Legends of the Fall was on again last night. Now, I don’t know if you’ve seen this movie, but I’d venture to guess that if you’ve seen even one movie, you’ve probably seen this one, since it came out during perhaps the peak of Brad Pitt (pre-Angie) hysteria, in 1994, when I was but an elderly high-school senior and Brad had yet to get serious with Gwynnie.
It’s on pretty regularly on channels like TBS and TNT. And it stars other rather famous people, like Aiden Quinn and Anthony Hopkins and the ill-fated Julia Ormond, whom I once saw shopping for hats at Barney’s and who is now starring in Lifetime movies. Which just goes to show that while men grow up to date Angelina Jolie, women … well, anyway.
I believe I’ve hinted around at this before, or maybe come straight out and said it, but … the job search is much like dating. And different jobs are much like the different dating options in your life, ranging from the abusive to the adorable. Certain ones are right for certain people, and not for others. And, I have to believe, there’s one for everybody.
The job that comes to you easy, you may not want—until it’s gone, and then you live a life of regret over it. The job that’s a challenge only makes you desire it more—until you get it and it reveals that it’s a total bore and a half, and has halitosis. And the job that treats you like shit and kicks you when you’re down? Well, you’ll just come crawling right back to it in the morning hoping it will still have you, until the day that the light streams in through the dingy window of your pathetic, oppressed soul and you get the nerve to karate-chop it in the nuts and scream “I quit!”
After all my talk of sleep yesterday I had a rather weird night last night. I had vowed to go to bed at a more reasonable time, wake up early (well, earlier than 1), and get started on the day. So I was deep in sleep by 3 am, when my neighbor came home, turned on her favorite numbingly repetitive tunes, and proceeded to have a tantrum involving extensive sobbing and wall-beating. Oh dear.
Poor neighbor. For some reason I suspect that her angst has something to do with a man rather than a job, for then she was on the phone, and occasionally yelling, and no one does that to former or potential bosses—do they?
photo credit: divemasterking2000
Last night, YUD hit the town with her dear friend C., who is married to a lovely man and has an adorable, nearly 1-year-old baby, a good job, and a cute house with a garden, a deck, and her very own worm farm. In the early part of the evening, something came up. The word vicarious. As in, “Tell me some stories so I can live vicariously through you.”
At least to YUD, who as we know is both single and unemployed, “vicarious” stings a little. It feels patronizing, for one. Like, “Oh, I’m a banker pulling in 7 figures and you’re a quirky semi-employed blogger; you must have some GREAT stories!” (And not much else, is the subtext.) Or, “I’m happily married and you are obviously not, I bet you have some hilarious things to say about that!”
(Note that C. is not guilty of this, she merely brought up the term.)
Well, let’s take that one particular a-hole and multiply him by oh, let’s say, 3 million. Nearly three million single men in New York between the ages of 35 and 54. (Not that I’d date the upwards range on that, but whatever, it’s an average, and you can estimate the twentysomethings for yourself.)
Found, this morning, scrawled on the back of the homework for the Dreamweaver class (homework I am considering not doing, as I don’t have Dreamweaver and, more offensively, the teacher welcomed us the first day by saying, “I teach by the Socratic method, which means, if you ask me, ‘How do I open the properties inspector?’ I will answer, ‘How do you think you open the properties inspector?’”):
Thank you sweetie for everything.
You kept falling asleep so I left you be.
Very peaceful.
Nice meeting you.
Take Care.
Not just figurative: Burnt cream and meringue kisses
I had dinner with two friends last night, both of whom I met at my very first New York City job.
That was, in fact, in a different career and time altogether, back when YUD thought that advertising, at $25,000 a year, was waaaayyy more lucrative than a $20,000-a-year magazine job. The good old days, I suppose.
Ahhh, couples. Glorious, joyous, vacation-going, wedding-attending couples. You can tell they’re meant to be together (who else would take ‘em?). Oh, I’m not bitter. But there’s something about a wedding that makes a single, unemployed girl weep just a little inside.
I love to be alone. I even need to be alone fairly regularly. I prefer the kind of companionable silence that is best achieved when one is without company. I just don’t love eating dinner alone unless it’s in front of The Real Housewives of NJ/NY/at least OC; I don’t love making awkward conversations with strange men from Canada just because I am alone and therefore a good target for “vacation friendship”; I don’t love, actually, making friends with ANYONE who I can guarantee I will never see again – or want to. I mean, yes, maybe if I’m going to get something out of it, like a job or free meal or at least a story for my blog – maybe if it’s on my terms – but generally, thanks but no thanks. Keep on walkin’, stranger.
(Kind UVAers who accepted me into your dinner party last night: this does not include you.)
photo credit: susieblackmon
Ahhh, couples. Glorious, joyous, vacation-going, wedding-attending couples. You can tell they’re meant to be together (who else would take ‘em?). Oh, I’m not bitter. But there’s something about a wedding that makes a single, unemployed girl weep just a little inside. 