work in progress

This photo was taken in April of 2009 at the St. Francis Cathedral Basilica in Santa Fe, NM. It was the first vacation Tom & I ever took together, and our long weekend there has been lovingly sewn into a quilt of memories that I hope to keep forever.

It was magical and romantic and perfect, and it made me realize that I was dating someone who not only tolerated a quirky, dusty, art-filled and almost completely empty city (April is not tourist season there by any means) on my behalf... but he loved it, too. It was one of the first moments in my life when I felt like maybe it WAS possible for someone to love the eccentric, dog-eared, private side of my life. My love of Santa Fe is nestled in the part of me that also loves weekends spent with a book propped on my stomach; that loves being home watching a movie instead of being out bar hopping at 1am; the part that knows I'm going to go to bed sporting a messy ponytail that makes me look like I'm in 6th grade instead of the coiffed, eyeliner-at-all-times woman who I imagine someone would want to see instead when they're going to bed.

Tom & I are heading back to Santa Fe again next week, and although it feels really weird to be going on a feet-up, vacation-snacks filled road trip when I still have no semblance of employment or stability in my future, I couldn't be happier or more excited to head back to our old haunt.

The photo I posted is from our brief tour of the Basilica, which was under a massive renovation for their 400th year anniversary. I took a lot of photos of the stained glass windows and ornate carvings that were hidden behind construction scaffolding; and I've thought about those images often over the last five months.

It is so easy to feel like a failure. For me, at least.
I deeply internalized the various petty comments I received at my old job, and even though I worked hard to grow a thicker skin and learn the difference between spite and valuable criticism over those five years, the sensitive person that I've always been was wounded by them.

Skimming the value out of my feedback and rejecting the high school pettiness was a huge learning experience for me, but the job searching process has proven to be another massive lesson in self-esteem and intuition.

I have applied for so. many. jobs. I've heard back from three robots, one frazzled human being, and one recruiter who I suspect follows up with 98% of the applications she receives. I've been sneaky, I've been aggressive, I've been passive, and I've been apathetic. Write, review, edit, send. Wait. Forget. Move on. My cover letters never fail to perplex me... even after asking several people for feedback, I have little to no sense of the quality of my sales pitch. My resume has been expanded to two pages (by the firm insistence of the HR recruiter I worked with), but the old-school advice handed out about 1 pg. resumes literally keeps me awake some nights, wondering if I didn't get a callback for job X because they thought I was presumptuous.

Or boring.

Or because my email is secretly broken and only sends personal emails to friends... automatically deleting anything that's sent to a business email.

Or because if you read my resume backwards, it says something malicious about the government and current affairs.

In an ironic twist, my life has gone from receiving constant, never-ending feedback to not receiving any feedback at all, and I miss the fresh hell out of it. I thrive on feedback. I obsess over things I've said to people; replaying them in my mind and worrying if humor could've been offensive or if my appreciation of a kind deed wasn't emphatic enough. My gut twisted this morning when I realized that Tom had taken a peanut butter sandwich to work instead of the Thai leftovers in the fridge, wondering if I had accidentally said something that would make him think he shouldn't take them with him.

Our work is so much a part of who we are, and without a job title to define my place in the world, I can't stop questioning my value, my skills, and my purpose. Some weeks have been good-- I feel more capable and 'awake' than ever. This week has been harder... the doubt has pervaded my brain to the point that I've truly felt like I am not good enough for the jobs I'm seeking.

A constant work in progress. I'm grateful for the opportunity to define myself-- my deep down, art-loving, taco-eating, Real Housewives of New York-watching (on the sly), crazy hair sporting, kindred-spirit loving, previous-comment-obsessing self. I'm grateful for the guise of a difficult job market, which has provided a tangle of scaffolding bars and platforms in-between me and the employers who will (with luck) soon be staring at me across a desk, looking me straight in the face and asking me blunt questions about my flaws and my mistakes.

Right out of the gate, I was too vulnerable for a firing squad. I didn't know it until now, but I was. I have re-learned the game... I have been reminded that interviews are places to shine, not confess, and down-time is an opportunity to reflect, not self-flagellate. (man. that always sounds dirty.)

At the moment, I'm supposed to be applying for jobs, but instead I'm curled into a corner of my favorite coffee shop writing an unfocused journal entry.

I have applied to be a researcher, an admissions counselor, a museum sign writer, an advertising copywriter, a library workshop leader, a marketing guru, a broadcast television producer and a beading & knitting show videographer. I've begged to be considered as a project manager, a portfolio coordinator, a Chipotle training instructor and an at-risk youth counselor.

I have channeled the identity of fifty professionals over the past 5 months, and I've written as much as I could to convince strangers that I would be the perfect, irreplaceable person for each of those jobs.

But for the moment,
I'm just a work in progress... seated by the window, letting a caffeine buzz flow through my veins while I peer between the bars of construction platforms I've built around me.

It's not such a bad place to be.