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#plus the jobs i've applied to have not gotten back to me and blah blah blah i'm doing nothing with my life at the moment
youremyonlyhope · 1 year
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Pippin is my favorite musical of all time.
But unfortunately, I seem to fixate on it during times of my life when my brain is especially existential, anxious, depressed, etc.
The last few days, I've been thinking about Pippin a lot, reading analyses of it, listening to the music. Just generally enjoying my comfort musical.
Then I remembered that earlier this week, my therapist heard me describing how I feel unfulfilled while unemployed and doing a lot of stuff for other people or to make other people happy and not doing anything for myself, all while having a completely messed up sleep schedule. And she said "Hmm... honestly... that sounds a little like depression."
And I was like "No. No. Because I am doing things. It's not like when I've been depressed in the past." but now that I'm back to fixating on Pippin, I think she was somewhat onto something since that's usually a bad sign. Yay!
#pippin#it's kind of sad that my comfort musical is pippin. but like. it's comforting for a reason. i need the comfort.#i'm currently being overworked by the theater i volunteer with because i was brought on to sew some pieces#and a couple turned into 6 pieces and then adding trims to other things and repairing a bunch of costumes#and completely deconstructing 2 different dresses to make them into new things#and then further alterations and tailoring and yeah this is not what i had signed up for#and how i need to learn to say no because i now have no time to do what i want to do with my free time#plus the jobs i've applied to have not gotten back to me and blah blah blah i'm doing nothing with my life at the moment#and past pippin obsessions have been senior year of high school when i had no clue what to do with my life#into freshman year of college when i was happier but still feeling strange about having no direction#then junior/senior year of college when i once again had no clue what i was doing with my life but about to graduate.#then one year post-college when i was considering leaving my job in the next year-ish to pursue theater#THEN during the really dark era of the quarantine in April just before May hit aka the lowest i've been in over a decade#literally crying every single day i was so stressed and anxious and depressed#and now. after a year of switching jobs. finally thinking i know what i want to do. and now having to actually do it.#while unemployed because my literal dream job that was supposed to last at least 4 months to a year only lasted 2 months
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jadelyn · 6 years
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Hi Jadelyn - I'm about a month and a half into an absolutely grueling job search. I've gotten a few interviews (which is progress for me), I know from a previous stint in an HR busy-work job that hiring takes time, and I feel like I've read every resume and cover letter advice post on the entire Internet, but it's really difficult not to feel discouraged. Any advice for keeping my chin up? What else could I be doing? (My field is communication/multimedia, if that makes a difference at all.)
Oh, love. Job searching is The Literal Worst. I want to smack people who joke about being unemployed like "at least you've got lots of free time" bitch I have been there and I would've traded all that "free time" plus a couple firstborn children (I mean, not mine? But a couple of them anyway) just to be relieved of the stress and burden that is job searching. It's that bad.So first, I'm sure if you've been reading All The Things about job searching you've already hit upon Ask A Manager, but if not, for the love of god go read her blog. Go through the archive of cover letter and resume posts. Read the comments, too - that is literally the only site on the entire damn internet where I would actively advise this lol - often people will add bits of industry-specific advice that Alison wouldn't have known to give. Her cover letter examples are the single most helpful thing on that topic I've ever found.But that doesn't really address the hard part, that discouragement. Because job searching, at its heart, is a months-long experience of constant rejection before you finally get to a "yes". Of course that wears on you! Rejection fucking sucks, and it's so easy to start to take it personally after awhile. There's not much I can say in the face of that, but what I can give you, here it is:*you already said it yourself, hiring takes time. Keep reminding yourself of that. I actually just pulled up my work email on my phone to look at the weekly recruiting report that I emailed the team today, because it has a column for "days open" for each job. My longest-open positions have been open for 216, 183, and 166 days. The first and third are branch manager positions (that 216 day one is under an area manager who is my literal least favorite to work with because he always drags his fucking feet like this, I hate hiring for him), the 183-day one is for a part time teller. It's taken this manager OVER SIX MONTHS SO FAR to try to find a part time teller! When I talk about doubling your estimate of when they should get back to you, I am not kidding. I am perhaps even understating the case a bit. So at a month and a half in, the first jobs you applied to may just now be looking at resumes lol. It's so hard to do, but be patient. Keep reminding yourself that the time of hiring managers does not move like the time of us mortals in the real world. A mere day passes for the hiring manager, and years have flashed by for us here. *that being said, don't wait by the phone for anyone on the assumption that they just haven't seen your resume yet and as soon as they do they'll probably call you, either. The only way to stay sane in a long job search is to apply and move on. You're probably keeping some kind of record of where you applied and when (and if you're not, you should be), so when you put in an application somewhere, note it down on your record, then move on and pretend it never existed at all. Otherwise you'll drive yourself crazy staring at your phone and willing it to ring. Use hobbies to distract you. Go binge watch all of Leverage before Netflix takes it away (btw fuck you Netflix). Don't dwell on the jobs stuff! *and here's the biggest thing, and the hardest one to remember: it's not about being the best applicant period. It's about being the *best fit* for the specific job.The company is not asking "who's the best worker" or "who's the best person". They're asking "who is most likely to be successful in this role?" because a successful employee helps the company and is happier and more likely to stay long-term. I've stopped short of applying to jobs that I'm eminently qualified for and which pay more than my current job, because the job descriptions were heavy on administrative work and I'm actively trying to escape the administrative dungeon. Could I do them? Sure. Would I do them well? Fuck yeah I would. Would I be successful in the long run? No, because I'd be unhappy and resentful and still looking for more. So if I applied for an HR assistant job, and I go in there as a rock star HR assistant with 4 years of experience and a degree and a certification already under my belt, and another candidate came in who was perhaps less experienced or just not an overachiever, who was competent but maybe not particularly ambitious, the company would be better served by hiring that other person, not me. Because while I might've been a huge asset to the department in the short term and worked out more efficient processes and upgraded their tech because I'm a self-starter blah blah blah, in a year or two I'd be expecting promotions and/or looking at higher level positions elsewhere, and our hypothetical competent but not spectacular employee might not have revolutionized their workflows or been the point person for a whole new HRIS implementation, but they would be going merrily along being perfectly good at their job with no expectation of change. Which is better for the company than having to go through the hiring shit all over again when I find something better and take off. So on paper, I'd be the "better candidate", but the better hiring decision would be to not hire me. So when you get turned down for a job, remember that it's not a reflection on your quality as a candidate. It just means someone else was, not a better candidate or a better employee, but a better fit for that specific job at that specific company at that specific time. Which is a reframing I've found really helpful as armor against the tendency to take job rejections personally.(and under no circumstances, ever, is a job rejection, or for that matter a missed promotion, or getting laid off or fired, or literally anything to do with bad stuff happening to you at work, a reflection on your quality as a person. We're culturally really bad about over-identifying ourselves with our jobs and it's super unhealthy. Your value as a person has fuck all to do with your place in the capitalist engine. Fuck that noise.)
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