Friday, February 27, 2009

Hope

Distant hope is encouraging and inspiring. Hope so nearly realized is tortuous and maddening.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Radio Silence

After six months of hearing nothing -- literally nothing but automated email responses -- back from potential employers, I finally have landed a job interview! I'm excited by the opportunity and confident that I'm qualified for the job, but I don't want to presume that I'll actually get the job. I don't want to raise my expectations only to have them squashed.

Actually, in the past couple weeks, I've gotten a few other promising inquiries:

  • A small, Chicago-based web company contacted me to write some online help for their site. This is turning into a story unto itself, and there will probably more to tell later
  • A headhunter in Kansas City must have found one of my old resumes and has asked if she could submit it to a few companies back in Missouri. I gave her the go-ahead because the jobs sounded kind of interesting
  • The state of Illinois has asked me to come in for a competency test to see if I'm qualified for a position that I applied for a month ago. I'm waiting on my college transcript to arrive
  • Even a regular customer at worked asked me if I would be interested in helping her walk dogs. I gave her my number

I'm not sure if this is the end of the radio silence of the past half-year or just a momentary reprieve. Either way, I'm grateful for the much needed morale boost.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Skinny

When people ask me whether or not I'm one of those skinny people that can eat a ton and never get fat, I say, "Yes." And while this is sort of true, it's not the entire story.

I can pack away large amounts of grub, and I have been known to snack all day. While I do have a high metabolism, the real reason I'm so skinny is because on the whole I don't eat very much at all.

I'm not really a grazer. If there's unlimited food sitting in front of me, I'll eventually get full and stop eating. I'm not a forager, either. I won't go looking for the perfect food to sate my hunger. I'm more of a scavenger. I'll wait until food presents itself and then I'll swoop in and gorge myself. I'm an opportunistic eater.

So, while I can eat quite a bit in one sitting or devour a constant stream of snacks for a while, I will usually go for long stretches of time where I eat nothing at all. Take, for instance, a few days ago. Without realizing it, I went nearly 48 hours only eating a bowl of cereal.

It's not that I don't get hungry. I do -- especially in the case of the previous example -- but that's usually only when I'm nearly starved. When I'm only slightly hungry, I usually don't notice until I think about it. And if my stomach doesn't rumble (which it usually doesn't) then I don't think about it. Basically, and this sounds pretty stupid, but I forget to eat until it's way past time to do so.

Recently I've begun to recognize something about myself and my body. When I've gone a while without eating, I tend to get even more surly than normal. (I know, it doesn't sound possible.) I believe this is because my blood-sugar is so low and I'm experiencing something similar to what diabetics feel if they haven't taken their insulin. So, I'm trying to recognize when I feel inordinately cranky, and take that as my cue to eat something. It's just sad that it's taken me 25 years to recognize this.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Talent

Despite whatever talents I have, think I have, forget I have, or wish I had, one talent I know I have is a talent for picking friends. They are quick to point out when I am selling myself short (no pun intended), and they have seemingly never-ending patience for showing me the positive when all I see is the negative.

Thanks to all my friends, far and near, who call me out on my bullshit, don't let me wallow in my own self-pity, and otherwise encourage me to be a better me than I am willing to settle being.

That said, there's no accounting for why I have good family. I'm just lucky, I guess.

Circa Now