(no subject)
I'm feeling rather and inexplicably desperate right now. Sad. Bothered. Slightly uncomfortable and just a hint of desperation, like I want to cry or sleep but am too apathetic to do either.
I scored a job (somehow). I'll be serving at Trident Booksellers and Cafe. I started training this morning from 8:30 to 11:30 and I go back in again from 8pm to midnight tonight. Considering I woke up at 7 for the first time in what feels like years, that's a long day. Hope I can make it through tonight's training well enough. Perhaps I shall guzzle coffee drinx.
Part of me is extremely relieved I don't have to sell my soul and work at Legal Seafoods, which is what my prospects were beginning to look like. I skipped out on round 3 of those interviews and Trident called me later that day, as I reclined fuzzily in some grass by Jamaica Pond. Sure, I'd make bank if I worked at Legal, but I don't know if I could survive working there full time. That place runs like a well-oiled machine, its employees the corporate robot cogs of douchebaggery. When you call the locations, you don't talk to an actual human being. You have to listen to like 6 different menus before getting to a line that allows you to leave a message. Again, I doubt I would have survived working there.
Trident is in independently owned coffee shop/diner/bookstore on Newbury Street. Huge pluses: I get a 20% discount on books, I love breakfast food all day, the ambience is low-key, it's on Newbury St. which means great money and traffic - and it's on the END of Newbury St, so I get to bypass all the obnoxious sheeshee parts and be near The Otherside, a sex shop, and J.P. Licks instead. Also, they didn't care about my tattoo. The job is good experience and looks to be relatively easy in terms of serving skills.
Minuses: I have a feeling money is going to be really unpredictable there. The place is really small and crowded, which will be rather hellish. I also have a feeling that it runs poorly in terms of organization and systems in place that allow smooth service. There is no host/ess and the managers help to seat guests. This means guests will sit wherever, and fairness to servers will probably not be taken into account. In short, it's a shitty and formless system that will probably end up biting me in the ass. I shadow tonight, so we'll see how it goes. I'm just grateful to have a job
even though right now all I want to do is travel and run around in woods and read.
I am nervous that I'm becoming permanently unemployable. In one sense I am. This job search has made me realize how much I need, for my own sake, a Bachelor's Degree. There is no fucking way I'm going to serve tables, work retail, or do sales for very much longer in my life. That shit SUCKS. I need a job that's actually going to go somewhere and teach me things. It would also be nice to work in a non-hierarchical situation, more peer-to-peer. In another sense, like I mentioned before, my ability to tolerate the "system" is rapidly diminishing. If I am working for some place, I expect to be valued as an individual. I expect to receive fair treatment and pay. I expect to learn and to gain, and to form lasting friendships, as jobs are a big part of life. Not only all of that, but I find it really ideologically difficult to work for Big Business, which represents every social, environmental, and worldly ill I am against.
The only jobs I think I could most purely enjoy are working for national park services as a park ranger or something similar, social work, community organizing, independent journalism... There are a few more on the list. This Trident gig is great for me because I support books/reading and I love food. Not all of the food is organic or locally grown, and the coffee may not be fair trade which bothers me, but at least it's independently owned and not a chain. And the uniform is simple black, which I can get behind. It's nice to have some guidance on what to wear to work, as my clothes are generally a mess.
In relatively related news, I currently hate Boston. It feels like it's going to be a real struggle for me to live here for the next 5.5 months. Every day I get more and more down on this place. With the help of my new friend Mike, I was able to escape to the White Mountains in New Hampshire from Friday to Sunday and it was so absurdly glorious to be surrounded by nature. Quiet. Pine scents. Critters. Echoing Thunder. Dirt. Sweat. The coolness of rocks and spring water. The list goes on to infinity
I can't help it, I'm a rural Maryland girl at heart. Nature inspires me. And on the bus ride home, passing through these teensy towns and people on riding mowers caring for their cottages -
Until we entered Boston city limits, and the first thing I see is some angry bro flipping off somebody else on the road. Massholes.
I hate Boston's cold aloofness. It's air of superiority and pretentiousness. I could deal with it for a while, but I'm at the end of my rope. And you know what I've recently discovered? I really judge yuppies, like, more than most people. I have extreme disdain for these uppity white people who live in polished lofts and buy $6 lattes at "The South End Buttery" while their purebred dog sits outside with a matching collar and water bowl. Fuck, I can't stand it anymore. The sense of entitlement and materialism that floats around this neighborhood is simply unbearable. It's just so perfect and so passive and so self-contained. Protected. Where's the danger? The risk? The FUN? Where's the unplugged version of you yuppies and what does that even look like?
I am so ready to relocate somewhere that isn't holier-than-thou. Greener-than-thou, cleaner-than-thou, wearing-more-expensive-clothes-than-thou (and pretending it doesn't matter). And living here makes me hate myself, because I am so close in demographic to these clueless rich people.
It's weird being here. I don't consider myself a student. Certainly not an undergraduate student, even though I've been taking undergraduate classes. I'm not a grad student. I'm not a young professional. So what am I doing here? This city caters to those crowds - well, the "young proffesionals and grad students" move to Cambridge, of course. Because they're all more cultured and brilliant and want a more steady, quiet life than the quaint yet rather rough city of Boston affords. Man, if I am going to be this embittered for the next 5.5 months, this should be interesting. Or extremely boring and more of the same, always.
I feel like I'm just floating around, the world not knowing what to do with me because I'm coloring outside the lines. I'm 21 and not committed to any sort of path. The vast majority of my soul simply wants to travel and figure out my own shit for the next however long. I'm already planning to drop off the face of the earth as soon as I get my bachelor's. I feel like going to Warren Wilson will help me feel as if I've dropped off the face of the earth without actually doing it. I am trying to stifle myself, because I can feel something in me bubbling up, ready to burst, telling me "GO, JUST GO FOR GODS SAKES, YOU CAN'T STAND TO DO THIS THING ANYMORE!" Virginia, just hold out for the Bachelor's, that's all you've got to do.
I'm pretty hopeful that this Trident gig is going to be my last real "job" job. My goal is to find other ways to make money and survive, preferably ways in which I can completely rely on myself. Crafty, real-world-skill ways that allow me to travel and be the mistress of my own time. It would be great to learn a language and get really amazing at it, then just be a translator for life.. What a sweet job. That part of my brain is not as solid as I'd like it to be, though.
Batteries' dying...
I scored a job (somehow). I'll be serving at Trident Booksellers and Cafe. I started training this morning from 8:30 to 11:30 and I go back in again from 8pm to midnight tonight. Considering I woke up at 7 for the first time in what feels like years, that's a long day. Hope I can make it through tonight's training well enough. Perhaps I shall guzzle coffee drinx.
Part of me is extremely relieved I don't have to sell my soul and work at Legal Seafoods, which is what my prospects were beginning to look like. I skipped out on round 3 of those interviews and Trident called me later that day, as I reclined fuzzily in some grass by Jamaica Pond. Sure, I'd make bank if I worked at Legal, but I don't know if I could survive working there full time. That place runs like a well-oiled machine, its employees the corporate robot cogs of douchebaggery. When you call the locations, you don't talk to an actual human being. You have to listen to like 6 different menus before getting to a line that allows you to leave a message. Again, I doubt I would have survived working there.
Trident is in independently owned coffee shop/diner/bookstore on Newbury Street. Huge pluses: I get a 20% discount on books, I love breakfast food all day, the ambience is low-key, it's on Newbury St. which means great money and traffic - and it's on the END of Newbury St, so I get to bypass all the obnoxious sheeshee parts and be near The Otherside, a sex shop, and J.P. Licks instead. Also, they didn't care about my tattoo. The job is good experience and looks to be relatively easy in terms of serving skills.
Minuses: I have a feeling money is going to be really unpredictable there. The place is really small and crowded, which will be rather hellish. I also have a feeling that it runs poorly in terms of organization and systems in place that allow smooth service. There is no host/ess and the managers help to seat guests. This means guests will sit wherever, and fairness to servers will probably not be taken into account. In short, it's a shitty and formless system that will probably end up biting me in the ass. I shadow tonight, so we'll see how it goes. I'm just grateful to have a job
even though right now all I want to do is travel and run around in woods and read.
I am nervous that I'm becoming permanently unemployable. In one sense I am. This job search has made me realize how much I need, for my own sake, a Bachelor's Degree. There is no fucking way I'm going to serve tables, work retail, or do sales for very much longer in my life. That shit SUCKS. I need a job that's actually going to go somewhere and teach me things. It would also be nice to work in a non-hierarchical situation, more peer-to-peer. In another sense, like I mentioned before, my ability to tolerate the "system" is rapidly diminishing. If I am working for some place, I expect to be valued as an individual. I expect to receive fair treatment and pay. I expect to learn and to gain, and to form lasting friendships, as jobs are a big part of life. Not only all of that, but I find it really ideologically difficult to work for Big Business, which represents every social, environmental, and worldly ill I am against.
The only jobs I think I could most purely enjoy are working for national park services as a park ranger or something similar, social work, community organizing, independent journalism... There are a few more on the list. This Trident gig is great for me because I support books/reading and I love food. Not all of the food is organic or locally grown, and the coffee may not be fair trade which bothers me, but at least it's independently owned and not a chain. And the uniform is simple black, which I can get behind. It's nice to have some guidance on what to wear to work, as my clothes are generally a mess.
In relatively related news, I currently hate Boston. It feels like it's going to be a real struggle for me to live here for the next 5.5 months. Every day I get more and more down on this place. With the help of my new friend Mike, I was able to escape to the White Mountains in New Hampshire from Friday to Sunday and it was so absurdly glorious to be surrounded by nature. Quiet. Pine scents. Critters. Echoing Thunder. Dirt. Sweat. The coolness of rocks and spring water. The list goes on to infinity
I can't help it, I'm a rural Maryland girl at heart. Nature inspires me. And on the bus ride home, passing through these teensy towns and people on riding mowers caring for their cottages -
Until we entered Boston city limits, and the first thing I see is some angry bro flipping off somebody else on the road. Massholes.
I hate Boston's cold aloofness. It's air of superiority and pretentiousness. I could deal with it for a while, but I'm at the end of my rope. And you know what I've recently discovered? I really judge yuppies, like, more than most people. I have extreme disdain for these uppity white people who live in polished lofts and buy $6 lattes at "The South End Buttery" while their purebred dog sits outside with a matching collar and water bowl. Fuck, I can't stand it anymore. The sense of entitlement and materialism that floats around this neighborhood is simply unbearable. It's just so perfect and so passive and so self-contained. Protected. Where's the danger? The risk? The FUN? Where's the unplugged version of you yuppies and what does that even look like?
I am so ready to relocate somewhere that isn't holier-than-thou. Greener-than-thou, cleaner-than-thou, wearing-more-expensive-clothes-than-thou (and pretending it doesn't matter). And living here makes me hate myself, because I am so close in demographic to these clueless rich people.
It's weird being here. I don't consider myself a student. Certainly not an undergraduate student, even though I've been taking undergraduate classes. I'm not a grad student. I'm not a young professional. So what am I doing here? This city caters to those crowds - well, the "young proffesionals and grad students" move to Cambridge, of course. Because they're all more cultured and brilliant and want a more steady, quiet life than the quaint yet rather rough city of Boston affords. Man, if I am going to be this embittered for the next 5.5 months, this should be interesting. Or extremely boring and more of the same, always.
I feel like I'm just floating around, the world not knowing what to do with me because I'm coloring outside the lines. I'm 21 and not committed to any sort of path. The vast majority of my soul simply wants to travel and figure out my own shit for the next however long. I'm already planning to drop off the face of the earth as soon as I get my bachelor's. I feel like going to Warren Wilson will help me feel as if I've dropped off the face of the earth without actually doing it. I am trying to stifle myself, because I can feel something in me bubbling up, ready to burst, telling me "GO, JUST GO FOR GODS SAKES, YOU CAN'T STAND TO DO THIS THING ANYMORE!" Virginia, just hold out for the Bachelor's, that's all you've got to do.
I'm pretty hopeful that this Trident gig is going to be my last real "job" job. My goal is to find other ways to make money and survive, preferably ways in which I can completely rely on myself. Crafty, real-world-skill ways that allow me to travel and be the mistress of my own time. It would be great to learn a language and get really amazing at it, then just be a translator for life.. What a sweet job. That part of my brain is not as solid as I'd like it to be, though.
Batteries' dying...