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Oct. 14th, 2003 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatYour Question or Information: Will I get a job
Past Raido - Safe travel, movement, obtaining justice in an issue, used to keep a situation from stagnating. | Present Ing - Fertility, successful conclusion to issue or situation, ending one cycle and beginning another. | Future Kenaz - The hearth fire, artistic pursuits, healing, love and passion, creativity, strength. |
Cast the runes here:
Rune Caster
I wonder if this means I'll get a job? It made me feel happy for a day, until my natural inclination towards skepticism seeped in. ie: "You're going to believe an internet fortune telling service? Are you nuts?" Ah, the war between the Celtic and Germanic sides of my character continues. I'm no longer certain which is which.
Feel a bit bowed under the heavy weight of rejection and criticism this week, so you'll have to excuse the proclivity towards whining, although is it really whining? Not sure. After reading the fanboards, I've lost all sense of the meaning of the word. One group (see Belly of the Beast's review) accuses Angel of being a whiner while the other group accuses Spike of being the whiner (see TCH's review). I despise whining, by the way.
After class tonight I stood on the subway platform, wondering if life can be compared to waiting for a train. The train comes - some people get on and quickly get to their destination. While others sit waiting, for what seems to be an eternity for theirs to arrive. Some people can take one train and whammo - they are there. While others have to switch four or five times. They might even get stranded somewhere. Speaking of being stranded this reminds me of anecdote, somewhat off topic, about a subway ride to hell on the London tube (I think they still call the subway the tube over there - it was in the 1980s). Two friends of mine were coming back from Wimbledon and got on a train that was not occupied.
Others were. Not their's. Everything was fine, for a while, until about halfway through the journey they realized two bizarre things: one - the train had not stopped any where for quite some time and two it did not appear to be going anywhere near their stop. If anything it had gone around their stop. I can't remember how they got out of it. All I remember is the terror they felt in repeating the story, which reminds me, now that I think of it, of some horror short story I read about once about being caught on an actual subway ride to hell. (Have no clue who the author is.) At any rate, I can't help but wonder if maybe that's how life works - you wait for the right train and are set on your path. But if you miss the train? What happens? Are you stuck at the station waiting forever for the right train to come along?
And how long should you wait? A minute? Two? An hour?
Or should you just hop on another train even if it's the wrong one and just hope for the best? And what if you got on the wrong train? What then? It's not like you can hop off.
(Warning: Following is long personal somewhat depressing rant...)
Today I took two clerical computer tests. I sucked at both, by the way. Not my strength. So I'm sitting there across from this temp agency guy, answering his questions about why I left the evil company, what I want to do next, and what I'm interested in, and if I've had any interviews, and I'm trying really really hard not to look desperate. In the back of my mind, I wonder how I got here - did I jump on the wrong train somewhere down the line? Did I cross a t wrong? Why haven't I gotten one of those jobs? What did the person they hired have that I didn't? Why didn't they at least call me and tell me that I didn't get the job? It's the silence that's the worst part, by the way. Criticism is at least useful. But silence leaves you wondering...what did I do wrong? I've decided we live in a world of spineless passive aggressives. Content to smile at your face, yet knife you in the back when you aren't looking. He was a nice temp agency guy - suggested I could do some market research for a three man firm, it would be only two days a week - internet research. He also could use someone to do some phone research for the temp agency. (Ack. Telemarketing, I must be in hell.) But it's better than nothing.
So I drift on home and check the fanboards, actually I'm in reality checking my email and somewhat frustrated by the selection of job postings go to the fanboards to distract myself, they are okay today. My friend cjl seems to want me to write an essay explaining why I think B/A is dead, while he writes one explaining why it isn't. Yeah, right. I may be masochistic, but I'm not that masochistic.
Feeling rejected and bitter enough, thanks, so do not need to be flamed by the B/A shippers. Besides, I know the ship ain't dead. I may wish it were dead. But I'm tv savvy enough to know the only way that ship is going to die is if SMG decides never to reprise Buffy, which is doubtful since her career is currently based on Scooby Doo and the Buffy fan base.
SMG may be a lot of things, but stupid is not one of them. I'm afraid the whole topic just depresses me too much to bother writing an essay on it.
Again I find myself wondering about trains. There's a Gwyneth Paltrow movie called Sliding Doors which is basically about finding one's life-mate on a train. In one universe she doesn't get on the right train in time and ends up stuck with her husband, in the other she meets the guy who plays Rebus. Actually it's more complicated than that, but I don't want to spoil people who haven't seen it. Is it as simple as that? Do you just happen to bump into Mr. or Ms. Right one day?? And what if you never bump into them? Is romance and love only provided to the lucky ones? Did they get born with that card in their deck? Okay now I'm feeling like Spike ranting to Angel about how grossly unfair it is that he got the W&H building, the cars, the girl who loves him, etc. Which I guess makes me a whiner too? Ugh. All this reminds me of a cool Dorothy Parker poem whose gist is death sucks, might as well live.
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Hey, if you can't whine here, where can you whine!!!!!!!!
Date: 2003-10-14 08:28 pm (UTC)Don't take the hiring process personally - in my current job I've gotten to see and occasionally participate in it, and have seen both good hires and bad hires happen in important positions and I can tell you it's not a logical process. The people I thought were going to be a good hire were frighteningly bad, and the ones I was skeptical about are turning out to be a home run. I don't think anyone really knows how to evaluate people in the few short meetings you get during the interview process. Personally I think the whole process is about magic and fairy dust rather than science and system.
You're holding up remarkably well under this stress. I've seen those who haven't done half as good as you're doing! I don't know why, but I have this gut feeling that this all going to work out fine - and I'm not an internet fortune telling service, so I should have some credibility, don't ya' think?
And don't worry about whining - there's nothing better in life than having a safe place to whine and people to whine to. I personally think that is one of the keys to happiness.
Oh thank you!
Date: 2003-10-14 08:39 pm (UTC)It helps to get a little reassurance from people outside myself.
For what it's worth, I think Atpo's online community here and on the board has in a way kept me going, when I was close to giving up. It's nice to have a place where I can
express myself so honestly.
Also - thank you for the reminder about interviews. I'd forgotten my own experience with hiring people. The people I thought would be great turned out to be mistakes and the one who I was wishy-washy on, ended up becoming a friend. I guess it's not so much scientific as random when you get right down to it.
Re: Oh thank you!
Date: 2003-10-15 07:02 am (UTC)I don't think anyone really knows how to evaluate people in the few short meetings you get during the interview process. Personally I think the whole process is about magic and fairy dust rather than science and system.
The only think I can find to disagree with is that there is a good way! After, ruling out the few obviously non-qualified people, it's pretty much a game of chance(IMHO). I do wish that job I had open offered a better starting salary, and that you were closer. I start interviewing people again at the end of this month, and I'd just about give a body part at this point to find someone good.
Anywhoo, hang in there. Thinking of you.
Hi shadowkat
Date: 2003-10-15 02:44 am (UTC)I'm a touch irritated with Claudia, who appears to have decided that I've taken Angel's side on the whole issue, while apparently not reading through the entire post, where I criticise Angel for his control issues, and dwell considerably on Spike's evolution as an interesting dynamic character. But that's the flak you take, I guess,
Sorry
TCH
No need to apologize, it was a good review
Date: 2003-10-15 11:41 am (UTC)Claudia overreacted to your post, I think. She tends to do that a lot. I don't read her or the Diana/lunasea person b/c they both have a tendency to bash posters who disagree with them. When I read through your entire review - I saw what you were going for - which is how the whole thing was affecting Angel, the writers are in a way using Spike to point out some of Angel's serious flaws.
And boy does he have them, some of which make Angel to be one of the most convulted and interesting characters on television but not a hero, actually Angel is the anti-hero. (Spike is Angel's little brother and like lots of little brothers - makes a great foil).
Angel thinks of himself as a hero/champion, but when you sit down and think about it? Is he? Really? When did he save the world selfishlessly? The only time I can think of is in Peace-Out and nothing about that was self-less, as the insect creature priest tells him - he's not doing it for his friends, he's doing it to redeem Connor. Nor, if you think about it was it really saving the world. Was the world better or worse off after he revealed JAsmine's true face? Connor has Angel's number in that episode. Prior to that - when has Angel sacrificed himself or saved the world? Prophecy Girl? No that was Xander and Buffy. Becoming? Xander, Buffy, and Spike - Angel was the villian. Surprise/Innocence? Xander, Buffy, and the gang, Angel was the villian. The other times? a participant, but he certainly didn't turn the tide. Graduation Day? He almost cost Buffy her life. In Angel the Series? Well he's saved some people here and there but in Hero when a race was doomed? That was Doyle, not Angel.
Pylea? Cordelia, Wes, Groo, not Angel.
My difficulty is I don't see Angel as very heroic or very good or very righteous. Self-righteous? yes. Righteous? no. He reminds me a lot of Batman - in that his heroism is more viglantism and in some ways more about him and his own background than the people he saves. It's what makes him fascinating to me. But approval and being a "champion" is important to Angel, he needs that title. More so than Buffy ever needed the Slayer title. It's the key difference between them, Buffy is the reluctant hero, just in a way as Spike is a reluctant hero. Angel desperately wants the hero title. He wants to be the prophesied hero of legend. He fears losing that title. He fears what he was and could become again. Angel lies to protect his own image, tells stories if you like, yet his lies separate him from everyone. He tells tales to himself about what a great hero and champion he is - as we saw in Awakenings. While Angelus giggles at the lie. Angel is his own worst enemy. He saves others to make himself feel like a superhero - as we see in the introduction of Conviction. So while Angel's anger at Spike may be righteous in a good way (ie. justified) it is also unjustified at the same time. Just as Spike's anger at Angel is both justified and unjustified. I think Spike in some ways points out the things Angel doesn't want to see about himself, just as Angel points out the things Spike doesn't want to see about himself. I don't know if you have a brother? But it is something brother's have annoying habit of doing - my own does it to me all the time and vice versa - it's almost as if we see each others foibles more clearly because they are to an extent a counter image of our own.
Not sure that made sense. Didn't mean to make you feel bad. I'm just over-identifying with Spike at the moment, probably because I feel more like a useless incorporeal ghost in my life right now than a powerful CEO with a flock of fancy cars ;-).
Great stuff
Date: 2003-10-16 02:14 am (UTC)TCH
I feel your pain
Date: 2003-10-15 09:15 am (UTC)Couldn't agree with you more when it comes to spineless passive agressives. It's like they're taking over the world and they've decided that they've gotta go through you and me to get to the top. Grumble, grumble.
Hmm... I think I'm breaking the cardinal rule that LJ replies should be supportive... ahem... must remedy this immediately: You Can Do It! Woohoo! (can I get one in return?)
---
oooh, I absolutely LOVE Sliding Doors!
LOL! Yes...
Date: 2003-10-15 11:50 am (UTC)Well haven't gotten temp job yet...but first I tried for in a long while. Agreed. Temp work blows big time. I did it for ten years before the evil company. It's why I stayed at the evil company for so long, fear of going back there. Ugh. Hopefully the economy will turn or maybe I should go somewhere where it's better? Any jobs in Canada? How about Australia? England? Ireland? Since I'm not good at any languages outside of English with a little French, I'm a bit limited on where I can defect to.
Anyways thank you muchly for the support and the commiseration. It does help. Here's hoping things get better for both of us.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-16 05:05 pm (UTC)Loved Sliding Doors, and feel sometimes as though life is the same way -- missed opportunities, opportune moments, and a dash of luck and Murphyism all in one. And btw, I love that Dorothy Parker poem! Copied it down in middle school because I thought it was funny. Must have a morbid streak somewhere...
Thinking of you! Would do a rune cast for you or read your cards if you were here.
Thank you
Date: 2003-10-17 11:11 am (UTC)Yep, that's the feeling exactly. Feel that way at least once a week. Horrible feeling. However, when I was sitting in my career transistion counselor's office and she asked how was my support system holding up - I told her the online network was helping tremendously. It helps to know there are people out there who care about you and do not think you are worthless or incompetent.
Who share the same interests you have and even without meeting you face to face or necessarily knowing your name or what you look like, can emphasize and like you based on how you present yourself online through words and sentences. For some reason it really helps a great deal and makes me feel better.
Ah, another Dorothy Parker fan. Yes, dark poem yet it always makes me smile. When I discovered it in college I remember copying it and posting it on my wall. People thought I was nuts. Seems we both have a morbid streak.
Thanks again. Really appreciate the support.
Re: Thank you
Date: 2003-10-17 08:38 pm (UTC)I really should read more of Dorothy Parker! I've only really read her in various quote books. Particularly like the one on pearls before swine. But yeah, looking at the Nightmare Before Christmas thing and this, seems as though there is a bit of morbidity... you've read Sandman right? I have a friend who generally doubts any recs I make because she says the books I read are depressing. Whereas I think things like Sandman are harrowing yet uplifting in the end...
Much luck, and many happy wishes... and we all think you're a great person, no matter what the job status is.
Re: Thank you
Date: 2003-10-17 09:53 pm (UTC)Yes, I read Sandman and loved it. I guess it depends on your pov. I see Sandman, Harry Potter, BTVS and Nightmare before Christmas as oddly comforting and uplifting but the dysfunctional family books which Oprah pushes as incredibly depressing. Seventh Heaven, Touched by An Angel, the Lifetime movies and the supposedly uplifting Oprah books depress me. While somewhat morbid horror tv shows, supernatural fantasy and dark comics comfort. Very odd. Maybe it's the escapist element? OR perhaps its the metaphors that I identify with?
On Gaiman - I started with Enter the Dreaming - which stared not Morpheus but two other odd characters. Then I grabbed all the Sandman books, because I loved the metaphors and mythos. American Gods disappointed me in comparison. Haven't tried Neverwhere.
Re: Thank you
Date: 2003-10-18 10:39 pm (UTC)Enter the Dreaming? Hrm, haven't heard of that... Didn't like American Gods so much, like Neverwhere, really like Stardust, and I think I'll really like 1602, though only read one issue.