get used to the taste of ashes

[jazzfish]

The last few weeks I've become rather fond of the spaciousness of my condo when it's not losing a foot in all directions to bookshelves. I prefer having all my books and games around, but I enjoy the sense of openness too.

"I would have liked to have a home with a separate library," I said a few nights ago. And a place where I can practice viola without worrying about irritating a neighbour, and floor space and equipment for yoga and rope, and a cat tree, and and and.

It's always difficult to make predictions, especially about the future, but: I do not believe that I will ever again live without roommates once I have to move out of here. The two-legged kind; I also don't expect to find a place to live that I can afford that will accept a cranky cat. This will be increasingly bad for my mental health, but I won't be able to afford counseling either so maybe I won't notice.

I'm still leaving today for the Gathering in Niagara, and Minneapolis for a week afterwards. Perhaps the change of scenery will help. Horse, sing, etc.

I've been applying for jobs for roughly a year now. I haven't kept track (that way madness lies) but it's been on average one or two a day, three or four days a week since there's usually a day or two where there's nothing new. Call it four a week, fifty weeks, two hundred jobs. You could say these are rookie numbers and how do I expect to find work when I'm not really putting myself out there, and you wouldn't necessarily be wrong I guess.

Out of that I've gotten fewer than a dozen phone screens. Five percent. That's the basic call from HR to determine that I'm a real person, before they hand a stack of resumes to the hiring manager. Zero of those have been for GIS jobs in Vancouver. I assume Van is flooded with BCIT GIS grads.

I've talked to someone higher up than HR ... three? Three times. One of those was for a tech writing job with an airplane company out in Port Alberni, on the island: they wanted someone who'd move there for a lowball salary and two weeks vacation. It sounds like they found someone desperate or junior enough, so, good for them. The others were for GIS jobs in Minneapolis, with flaky-sounding companies, both of which ghosted me. Arguably all three of these were a bullet dodged but I've reached the point where I'd welcome being shot if it meant I could sell the bullet as scrap metal.

I will not be getting a GIS job because I lack GIS experience. I realised a bit late that I should be applying for internship-type things despite their minimal pay. No takers this year, and come June I age out of "was in school no more than a year ago." Oh well. That's just two years and twenty grand down the drain.

I am not optimistic about a tech-writing job either. The tech sector has been three garbage fires in a trenchcoat for at least the last eight years. The 'generative AI' flavour of garbage fire is putting tonnes of tech folks out of work, and tech writers are always among the first to be axed regardless. Other industries are following suit.

Note that none of this means I'll stop looking and applying for jobs. I just do so with the conviction that it won't matter. Perhaps the universe will decide to prefer "proving me wrong."

In conclusion I'd like to thank just over a third of Americans for enthusiastically demolishing every good thing the US has done and torching the economy into the bargain, and just under a third for not caring one way or the other. In lieu of flowers, please send acerbic letters to Republicans.

(I am not a danger to myself or others.)

Comments

[reedrover]

Not enough people understand how "hope" is the foulest four-letter word of all. And yet we as humans cannot let it go.

[reedrover]

Also, that's a delightful link.

[jazzfish]

A vulture is the thing with feathers.

My first decent therapist once told me that "hopelessness is the release of all thought of an alternative to the present moment." She was framing it as a positive, like, once you're done hoping things will be different you can start doing things to make them different. I think about that a lot, because I genuinely don't know how I feel about it.

(Re link: it is SO GREAT. I came across it back when it was originally published, and the phrase still pops into my mind from time to time.)

[reedrover]

Yeah, no, I see hopelessness as a lack of imagination for a future rather than releasing desire for a different present. It's a lack energy and a lack of striving. I don't know how that could ever be positive.

[reedrover]

The song that your post title was resonating with in the back of my head finally bloomed.

https://sjtucker.bandcamp.com/track/stolen-season