Nothing to Read Here – Page 6

Aging ungracefully

Mar9

Posted by P-Dawg in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

I’ve never been the kind of person who cares about his age. Turning 30 didn’t frighten or upset me in any way, and I don’t expect future milestones to either. I know there are tons of people out there who repeatedly celebrate their 29th or 39th birthdays, but that’s always seemed silly and rather illogical to me. All that being said, I had two age-related conversations at work recently that actually pained me a bit.

First off, I sit next to a very nice young lady. She’s an intern, so I already understood that she was young but hadn’t given it too much thought. I had a couple of questions for her, but we had a meeting starting a minute from then, so I said, “We can walk and talk, just like on ‘The West Wing.'” “Excuse me?” she asked. “Oh, on ‘The West Wing’ they always had conversations while walking the halls of the White House.” It turns out that she never watched the show because when it first came on the air, she was…in elementary school. I had already graduated college when the pilot aired. It would be one thing if I were talking to some younger cousin or something, but I view her as a colleague and near-peer, so it didn’t occur to me that we were in entirely different generations. That became even clearer when I saw her mug that said “Class of 2007.” Oh yeah – and that was from her high school.

Secondly, the topic of age came up last week again when I was chatting with three or four people. “How old are you?” one asked. Before I could answer, one younger lady thought it would be wise to offer a guess: “38?” Like I said at the beginning of this post, I truly don’t mind my age number getting higher…but that one got me. “38!” I exclaimed. Someone else asked, “You’re 34, right?” “Yes, just 34,” I said. I know there’s not a huge difference there, and I’ll be 35 in just a few months, but that’s the first time in my entire life that someone has guessed my age to be multiple years older than it actually is. I always got younger guesses (and have even posted about being carded at Trader Joe’s – do they card people who look 38?), so that one stung a little. Is it the beard? I don’t think so, because I’ve had it a few years now. Is it that I’ve been carrying myself more professionally than normal? Nah, probably not. Do I need to start using that eye cream? Maybe. I’m telling myself that she’s just bad at guessing ages in general, as some people are. To be fair, I don’t know if she’s 23 or 28, and neither would shock me. But I never would just offer the high end of the range, even if asked directly. But maybe it’s exactly that kind of wisdom that comes with my advanced age.

(I wrote the majority of this post two weeks ago and am just getting around to finishing/posting it now. During that time, someone guessed that the 22 year-old intern was 24. She made a slightly horrified face. “Not fun, is it?” I asked. “No,” she replied, “not fun.”)

Tags: guessing, old, west wing

The new guy blues

Feb11

Posted by P-Dawg in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

When starting a new job, everyone wants to put their best feet forward and make the most favorable initial impressions possible. A lot of these things are within one’s control: eye contact, displaying a genuine interest in the company/co-workers, not blasting gangsta rap, etc. Then there are things outside of one’s control that crop up. Unsurprisingly, I have a story from the latter category.

It was my second week on the job, and though I’m super shitty with directions, I was finding my way around the office pretty well. It’s many times larger than my last working environment, plus there’s a bunch of construction going on that’s caused some wings to shape-shift from one day to the next. Regardless, I was getting my bearings and feeling good about that. I’d even settled on a bathrooming routing. (Yes, bathrooming. Look for it in the 2032 Olympics.) There’s the main, multi-stall/multi-urinal bathroom by the elevators (about 85 steps from my workspace), and a small, single-user, unisex one about a third of that distance away. My plan is simple: don’t shit in the small one. Makes sense, right?

On this particular day, I walked over to the smaller bathroom to do my lesser business. I went inside, locked the door, and then turned to see splashes of urine on the unlifted toilet seat. It was already too late for me to remove myself from the situation. Even quickly unlocking the door and leaving would still make it seem like I had been the last one to use the facility, so I was firmly entrenched in this predicament. My options were clear: have people think that I rudely pissed on the toilet seat with no regard for others or clean up a stranger’s urine. I kicked the seat up with my foot and thought about my options while I let loose my liquid. I finished up and knew what I had to do. I grabbed some toilet paper, lowered the seat, quickly wiped the inconsiderate stranger’s mess off of the seat (that never should’ve been left down in the first place), flushed my pee, his pee, and the t.p. down the toilet, and thoroughly washed my hands. It sucked, but it’s what I had to do unless I wanted to risk having some female see me leave the bathroom, assume the rudely left urine was mine, and tell others about the asshole new guy. I couldn’t let that happen, but the forced clean-up of some douchebag’s errant stream still left me (wait for it) a little pissed.

p.s. It only occurred to me while writing this that there was a third option I didn’t consider. I could have put the toilet seat up, done my thing, and then left it up. The next person might have thought I was rude for not lowering the seat, but upon lowering it herself, she would’ve known that I hadn’t been the errant pee-r. I wouldn’t have ultimately settled on that option because I still end up looking like a minor jerk, and I’m trying to avoid that until completely necessary.

p.p.s. I couldn’t help but think of David Serdaris’ story “Big Boy” while I was in there. If you’re familiar with that story, you probably already thought about it during this post. If you’re not, you should be. It’s good shit.

Tags: bathroom, jobs

Topanga Canyon = Communist Russia

Jan31

Posted by P-Dawg in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

I’ll say this up front: I think of a lot of strange things, and not all of them work. This might be one of those times, but that’s never stopped me before.

Last week, I was taking the long and winding road (cue music) to work named Topanga Canyon. For those of you unfamiliar with this road, it’s about 10.5 miles of one-lane twists and turns that take you up and down a mountain in order to avoid the 405. On this particular trip, the events that unfolded left me likening them to the machinations of a totalitarian state. I don’t know if Communist Russia is actually the best example, but since I just read a three-book series set in that environment, it’s the one that first came to mind. (Incidentally, those books also made me dream about denouncing my family as Western spies, but that’s neither here nor there.)

I was driving along at a decent speed, a happy worker bee in the system. Before long, I saw the cars up ahead were moving a little more slowly. The reason was clear: a pickup truck wasn’t going as fast as others would like. The pickup truck was our leader, though we had no say in the matter and never collectively chose him to be our #1. Because of his position of power, he set the pace for the rest of the cars, and there were now five of us behind him (with me in the #4 spot). After just a minute or so in this situation, it was clear that the proletariat – oops, I mean the cars behind him – were getting unhappy. The car directly behind the truck got a little closer to it, expressing his displeasure and encouraging the truck to use one of the turnouts. The rest of us followed suit, each inching closer to the car in front of us to send the clear signal to the truck that we were in solidarity. The truck wasn’t having any of it. Though likely fully aware of the unrest in the masses, he stuck to his guns and refused to cede control of the road. Meanwhile, the rest of us were bonding and growing more hostile by the minute. A turnout would go by unused, and we’d all throw up a hand as if to say, “Come on, man!” Minutes went by, and our collective frustration grew. We felt oppressed by the absolute nature of his rule, but we were no longer going to resign ourselves to the tyranny. After another couple of turns, some polite-ish honks and “move over” gestures started (none by me, but I appreciated my comrades – er, fellow commuters – taking further action). Still nothing happened. The truck ruled with an iron… whatever the car equivalent to a fist is. The message was clear: “I’m in charge. This is how slowly I want to drive. You can’t do shit about it. So suck it.” Just like Stalin, am I right?

Another minute later, and the truck’s left turn signal went on. Not the right one, which would’ve indicated the use of a turnout, but the left, meaning he was turning. This was no abdication of the throne, and he stuck to the pillars of his regime until the very end. He then made his turn, and you could practically hear the cars rejoicing. What a coup! The will of the people had prevailed! The euphoria was palpable as our collective speed shot up another 10mph or so.

As the new #1 moved along, something changed. You see, at first we only had the pickup truck as a point of comparison. In that regard, the new #1 was doing a great job. Slowly though, that car (a silver Mercedes) became judged on his own merit rather than just being celebrated for his “anyone but that pickup truck” status. He now had to deal with being the leader and the pressures that come along with that position of power. Only a minute or two into his reign, the car behind him moved in closer. New #2 (a tan sedan) had a taste of revolution, and he wasn’t prepared to give that up yet. He had ambition, and #1 was his only obstacle on his road to glory. Closer and closer he got, the Lieutenant who dreamed to be the General. I could sense #1’s fear by the way he drove: he sped up on the straight-aways to try to prove his worthiness, but he wasn’t comfortable taking the turns fast enough to keep the overzealous sedan off his ass. He wasn’t cut from the same cloth as the pickup truck. Instead, his rule was anything but absolute, always keeping a careful eye on the underlings he once led and wondering when he’d have to use the white flag equivalent of the turn signal.

But not today, my friends. Though I felt like the driver’s hand was probably already moving toward the signal lever, the traffic gods intervened. We were literally reaching the end of the road, and there would be no more revolting on this day. We made it to Pacific Coast Highway, and everyone went on their respective ways to their respective destinations. Whether it was to work, home, or to run an errand, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that after 10.5 miles comprised of tyrannical oppression, the unification and rise of the masses, a bloodless revolution, the dawn of a new era, an internal threat from an old ally, and a thwarted coup d’etat, we were all free. The ocean had never looked so beautiful.

Tags: coup, topanga

That’s bullshit: Rhyming edition, Part 2

Jan28

Posted by P-Dawg in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

As I typed in the title of this post, I went back into the archives and saw that rhyming had already earned its own “That’s Bullshit” post. So I named this “Part 2,” but it’s not really a sequel. It’s not even a gritty reboot of a franchise, though I do appreciate those. Disirregardless, I shall press on.

Let’s talk about the word “again.” It rhymes with “ten” and many other common words in this glorious yet frustrating language we call English, right?. Do you know what it doesn’t rhyme with? “Main,” “train,” or “Bahrain.” Yet that rhyme pops up in song lyrics and poems all the time. I get it, it looks like it should rhyme with those words, but here’s the thing: it doesn’t. For too long, I’ve heard lyrics like, “I’m standing in the rain/And I miss her once again” and just thought to myself, “Oh yeah, we pretend that those words rhyme.” Why do we let that slide? It’s not like the real way we pronounce “again” wouldn’t have any words with which to rhyme and so we give it a free pass and let it feast in the -ain/-ane category. There are plenty of great words there, but we still just hear that non-rhyme and accept it because we’ve been conditioned to think it’s been granted some kind of rhyming bigamy. Why? Just because they look like they should rhyme with each other? That’s not a good enough reason. We don’t pretend that “laughter” and “slaughter” rhyme, “rough” and “through,” or “show” and “how,” so what’s so special about “again”? Nothing, and fuck that. When the singer/writer pronounces the word as “uh-GEN,” then it has to rhyme with the right words. Anything else, and that’s bullshit.

Tags: again, bullshit, slaughter

Special delivery

Jan12

Posted by P-Dawg in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

I’m starting a new job in a little over a week, but until then, I have some time during the weekdays. This means that I can go places when not everyone else is there. Markets and stores are much less crowded at 10am on a Tuesday than pretty much any other time I used to be able to go. Two days ago was a perfect example; mid-day, I took a trip out to the bank, the post office, and then the drycleaners before coming home, and none of them were crowded. It was great, but that’s not why I’m writing. Nay, friends, I’m writing because my middle stop was a little out of the ordinary.

As I pulled into the parking lot for the post office, I smiled at the number of empty spaces. I settled on one just a few spaces away from the entrance, which was good since I was going to be carrying a box into the establishment. I walked in and got in line, which was mercifully short – only three parties ahead of me and one was already being helped. Directly in front of me was a woman who had a baby in a carseat with her. The baby was small, and when the woman saw me smiling at the kid, she implored him to say hi to me (which he refused). I asked how old he was, and she said, “Almost three months.” I was thinking about when my kids were that small when I heard a pretty loud crash behind me. If you had frozen time and asked me to predict what caused that sound without looking, my best guess would have been that one of the “Line starts here” stanchions had fallen over. I would have been wrong. I turned around and saw the front of a car partially inside the post office. I shook my head a little and looked more closely. Indeed, a car had run into the building and broken the lower panes of the window through which it entered. Next to it was an uprooted parking sign that had a Q-tip-esque mound of dirt attached to where it had once been firmly in the ground. Part of the car (a piece of fender maybe) was inside the post office, a good five feet from the window. My first coherent thought was something like, “Well that’s interesting.”

Other people were not as calm. Some ran outside immediately to see if the driver was hurt (which is a better reaction to have, I’d say). A group magically appeared around the car, assessing the situation. The woman at the front of the line kept asking, “Do we need to dial 911? Do we need to dial 911?” A woman near the door finally told her that it had been done already and that the lady who was driving the car was shaken up but fine. “She hit the gas instead of the brake,” she explained. “That’s an important distinction not to fuck up,” I said inside my head.

The lady with the baby and I made eye contact. We both made “big eyes” to intimate “wow” to each other, but she immediately turned more distracted. She took a step away from the carseat on the ground, walked back to it, left again, and returned again. “You ok?” I asked. “I just remembered that I’m parked next to that spot,” she said. “Oh yeah,” I thought, “I guess it’s good that I parked a few more down.” “Will you watch him for a second?” she asked me while pointing to the carseat. “Of course,” I said, and she left me – a complete and total stranger – with her almost three-month old baby. She came back less than a minute later and said that her car was somehow spared. “The police and ambulance are on their way,” she said, but she still looked really nervous. “I’m sure she’ll be ok,” I said reassuringly. “Oh, no, it’s just that I hope their cars don’t block me in. Maybe I should leave now so that doesn’t happen.” We collectively decided that since she was now next in line, she’d take her chances and stay where she was. Only one of the three postal workers was helping customers at that moment, since the other two were getting information from the driver, telling people what happened, etc.

Just a few minutes later, a male postal worker resumed his post and waved me over. “You don’t see that every day,” I said, figuring that that was the most appropriate quip. I was wrong again. “Well, four or five times actually,” he said. “Really? All here?” He nodded. “Why?” I asked, not really expecting him to have an answer. “The parking lot comes right up to the side of the building, and people push the wrong pedal,” he said matter-of-factly. I let it go, but I couldn’t imagine that enough people make that exact error in that exact location to have him witness four or five cars drive into his place of work. Shows what I know.

I walked past the crowd to my car, backed out of the spot very slowly (by pushing the correct pedals, might I add), and headed over to pick up my drycleaning. Thinking about what had just happened, I wondered if it was some kind of cosmic balance thing: oh sure, you can go run errands when it’s less crowded, but be careful – that’s when the highest incidence of pedal confusion happens.

Tags: crash, post office

That’s bullshit: sequence edition

Jan5

Posted by P-Dawg in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Some of my kids’ books are great, and some are less than stellar. I know my standards are probably too high, yet I’m still pleasantly surprised by some of the books strewn about their play area. Susan Boynton’s books, for example, are almost all awesome, and if you’re a parent of a kid anywhere close to the age range of mine, you’re probably nodding in agreement. They’re illustrated well, the meter of the verse is usually pretty solid, and there are sometimes little twists that make me smile (or even laugh out loud once – I know, that’s some serious shit right there).

But I don’t expect too much from the less ambitious ones. If it’s something like “Baby’s First Words,” they should be able to correctly put a picture of a shoe under the word “shoe,” and that’s not normally a problem. Actually, now that I think about it a little more, there is one small book of colors that has a mostly green apple on the page that’s supposed to illustrate “Red.” I think that’s some minor bullshit right there, but I have a new one that gets my goat a wee bit more.

“Numbers” is a small board book with a whopping six pages. Hard to mess that up, right? Page one shows a picture of a teddy bear, the number 1, and the words, “One teddy bear.” Pretty easy formula to follow, you might expect. Two shoes are on the page that faces that one, also with the appropriate text. Turn the page, and you’ll find three cupcakes and four cars waiting for you. So far so good, eh? But here’s where things go awry. The first time I turned the page, I was reading the book aloud to my kids. As I was saying, “Five fingers” and pointing to the splayed hand on the page, I couldn’t help but notice a foot waiting for me on the subsequent page. I actually had time to think to myself, “Nah, that can’t be right.” Sure enough, I moved over to the final page of the book and read aloud, “FIVE toes.” Yep, you read that right. The six-page book of numbers goes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5. Why the hell would they do that? It’s not like they needed to find something inextricably tied to the number six (like fingers are to five), because that’s not the case with three cupcakes, four cars, or…any of the others, actually. So it could’ve been six of anything – flowers, blueberries, rattles, babies, or virtually anything not R-rated. It’s like someone said, “Ya know, we had such a good feeling about 5 being fingers that maybe we should just try to replicate that success instead of pushing ourselves to find a good pairing for number 6.” Ok, sure, that could make a tiny bit of sense…if it weren’t a fucking counting book with only six pages. My kids are going to think that the number 5 follows the number 5 unless I step in and stop the nonsense myself. I really have no idea how it got published with what I consider to be a giant flaw, but I know one thing: that’s bullshit.

Tags: books, bullshit, counting

Degrees

Dec27

Posted by P-Dawg in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Some years ago, I lived in a tiny apartment in Santa Barbara with my lovely wife née fiancée née girlfriend. The main room was big enough for an ugly couch, a particle board wardrobe used as a hall closet of sorts, a coffee table, and a table we used as a television stand. That last item came in handy when I bought a t.v. that I saw on sale at Circuit City. It wasn’t anything fancy by any means, but it was bigger (and newer) than the one we’d been using up to that point.

The t.v.’s brand was Apex, which was close enough to Acme that it made me laugh on several occasions. That wasn’t the best thing about it though; nay, the best thing had to do with its volume. If I ever wanted to get a laugh out of fellow blogger MC Squared (who lived next door to us at the time), all I had to do was turn the volume from 0 to 1 Level 1 was louder than it should’ve been. Way louder in fact. I think 0.5 would’ve still been too loud if it existed, and 0.25 probably close to right. “Come on!” MC Squared would yell while cracking up. “That’s 1? How can that be 1? That’s impossible!” It got him every single time, and I can’t blame him. As I mentioned, the place was really small, so volume control actually mattered. My lovely wife would often go to bed before me, and if I were watching t.v. or playing video games with MC Squared, sometimes 1 was actually too loud. I tried putting a rolled up towel against the speaker a couple of times, but it didn’t make much of a difference; the power of volume level 1 would not be denied. In the end, I’d play games on mute occasionally or just be ready with the mute button if the show I was watching looked like it was about to break out into a gunfight. Still, it was pretty ridiculous to have to take those measures because my television was incapable of having just a wee bit of volume.

I thought about that old t.v. this morning while in the shower. I realize that might sound a little strange, but please allow me to explain. You see, the shower in the master bathroom of our new house has interesting controls. There are two handles, and each only turns one quarter of a turn. That 90-degree turn makes it go from nothing to full hot (or full cold). I’m used to two to four twists of a knob to get the water flowing, so this feels strange. In my mind, a quarter turn should get a trickle going, not be the most extreme turn possible. In any case, I usually turn the hot on and leave the cold alone. I like hot showers, and it’s almost always the right temperature for me without touching the cold handle. Every so often though, it’s a little too hot and I want to take it down a notch. Today was one of those days, and here’s why I thought of my old t.v.: I barely touched the frickin’ cold handle before it was already colder than I wanted. I tried moving it back just a smidgen, but I guess I went too far and turned the cold off completely again. I tried once more but was met with the cold water equivalent to volume level 1. In the end, I did a little tap-tap-tap to make incremental movements to just slightly cool the water. I was eventually successful after a few trial and error runs, but I felt a little silly having to resort to those measures. I checked, and the shower handles were not made by Apex, Pinnacle, Summit, Zenith, or any other synonym of Acme.

Yes, I realize that it’s probably easy to fix that problem, but that’s not my point. My point is that I can’t be alone in wanting things that don’t only go from 0 to 60, so why would they be made that way? Do they make microwaves that are unable to heat under a minute? Are there bowling alleys that only carry 6 and 16 pound balls? Do steakhouses only offer “rare” and “burnt” as cooking options? One thing is for sure: I’m hungry after thinking about steak. Peace out.

Tags: acme, shower, television

Isn’t that special?

Dec20

Posted by P-Dawg in Uncategorized | No Comments

Let’s talk about the word “special” for a moment, shall we? I’m not talking about it in the context of “special needs,” mind you. (But now that I think about that term, it keeps sounding more and more demeaning. “Oh everybody has needs, but his needs are super duper special!”) I’m talking about the noun form of it. We’re used to seeing that noun most often in two distinct realms: television and dining.

When there’s a t.v. “special,” it’s usually fairly true to the meaning of the word. That it, it’s a not-regularly-scheduled program that should have increased value to the audience because of its rarity. It’s special compared to the normal crap that the station airs, right? So I have no problem with that usage.

Let’s say you’re out at a restaurant and the server comes over to greet you. What often happens next? He or she tells you the “specials.” For the most part, I think these fit the bill as well. The swordfish entree isn’t on their menu but they’re making it tonight, so it’s special. Fine. That said, there’s a place down the street from my old office that my buddy Rob and I went to a handful of times that always had the same “special.” It quickly became a running gag, and we’d have to try to keep a straight face as the server said the same thing verbatim as we’d heard every other time in there. In fact, if we drove past that restaurant, it was likely that one of us would say to the other, “Hey, I wonder if they’re serving their lightly dusted sanddabs with blah blah blah mustard something.” “Ooh, they just ran out,” the other might reply. Good times.

That brings us to lunch specials, specifically the kinds that have no right using that word. I’ve been to countless places that have the same “specials” on their printed menus or even on giant banners that never get taken down. If you have them every single day for people to order, that’s not a special; that’s just a menu item. I thought about this because I was eating lunch a couple of days ago at a Mexican place recommended to me by that same buddy Rob. I studied the giant glossy banner announcing the “lunch specials” and saw that they each came with rice and beans. I ordered the carne asada burrito “special” because that’s what I do to compare manzanas to manzanas, then took a seat. A few minutes later, the guy nodded to me and I walked up to take my tray of food. I looked and saw only a wrapped up burrito on the plate. “Excuse me,” I said, “but I thought the special came with rice and beans.” Without missing a beat, he replied, “They’re inside the burrito.” He said it as if it should’ve been obvious. “Oh that makes sense,” I said sarcastically, but he missed my tone completely and smiled as though he fully answered my question. Awesome.

So that’s what caused me to analyze the word in detail and write this post. (And in case you were wondering, the burrito itself was pretty good, but nothing special.)

Tags: burrito, sanddab, special

Job hunting and the apparent scarcity of optimism

Dec15

Posted by P-Dawg in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

As I walked out of the drama classroom one morning during my senior year of high school, I noticed that the weather had changed during the preceding 50 minutes. “Cool, it’s raining,” I said aloud. “You’re an optimist,” I heard someone say. I looked, and it was my friend Pam. “Everyone else who came out was upset about the rain, but you said it was cool,” she reasoned. “Maybe I just like the rain more than other people,” I countered. She accepted that as a possibility, but said that I was still an optimist because I didn’t immediately jump to be upset by the change in the weather and its repercussions. I thought (and still think) that she was giving me too much credit, but the question remains: is optimism so scarce that even glimpses of it stand out as rarities? My experiences over the past couple of weeks have told me that the answer is a resounding yes.

As of a few days before Thanksgiving, I am looking for a new job. Even though my boss views it as some kind of unpaid, immediate, temporary yet indefinite furlough that will end sometime soon and restore order to things, I see it as being laid off. My first reaction (once the initial stupification wore off) was to hit the ground running and go get something else as quickly as possible. I started calling and emailing the contacts I had made over the past several years and got to work (trying to find work). I couldn’t imagine another course of action, but apparently others can since I was commended for the way I jumped into the daunting task. In an email to a few friends, I wrote that this was also an opportunity for me to really think about what I wanted to do and possibly find something better and/or closer to home. I was met again with warm responses lauding me for my optimism and attitude. While it felt good to read those emails from some of my closest friends in the world, I couldn’t shake my follow-up question: “Well what else would I do?”

It was just one day later that I was sitting in traffic on the way to “my” office. As many of you know (or should know by now), I like looking at bumper stickers and license plate frames. Going zero miles-per-hour in front of me was a car with this frame: “If you feel sad – Don’t. Be awesome instead.” I saw that and said aloud in my car, “Fuck yeah!” Of course I know it’s not that easy, but I love that mindset. I don’t see any value in dwelling on frustrations when I can proactively try to change things, and trying to be awesome might just be the best way to go about that. Not just good, better, or even great. Awesome. “You got it, stranger’s car!” I thought to myself, and I readied myself for the task ahead of me.

I began sending out cover letters and applications to a wide range of job openings. During that process, something occurred to me. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t selling myself as the bright, young professional with a ton of potential who employers should snag now before he lands somewhere else. Instead, based on the level of the positions I was seeking, I had to be the confident, experienced professional who can bring the lessons he learned from his past successes to help grow their companies. I’d never played that role before, and though it felt a bit artificial, I got behind it and adopted an extra level of fake confidence to accompany that persona.

Here’s the thing: it’s a super shitty time to be looking for a job. I’ve received very little feedback to date, and though I’ve had two good interviews so far for a company that’s bringing me back tomorrow, I know that there are 25+ jobs that haven’t even acknowledged my application. So I press on because, again, “Well what else would I do?” I’ve told clients in the past that my philosophy is to be simultaneously as prepared and as flexible as possible. Now it’s time to prove that I actually operate in that manner. In the meantime, I’ll do what I would ask of anyone else in a trying situation: work hard, be honest with myself and others, and be confident that those things will pay off in the end. I acknowledge the craptastic situation I’m in, and it is definitely frustrating to be met with so much silence, but I’m trying to be awesome instead. That’s as good as any place to start, right?

Tags: awesome, jobs

Word to the wise

Nov23

Posted by P-Dawg in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Sorry I haven’t been here for a while, and this is going to be extremely brief, but it’s important. I have wisdom to impart, so pay attention:

If you’re going to Target, don’t wear a red shirt.

That is all.