Self Help

24Jun08

Dear JoAnne,

          Like you, I am a job-hunting, single white girl who is 24. Statistically, it is only possible to apply for employment utilizing Monster.com, YahooHotJobs.com and Craigslist (in 5 metropolitan cities) for 4 hours each day. Please, I’m going crazy here in my parents’ home in the middle of nowhere! What do you do with the rest of your time? HELP!!

                                        -Searching in Kankakee, IL

 

Hello Searching.

            My friends often ask what the hell I do with myself all day long and I’ve wanted to thoroughly answer them for some time, so I am grateful for your inquiry.

 

The first thing you can do is accept temp jobs off the internet. Are they credible? Sometimes. Are they lucrative? No. But do they keep your Sudoku-flexing synapses sharp? You bet! The following is an example:

 

Number two: find a hobby. Me, I like to play the piano. I find old popular sheet music buried in our basement – I whip it out and challenge myself to see if I can transpose it, play it with a boogie woogie bass line, sing it in español, etc.

 

 

 

(A note: In participating in such an exercise, you can deliver a small pep talk to yourself, as being unemployed is lonely and a bit maddening. The words of popular music in the nineties can be inspiring and will, if sung with inflection, propel you back to your usual mind frame of greatness.)

 

 

If you still are looking at an entire afternoon to yourself, I suggest finding your nearest library! And although the Marshalltown, IA Public Library does not get the Sunday New York Times until the Thursday FOLLOWING its publication and then separates the magazine and hides it in the stacks of the 4th floor, it is a very special place full of resources and ideas. Good ideas. Like this one:

 

 Yes, that’s a VHS. And thank goodness MY parents still have one of those players.

Then there is also a little game I call VISUALIZE. You can play it anywhere! I like to play it on my bicycle or sometimes while I swim laps in the pool. Here is an example scenario: 

I pretend that I work for VH1. I produce a show where up-and-coming funny people say absurdly stupid shit, and then we all go to Brooklyn for drinks after, meeting up with a conglomerated Pulitzer panel of writer and artist friends. Nymphs of wit and charm, waif-like Scandinavians in earth tones and tattoos. Subversive poets who confound me, who speak over my head. This will be obvious on my uncontrollably expressive face, so the cutest of the VH1 street comedians grabs my hand and whispers inappropriately in my ear; he is in now and he knows it. I don’t mind giving him that. Possibly I will hate him tomorrow, but this is tonight and frenetic Williamsburg is such that I am willing to nurse his ego for the promise of contact, for the hope of a silly note as he leaves early to hunt and gather in his too-small-for-such-talent cubicle. He will leave me temporal words in passing, but evidence! It was a project worth creating; the wrinkles in my forehead will relax into a small smile as I remember. I’ll keep that Duane Reed receipt – with the scribbled orange crayon block letters – in my sock drawer and pull it out sometimes when my feet are cold.

It never hurts the old ticker to nod towards the occasional bit of Lifetime inspired melodrama, and who knows! I could probably develop this whole paragraph into a contest for Harlequin Romance novels and win $1,000.

So what I’m saying here, Searching, is that you must dream big. That is, in the hours that you aren’t crying over Craigslist.

Best of luck to you,

JoAnne M. Harris

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed under: Humor   |  1 Comment
Tags: boogie woogie, Celtic Feet, Craigslist, Job-hunting, Public Library, R Kelly, VH1