On the futility of millennial job hunting

The following  piece, while truthful, is full of self- pity and poor grammar. Proceed with caution. 

 

Things I’ve typed into the search bar of job listing websites:

• non- profit
• entry level
• food service
• coffee
• books
• something
• anything

results, over a period of about two months and 20+ applications:

• 1 interview ( job filled up right after)
• 2 responses back that the position I have applied for is not interested
• 4 confirmations that I had sent something in and “we’ll contact you further if we decide to interview, otherwise have a nice day”
• around 13 or so jobs never getting back to me at all.

Each job application takes anywhere from one to three hours to complete- I have to re-write my cover letter, contact potential references, tweak my resume, regurgitate the information in my resume into a form- all before I send it in and inevitably hear nothing back.

2-5 years experience is necessary for EVERY. SINGLE. JOB. I worked at the WC for a year and a half, so I have to stretch that a little further for my competency to even be mildly believable.

Two degrees don’t really mean anything. I knew this going in, and I don’t regret the work I put into them. I have them now, and even though they are more of a necessity than a marker of achievement, I guess no one can take them away from me.

But Dammit if I’m not a little bit frustrated.

It feels like I’m never going to find anything. Everyone tells me that I have to be patient, that applying is basically a full time job.

Can I even handle a full- time job? I’m so tired all the time, depression and anxiety turn me into a huddled mass of blankets and lethargy. It takes so much just to look at a website and not immediately overwhelm myself with my ineptitude.

I can barely get up in the morning.I have to exert a massive amount of energy- perhaps the only spoons I have all day- allocated to begging for a job. For a chance. For an email that isn’t just spam. For someone to look at my words and think that I’m good enough.

Applications on top of applications, hours of emotional labor poured into paragraphs never read by potential employers. I’m exhausted. I’m tired of scanning job websites and seeing very little that I am qualified for, let alone that I would potentially enjoy doing.

I’m not giving up, I can’t give up. I have to get out more than anything, and the only way to do so is to work, too save and scrimp and claw my way to freedom.

I’m just tired.

So to every other recent college grad who has no clue what’s in store, if anything-

I commiserate with you. lets be tired together.

life change list

2017 updates, to be expanded upon at my leisure ( or never, I get to decide).

• my 3 year relationship (discussed before) has ended more or less amicably. I was in a bad way, and then I was just a little sad, and now I have healed.
• I am in love again and hopeful
• I lost over 50 lbs. I have a lot of conflicting feelings about this, but the main thing is that gravity affects me slightly differently.
• I graduated from college with some honors and two degrees. One is rolled up in a tube in my closet next to my high heals and binder full of receipts. the other is on its way.
• I am back where I came from, but I plan to leave as soon as I can
• I need a job

That’s it. That’s the list.

also, I’m not going to be posting this blog to facebook anymore. If people want to read this, they can find it on their own. It’s not really for most of the people I interact with on facebook, so why give them a look into my life if they would rather pretend they hadn’t seen it?

Welcome back, I guess. I’m not trying to be a bad host, the ‘I guess’ was mostly for my own benefit.

okay that’s the post.

On Home

I landed in Baltimore yesterday after about a week visiting my grandmother in Nowhere, Midwest. I was so relieved for the travel to be over, so glad to be home.

Except I couldn’t stop thinking that where I was headed isn’t really my home anymore.

More like a holding tank. Like the 2 1/2 half hour layover from earlier, but longer- with no time of departure.

I don’t think where I live is my home. It hasn’t been for a long time. I’m back in my childhood bed, with the family that (mostly) raised me, but this isn’t my final destination.

It feels wrong to even type that, like I’m  not appreciative of the free roof over my head. I am. I wouldn’t have anywhere to go if it weren’t for this house and the people that let me live here, some of whom let me live in the first place.

But there is also too much weight here, too much dysfunction that I thought I had moved past. This is a site of trauma. I have been deeply and irrevocably wounded here. The woman who antagonized me, who wrapped my life around her little finger, also pays half the mortgage. I didn’t realize emotional abuse was a thing until I left for college and saw how fucked up her dominion had made me.

So I left any way that worked. I grafted my damaged parts onto those of another person and sought refuge in them. A person became my home, and for a couple of years I thought that was enough.

But people are not built of brick but of bone. A flesh and blood human being cannot-and shouldn’t have to- be a home. It is far too limiting to make space within another person, to try to dwell in love, dependency and misplaced attachment. I have made my mistake, and I am scared every day that I will ask of another the same impossible feat. As much as I want the arms of my new lover to become my home, it is not fair. Not to them and not to me.

I was quasi-homeless for a while. I spent a few months living in the borrowed room of my ex’s older brother. My life changed around me while the setting stayed the same. My found family. They are wonderful, caring people, but it is healthier that I left. I wouldn’t have been able to move on if I had stayed.

I don’t know where I will be living in the next couple of months, let alone years. I have a blurry blueprint in my mind- potential roommates, some living expenses budgeted out with no real money for any follow through. My future is in question, and I am frightened of ruining  the blank canvas in front of me.

Maybe I’m still a little homeless. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places- searching for people to do the impossible and take me into themselves, to shelter me. There isn’t really an easy answer. Until I find my footing, I won’t really feel like I belong in the place where I sleep and eat and rinse and repeat. I have no clue when I’ll get out of here, and no clue if the next place is actually a home or just another way station.

Maybe, at least for now, I have to be my own home.