating and other big fancy admin words. But it really wasn't that bad at all. They show you your scores at the end of each test, and although I thought I took a long time, I got all the answers correct.
When I went out of the testing room to announce I was done, the lady guiding me through the process asked, "you finished both tests already?" That's the moment when I relaxed. The written test was ridiculously easy too. I scored well on my spelling, math, and alphabetizing sections. I even aced the safety and office etiquette parts.
At the end of the interview, my reviewer was very excited. She said that she's already put me into the system and wants to try to get my references and background checks done a.s.a.p. She even said she could float out my resume to my contacts for Graphic Design related jobs, which I thought was cool.
Maybe it's silly, but after so much disappointment lately, this small achievement felt like a huge triumph.
My spirits were then utterly lifted, and hope was restored. I again had hope that I would get the room in the NW area of the city. I again had hope that I would eventually find a job, whether in Portland or Seattle. There was a small part of me, like the black little devil sitting on my shoulder that warned me about getting my hopes up. That they'd eventually plummet back down, and I'd feel disappointment again. But this time it felt good to hope, and so I went with it, and hoped again for everything that I wanted before I came out here.
And then it was today. Wednesday. I had to wake up early to move my car to a different zone. I also had to be prepared that I might have a phone interview at 10am, which actually didn't happen, but I knew that was a possibility. So instead, I cleaned up around the studio, had some breakfast, took out the trash, and took a shower. It was nearly noon when I checked my email. And there it was, the email I'd been waiting for.
I was stunned. After such build up, to receive the news in such an unceremonious manner seemed a little anticlimactic, but there it was anyway, in black and white on my computer screen. The proof that as of Sept. 1st I would have my very own room in an apartment in the neighborhood where I wanted to live from the get go. Joette wrote back and said that I was definitely the person she wanted to live with! I guess my powers of persuasion had worked.
I made a flurry of calls, sent out several emails, updated a few "statuses", and chatted with a couple of friends about the news! Finally some news! Some good news!
Last week, when I'd been here for a month, my mom remarked, "how odd; to think you could have flown out there a month later and would still be in the same circumstance." At the time I agreed with her that yes, that fact was total crap.
Of course now, looking back, if indeed I had flown out here on Aug. 22nd instead of July 22nd, then I would not be about to move into the apartment that I now know I will be. If I look at the process I've gone through, it all led me to this conclusion. I started out looking at 1 bedroom apartments with zero luck. I decided to consider having a roommate, so I looked for room shares and resigned myself to the fact that I'd probably end up on the east side where most of the ads were from. That search also ended up being pretty dry, and while I grew more familiar and somewhat fond of the east side, I still didn't like it all that much. Then one day I just happened to see a posting for a room in NW, and the rent was cheap for the area, and I thought, "what they heck, might as well go for it," and I did. And then she gave me the run around for 2 weeks and I figured I'd hear from her eventually that she chose someone else, but she didn't. And now I have a place to live, and things are ok again. It's amazing that I can condense that whole experience down into a paragraph.
I talked to my mom on Monday before I knew anything good about anything and remarked to her, "you know, it's only been 5 weeks which really isn't that much time. But when you are doing something like this, out there every day, trying to find your way, not knowing what to do, and not having even a glimmer of success, then in that case, 5 weeks is excruciating. It's tiring and draining and frustrating. It makes you angry, it makes you cry, it makes you numb, and sometimes it even makes you laugh because that's really all you can do." She completely understood, and we both had a good laugh about how ridiculous things seemed to be.
Anyway, this has been a long and mostly emo-laden post, but the point is, I'm glad I didn't go home. In and odd way I'm even glad that this experience has been difficult; makes me feel like I've earned it or something.