Working for a Living (or free coffee)

As promised, I've been diligently looking for writing internships these past few weeks. I even got a tad bit obsessed with it on my vacation (which I don't recommend as that's not how vacations are supposed to be spent). What I'm looking for is simple. Or at least I thought it was simple. I just want to learn a bit about the publishing industry, get some writing cred and something that looks good on my resume. In exchange, I will contribute long hours, tireless patience, edits, re-edits and re-re-edits. Notice that I'm not asking for money? Nope, none. All that for free. But for some reason, despite the fact I am willing to be an editorial slave for a few months, it is still incredibly difficult to find this type of situation. Or at least this type situation that actually wants me.

This brings me to the thrust of this entry. While I freely admit that I am willing to give my time for free in exchange for some experience, I do not believe this should be the modus operandi for every person working out there. Take for instance, Rob (heart of my heart, washer of my dishes, blender of my margaritas). He is currently working a dismal job. His hours are long, his commute is an hour each way, his benefits are being cut and the company clearly cares very little about its employees. It affects his quality of life, my quality of life and our relationship. Recently both of us have vented about this to family and friends. To our surprise, their reactions weren't those of empathy or encouragement. Instead most people say something along the lines of "well, at least you have a job". When I have commented on how little teachers are paid or how I am stressed about the idea of having to find work after my temporary credential expires I have received the same type of responses.

This is dangerous thinking. Yes, we are in an economic recession. Yes, many people around us have lost their jobs and cannot find any work. Yes, it is fortunate to not be in that situation ourselves. But I think we are forgetting a few things. This recession is not an excuse to start expecting less out of the quality of our jobs. It is not a reason to stop expecting health insurance, or vacation or a comfortable work environment. The economy will improve eventually (with lots of work!), but then what will we be left with if we haven't held corporations and other businesses to a high enough standard when things were rough? The reason we have labor laws (not to mention weekends, maternity leave and worker's comp) is because people like us have been working for legislation and putting the pressure on employers to uphold those laws for many years. If we suddenly stop being vigilant in this we are doomed to regress.

When I do someday get a "grown-up" job (ie not nannying, or tempting or interning) I will look for an employer that values their employees' time and the contributions they make. But until then, I will say to the next publishing agency/website/weirdo hermit author looking for an assistant, "Use me! I'm yours for the taking!"

Oh yeah, I have a blog

I will be honest with you. I'm not a very good blogger. It's true. I have tendency to take long, leisurely hiatuses in which I don't so much as think about my commitment to my blog or really any personal writing for that matter. This is not good for a number of reasons. First of all, any person who wants to write has to have a blog. Let's face it, even people that don't want to write or aren't even very good at writing have blogs. I should be so exception to this rule. Blogging is where it's at, and I wanna be where it's at! ( still figuring out what 'it' is. will get back to you)

Since my last blog post almost an entire year ago I have moved back to the bay area, met the love of my life, worked as a nanny and a teacher and have finally come to terms with the fact that if I'm not working as a writer then I still have a lot of work to do. So here I am, back to documenting my post-collegiate life, one step at a time. At the moment, the job market is tough and I have to force myself not to become discouraged by its slim pickins. But on the bright side I make enough money to pay my rent, eat good food and still have some left over to play and travel. I live in a great apartment in the Lake Merritt area with two cats (who knew), a bunny and a very loving and domestically-inclined boyfriend. We even have a sliver of a lake view! Life is pretty peachy.

Right now I am sending out resumes looking for an editorial or writing internship to really get some hands-on experience in the publishing industry. The more I learn about writing professionally the more I realize it's not a career that comes to you suddenly. It has to be built over years of experience, persistence and diligent writing. I don't think this is something that comes naturally to most people, the whole making yourself do something for years and years without receiving a dime for it. It sure doesn't for me. But writing fills me and as many times as I may walk away from it for a while I always come back and it always feels like coming home.

I'll try to make this a regular post, not just about job/internship hunting, but about my whole, wide, ever-expanding life. Oh and I'll even figure out how to add pictures to make this a bit more visually exciting.

Peace out!

A Sleepless Night

I can't sleep. For some reason I thought pouring my heart out to this glowing screen in the wee hours of the morning would help that. But now that I'm here I don't know if I have the words. All I can think of is my mama, lying far away in a hospital bed, hooked up to machines. I want to hug her waning body, tell her I love her. But I can't. I can't do anything now so I lie awake and try to put my heart in hers from far away.

Despite the endless blood tests and MRIs, a team of doctors just can't seem to figure out what is breaking the body and spirit of my steel magnolia mother. What terrifies me is that I think I know: I think we did this to her. I think we took and took and took and now she just can't give anymore. I hate thinking of all the times she rode silently in the backseat while my father and I flexed our intellectual muscles in the front. All the times she bit her tongue to save our egos. The things she gave up to support our dreams, letting her own fall by the wayside. I'm scared that her painful deterioration is the tragic but inevitable consequence of our selfishness. For all my bullshit rhetoric about feminism I was never able to elevate the one woman in my life who needed and deserved it the most. And now, I want to be there with her, not because I think she needs me but because I can't assuage the guilt that's coming in heaps. I want to somehow erase my misdeeds against the person who only ever tried to do right by me. I want to repay my debt to her, to take care of her like she has taken care of me. But nothing can be done tonight. So I will lie with my guilt because for now that seems like the only fitting punishment.

Another poem!

I found this while looking through an old blog I kept while in England. I like it. Though it was written over a year ago it feels very pertinent to today. Also, it has a sort of Adrienne Rich vibe that I'm digging.

Untitled

I worry
That the streetlights flicker while I sleep
Speaking a brilliant Morse code
And they're laughingLaughing while I sleep
And I'm dreaming in Latin
Or maybe Aramaic
Of bagged lunches and scrapped knees
But I could,I know I could,
Dream of smudged ink
And hands that smell of turpentine
But I fall asleep to the hum of the bread machine
Whirring and moving its parts
Against the night-silence of an old house
This poem will never be read
Or ripped to pieces
Only yellow between these covers
Grow old, distant, absurd
Climb into a chest of drawers
And when I come around again
Looking for a sweater
Or maybe this
It will be my turn to laugh
Not like the street lights
But like an arthritic cellist
With negligent hands

Still under construction

I needed to channel some hostility into something productive. It's definitely still rough around the edges but I'm impressed with what I can produced in twenty minutes with a little effort and some lingering venom.

Hey You

Hey you
Yeah, you
Pretty boy
Swimmy swimmy eyes
Kissy kissy lips
Yeah, you
Too cool to be cool
I know you care too much to care
But I got something to say to you
You see these eyes?
Too busy
Scanning the horizon
Watching my back
To go swimmy swimmy
In yours
See these lips?
Too busy
Speaking the words that would leave you breathless
To go kissy kissy
See these feet?
Too busy
Dancing circles around you
Stomping the ground of places
You will never go
See these hands?
Too busy
Writing the truths you can’t bear
Giving the love
You won’t know
Too busy
Too busy

Eternal Questions

I take a hot bath tonight; an old, sacred ritual. I wash the dishes in my small kitchen and try to ignore the swarms of fruitflies hovering around my face. Afterwards, I sneak outside to the neighbor's lemon tree that hangs low over the dividing cyclone fence. The fat yellow orbs hang high in the tree and I have to stand on my toes to get a decent sized one. I sneak back inside quickly. Though I don't think they will care. I would rather not be caught stealing a piece of citrus from a relative stranger's tree; it just seems slightly undignified. Inside I quarter the fruit and squeeze the juice from each piece into a glass of ice water. The juice bites at the small cuts on my fingers left from hours spent at the metals lab.

I savor the details of these nights, especially as the ones I have left become fewer and fewer. One month from tomorrow I will graduate from college with a degree in (I know) English. In a matter of twenty-four hours I might entertain the thought of becoming an au pair in France, taking a wild adventure cross-dressing adventure in India or some desk job worker in San Francisco. While it isn't 100% accurate to say that I have no idea what I plan to do with my life, I fear I am getting dangerously close to that conclusion.

This afternoon I was walking with Professor Martin to my fiction class when he asked me if I am going to grad school. When I told him no he seemed genuinely surprised. I asked why and he said because I am one of the top graduating students in the English Department. Let me first say that this came as an incredible compliment to me. I am deeply flattered. But let me add to that the fact that it has never even occured to me that I am part of the English Department, let alone a top student within it. I had no idea that professors talk about such things. Multiple professors talk about these things! Talk about me! Sometimes I think this goes to show how very little I take seriously, even when it would really behoove me to take that thing seriously. Maybe I could be on the fast track to a Ph. D in English. Maybe, as way too many people have said to me, I do have a true "professorial" vibe and should run with that. But for whatever reason, I can't go there right now. Or maybe I just won't. Whatever it is, some big part of me refuses to take my life that seriously right now. I want to putter around aimlessly in menial jobs, I want to have torrid love affairs with men who are all wrong for me, I want to pack my possessions into cardboard boxes and flee the country for a year if I so please. Hell, even the fact that I have a pet rabbit seems like an overwhelming responsibility at the moment.

Simply put, this age baffles me. I feel all this potential for greatness in my life. And I don't just mean that figuratively, sometimes I really can feel it, as if this untamed energy is knocking about inside me. I can see my talent and I can hear all about it from others, and that's all wonderful and encouraging but I keep coming back to the same question: what the hell do I do with it all? In reality, I shouldn't need this explained to me. I have the degree. I've lived alone long enough to know how to survive, or at least how not to die. I should be able to figure out how to turn raw talent into honed skill and how to translate that into some semblance of a successful career. A few months back I read this quote in a book called Art and Fear. It said: Fatalism is a species of fear- the fear that your fate IS in your own hands but that your hands are weak. Ever since, those words have been breathing down my neck, echoing in my ear when I try to sleep at night. What if I fuck it all up? What if I take the talent I have and flush it down the toilet? This is the stuff that haunts me.

I don't have the answers just yet. Maybe it will take years for me to find them and maybe some of them will be lifelong quests to answer. The one thing I do know is that I have a hell of a lot of work left on my necklace and a Shakespeare essay due in a week. As they say, one day at a time.