Project New Leaf A-9
Entry #A-9: "Algorithm"
Last summer, my hair was orange. I landed a job the first day I was attempting to locate one.
This summer, I am again dark-haired and look five or six years younger and sweeter.
So, why haven't I been able to land a job yet?
A list, for the sake of lists. None of these really relates to another, but are disjointed concepts which keep swimming convolutedly through my scattered thoughts.
1.Though my typical "look" could be described as ferally, apathetically bohemian, I clean up very nicely, and cut a sharp image in heels and knee-length St. John's skirts and pressed blouses. But there is the eye contact issue... even though I'm articulate and my resume is impressive, this one item makes me seem shifty and like I have something to hide. Damn it! I've scattered my eclectic resume all over town, but does anyone really need a competent violinist who speaks Japanese and German? The places that are hiring are typical tourist-town fare: clothing stores and ice cream shops, neither of which I'm enthusiastic about, but I need a job badly.
2.There is always street busking... but my violin is in the shop and I'm going positively mad. I've been looking up youtube videos, of myself and others, playing their instruments, and I've felt like crying. I am desperate to start my intensive summer program, of self-driven overindulgence in repetitive slavery to an unnamed muse (ie, learning "Le Campanella" and Bruch's violin concerto), but without my instrument I'm only as good as a college kid who needs work. This depresses me beyond reason.
3. That's another thing. I am a moody bitch lately, and what scares me is how tolerant my family is of me. Almost indifferently so. Is this just feeding my paranoia, or is this another case of the obvious that has eluded me for years?
4. Dostoevsky is possibly my new favorite author. Yesterday I read exactly half of Crime and Punishment on the car ride home from up north, and I am absolutely addicted to the first author in a long time who has managed to reach me. Raskolnikoff reminds me of Light Yagami from the anime Death Note, except maybe more sympathetic... the part of the novel keeps coming back to me, where he recalls being a child and watching a drunk man beat his overworked mare to death, swearing that he will make her gallop. When he and several others become so infuriated that they succeed in killing the horse, they are satisfied until an onlooker points out that the mare never did gallop, despite the man's anger. I've been thinking lately about torture, and how a secret held in death is actually one of the most precious tributes to self-control and willpower. If a victim keeps from giving its tormentor what he wants, the victim is in fact the victor, dying quietly and with dignity.
I don't think that I could die quietly and with dignity... but I've never been tortured for information. I've always had nightmares about people cutting off my fingers... until it reached that point, I think that I could tolerate pain and torment. I suppose it all depends on the nature and importance of the secret.
5. There was an internship that I interviewed for. Someone else got it. I never really expected to... I would have performed dreadfully, knowing little about the government and political science. My mother laughed when I told her that I might get a job with the Chamber of Commerce. She knew all along, as usual.
6. I got a haircut yesterday. Very minor change... but I still feel a bit strange. I'll get used to it.
7. I just got braces on my lower teeth, and my jaw is all out of alignment. The inside of my mouth is scratched to pieces, and eating was torture for the last few days, but it's all getting a bit better now.
Last summer, my hair was orange. I landed a job the first day I was attempting to locate one.
This summer, I am again dark-haired and look five or six years younger and sweeter.
So, why haven't I been able to land a job yet?
A list, for the sake of lists. None of these really relates to another, but are disjointed concepts which keep swimming convolutedly through my scattered thoughts.
1.Though my typical "look" could be described as ferally, apathetically bohemian, I clean up very nicely, and cut a sharp image in heels and knee-length St. John's skirts and pressed blouses. But there is the eye contact issue... even though I'm articulate and my resume is impressive, this one item makes me seem shifty and like I have something to hide. Damn it! I've scattered my eclectic resume all over town, but does anyone really need a competent violinist who speaks Japanese and German? The places that are hiring are typical tourist-town fare: clothing stores and ice cream shops, neither of which I'm enthusiastic about, but I need a job badly.
2.There is always street busking... but my violin is in the shop and I'm going positively mad. I've been looking up youtube videos, of myself and others, playing their instruments, and I've felt like crying. I am desperate to start my intensive summer program, of self-driven overindulgence in repetitive slavery to an unnamed muse (ie, learning "Le Campanella" and Bruch's violin concerto), but without my instrument I'm only as good as a college kid who needs work. This depresses me beyond reason.
3. That's another thing. I am a moody bitch lately, and what scares me is how tolerant my family is of me. Almost indifferently so. Is this just feeding my paranoia, or is this another case of the obvious that has eluded me for years?
4. Dostoevsky is possibly my new favorite author. Yesterday I read exactly half of Crime and Punishment on the car ride home from up north, and I am absolutely addicted to the first author in a long time who has managed to reach me. Raskolnikoff reminds me of Light Yagami from the anime Death Note, except maybe more sympathetic... the part of the novel keeps coming back to me, where he recalls being a child and watching a drunk man beat his overworked mare to death, swearing that he will make her gallop. When he and several others become so infuriated that they succeed in killing the horse, they are satisfied until an onlooker points out that the mare never did gallop, despite the man's anger. I've been thinking lately about torture, and how a secret held in death is actually one of the most precious tributes to self-control and willpower. If a victim keeps from giving its tormentor what he wants, the victim is in fact the victor, dying quietly and with dignity.
I don't think that I could die quietly and with dignity... but I've never been tortured for information. I've always had nightmares about people cutting off my fingers... until it reached that point, I think that I could tolerate pain and torment. I suppose it all depends on the nature and importance of the secret.
5. There was an internship that I interviewed for. Someone else got it. I never really expected to... I would have performed dreadfully, knowing little about the government and political science. My mother laughed when I told her that I might get a job with the Chamber of Commerce. She knew all along, as usual.
6. I got a haircut yesterday. Very minor change... but I still feel a bit strange. I'll get used to it.
7. I just got braces on my lower teeth, and my jaw is all out of alignment. The inside of my mouth is scratched to pieces, and eating was torture for the last few days, but it's all getting a bit better now.