If you want to do stuff, you need a job

Well, we kind of forgot to pick a theme this week so here I am writing about stuff.

So for the past couple weeks I have been busy as a bee. Why? Because I need a job and my mother won't stay out of my hair until I have been employed.

My last job as a barista was a lucky hit, they were fresh out of baristas at the Stop&Shop and I just happened the walk in the door at the right time. This fact is forever getting rubbed in my face as I wander the Cape Cod Mall filling out application after application. I have gotten one interview, which ended in unemployment and a slew of "Don't call us, we'll call you" statement variations.

For a place that is a major tourist destination, no one seems to need much extra help. But I guess that's what we have Bulgarians for. (No offense to any Bulgarians, it's just something I noticed at Stop&Shop that half the employees are from Bulgaria).

My mother doesn't really seem to care for all the psychological and social progress I've made just by looking for a job. Nor does the universe for that matter as I still am jobless. Previously I couldn't even walk up to a desk and ask for a piece of paper, other people had to order food for me or walk into a store next to me. I could barely do anything buy myself and now that I have been going to therapy and have started taking anxiety meds, I'm driving all over the place, talking to people about jobs, going to interviews and filling out applications. I talk without hesitation to people I've never met. I even fended off some guy hitting on me without breaking down. How is that for progress?

But somebody in the universe doesn't seem to care.

Heck I'm trying to find ways to attract commissions on DA, I'm practicing art like crazy on and off the computer even if I'm not uploading it. I want to start uploading some high quality original work.

I was even looking at starting an Etsy store for bracelets I know how to make. Which only reminded me of the things I want to be able to spend money on. Like corset sewing patterns because I really love steampunk and the Victorian era and conventions.

And now I'm off to go fill out more job applications! Wish me luck guys! I need it.

Summertime

As of last week I'm officially done school for another year, so that's pretty exciting. I haven't actually found a summer job yet, so I've got some free time on my hands at least for the next little while.

So far I've been using the time mostly to read and clean. One of my first priorities the day after my last exam was to go to the library (beaten only by sleeping in, and finally seeing The Hunger Games), so I have a good stack of books that I'm working my way through. My ultimate goal is to read books off of my to-read list faster than I can add more to it, but I never seem to be able to maintain that pace long enough to put a significant dent in it.

As for cleaning, I got hit by the spring cleaning bug a few weeks back and was actually antsy to be cleaning things all the way through exams. I'm about 90% finished with my room now, so after I finish up the last few touches tomorrow I can move on to the rest of the house. Freshly cleaned things just make me so happy, having basically my whole room be clean all at the same time is so refreshing and wonderful.

I also went home over the weekend to visit my parents. It was nice to see them, and to get out of the city for a little while. Also my dad showed me how to do my taxes, which is one of those things that I've sort of always had on the list in my head of things that will make me "a real grown up." But it was actually pretty straightforward, and I don't really feel any more grown up than I did before.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to summer. I have a lot of things I want to do this summer, although I always do at the beginning of summer, and I never seem to get them all done. But I want to get back on a regular exercise schedule, experiment with cooking new things, read a lot of books, do some writing, finish knitting a sweater I've been working on for four and a half years, start learning a new language (maybe Spanish?) through LiveMocha, get caught up on learning computer programming through Code Year, and maybe start a small garden in planters on my deck. And, you know, hang out with friends, go to the beach, eat lots of ice cream, and all the other normal summer activities. I don't know whether I'll actually be able to fit all that in, but hopefully I can at least do some of it.

This is what I do

Since we didn't pick a theme for this week and I haven't finished a punishment post yet, I'm just going to tell you gals about how much I love my job right now.

I'm working as a Youth Services Officer at a Service Canada Centre for Youth.  Basically that means that I help youth find jobs and make career decisions and important things like that.

One of my favourite parts of the job is doing presentations.  We go out into the local schools and present to classes about things like making resumes, interview skills, where to look for a job, career options, and workplace health and safety.  It's a lot of fun to interact with the younger students, and it's always nice to get out of the office for a little while.

I also really like how much freedom we have in this job.  There are certain things we have to do, and certain target numbers for presentations and clients and such that we're supposed to try to meet, but it's really up to us how we want to go about doing them.  So when it's nice out we can just decide that we want to go out and spend a few hours putting up flyers to advertise our services, and the other day we spent like three hours making fun posters to put up in the office, and the other day we had a meeting with the mayor just because we decided to call him up and ask if we could talk to him about youth issues in the community.

The most satisfying thing about this job, though, is when we feel as though we've actually really helped someone. After one of our presentations, a girl asked us about applying for Student Loans, because no one else had explained it to her, and it felt like we really helped her figure out what she needed to do.  Another girl asked us to help her find some information about small engine repair because her boyfriend was really good at it but wasn't sure it was a viable career option.  It's nice to feel like we're actually doing something good for the world!

So that's what I'm doing this summer.  It's wonderful and I love it.

I would if I could

Something that I absolutely love is long, leisurely meals with a large crowd of people.  The kind of meals where you have a long table full of people who can talk and laugh for hours.  Meals with lots of courses.  It doesn't have to be a fancy meal.  Just slow.  Relaxed.  I love that sort of shared time, just appreciating each other's company without distractions or disturbances, but just being in everyone's company, enjoying the simple sensory pleasures of the meal.  I don't get to do this very often because it's hard to get that many people together and usually the only places you can get multi-course meals are expensive restaurants.

I also enjoy summer Saturdays on my own.  A typical Saturday like this would usually involve going to the farmer's market, wandering around and smelling all the wonderful things and watching all the interesting people, having crêpes for breakfast and buying some fresh produce and flowers.  Then I'd curl up at my favourite coffee shop with a chai latte and my notebook to write for a while, and stop in at the used book store and the thrift store on my way home.  I like having adventures with other people too, of course, but there's just something satisfying about doing things by myself, so that I can go at exactly my own pace and stop to look at all the things I find interesting without feeling like I'm slowing down everyone else.  I don't get to have these sorts of days very often because summer only has so many weekends, and I can't spend all of them on my own.

I also love camping, like really really really love, but sadly I only get to go once or twice a year now that my family doesn't really go any more and my friends are more dispersed and it's just harder to organize.

Whoops

So, hey.

I could pretend this post is late because I just moved over the weekend and am still in the process of unpacking and getting settled, and didn't have time all day, but that's not true.  I was really pretty lazy about the whole unpacking thing and spent a lot of time standing in my room staring absently at my stuff.

Or I could pretend that the mid-afternoon break that I spent reading ridiculous theories about the recent Doctor Who developments was definitely a better use of time than writing a blog post.

Or I could pretend that it's because I had to go run a bunch of errands with my family in the evening... actually that one's true, but it was only a couple hours of the day.

Or because the new episode of Glee was on tonight and I mean, I obviously couldn't have written a blog post during the commercials.  That would just be way too much to ask.

No, no.  The real reason is because in the hour and a half that I had after Glee, my plan to quickly check my email and Facebook and such before writing a blog post somehow turned into getting sucked into TV tropes...

So, sorry.  I guess I'll await the decision of the punishment thread in the YP group.

I know there was discussion on Rachel's post on Friday about the theme for this week being "I never though I'd say this, but..."  However, since Sarah didn't do it yesterday and I still haven't come up with a good response to it, can we make this another free week and push that one ahead to next week?

As I mentioned, I've been busy moving and getting settled.  It's really weird to move back home after being away for three years.  Especially since we moved here only a few weeks before I left for university, so it doesn't even really feel like home.  The room that I always stay in when I'm here to visit was always essentially set up as a guest room that would work equally well for me or my brother or my grandparents or anyone that was staying here, but for the summer we're rearranging it so that it can actually be my own space.  We've moved a lot of the things that were stored in there so that it's not cluttered up with any of my brother's stuff any more, and we made space for a lot of my furniture from my apartment, and it really feels like home, which is something I've been lacking for a long time.

I never really felt at home living in university residences because, well they were residences.  No matter how long you lived there and how hard you tried to make it your own space, you were still sharing one shower between eight people and the toilet broke about once a month and those are just not things that make you feel at home in a place.  My apartment was a huge improvement, but it was very small and didn't have much storage space so I always felt cramped.  Plus I had roommate issues the first year I lived there and mouse issues the second year.

Long story short, right now is the first time in a long time that I've really felt as though I had a space of my own, and it's wonderful.  I want to make use of the comfortable, nurturing atmosphere I've created as a springboard for self-improvement this summer, meaning I want to do some serious writing, get into a healthy exercise routine, decrease the amount of time I spend on the computer, and finish the knitting project I've been working on for three years.  Those are my plans.

What I've been doing and what I will be doing

Good evening Nerdsisters!

Today was the last day of my undergraduate degree.  It hasn't really sunk in yet, but at this point it feels weird more than anything else.  Actually at this point it mostly feels like any other semester where I'm just glad to have survived end of term madness and have a bit of a break.

I passed in my very last paper yesterday, and today I had to defend my honours thesis, which is probably the most stressful thing I've had to do in the entire four years, but I think it went okay.  A bunch of my friends and I went minigolfing to celebrate being done.  We are the coolest kids.  But it was super cool minigolf with black lights and everything is painted in glow-in-the-dark paint, so that has to count for something.

As much as I'm glad to be done for now, the next few days are going to be really hard in a completely different way.  It's time to say goodbye to people, some of them probably forever, and that's really tough.  One of my roommates moved out on Sunday, and I haven't been handling it very well.  We've known each other since we were six and been close friends since junior high, and now he's just... gone.  I know we'll see each other maybe once or twice a year because we'll both go home for Christmas and such for a while yet, but it's just so weird that I've seen him on a daily basis for most of the past 16 years, and now we're going to live in different provinces.  I think the very worst part, though, is that it's not like everyone leaves at the same time.  People trickle off one by one and every time I turn around someone else is leaving and breaking my heart all over again.

Well, that was a depressing paragraph.  On a more positive note, I'm moving back home for the summer, and I'm kind of excited.  I like Halifax, and I like being able to walk to everything and I like it in the summer when you can go to restaurants and sit on the patios and when you can just go out for ice cream or grab fish and chips from the chip truck on the way home from work and all those delightful summery city type things.  But I also really like being at home for the summer.  I like having a deck, and my dad built this amazing outdoor fire circle place last summer that I absolutely love, and I like driving on the highway with loud music, and more than anything else I like having easy access to beaches.  Also the lake that's insanely deep and has a raft and a rope swing and we always stay there way too late and stargaze from the raft.  Also camping.  So yeah.  Excited about going home.

I have the next week and a half off completely, and I'm going to spend it reading and catching up on TV and movies and finishing my screenplay for Script Frenzy and I've decided I'm going to take up running.  That should be, erm, interesting.  After that, I'm going to be working at a Service Canada Centre for Youth for the summer, which basically means that I'll be helping other people find summer jobs and make resumes and cover letters and all those fun things.  It's really different from any other job I've had before but I think it should be interesting and I'm excited to get started.  Also it's only a 14 week position, so I'll end up with almost a month off at the end of summer, and I'm really excited about that!

Anyway, I guess that's it for me... especially if I want to get this posted before midnight! :)