I’ve come to terms with this whole unemployed thing on a personal level, but I suspect that it’s negatively affecting my social life. I have a very vibrant social life and too many friends to count and numerous engagements to attend and lots of modesty. But lately, when I attend my fiestas and rendezvouses, I sort of feel… lost. I try to hold conversations and can’t come up with my usual entertaining commentary. I ask questions of people and then just stare blankly, without any proper facial or verbal reaction to their answers. I try to talk and the wrong words fumble around in my mouth, then awkwardly hoover around in the air. My confidence is shattered!

After some serious introspection I’ve decided it’s because I’m afraid that everyone is judging me for my lack of a job. I have no unemployed friends anymore. The one friend who joined me in such misery just found a job, hurrah for her, boo for me. I know logically that I am no less desirable now that I’ve graduated. I know logically that I am the same person that I was in school. I know logically that my friends went through similar debacles for months too, back a year ago when I was starting graduate school. Logically, it’s all good.

But emotionally I am newly timid and very much quaking in my flip flops. Because one day, some friend is going to get mad at me and look me straight in the face and say “Whatever. Get a job.” And it’s going to be the best insult ever and I’m going to fall to the ground in a heap and just cry and cry for hours…

It proved too difficult to take it day by day with that boy, who is no longer my current boy. When I said it was the exact same relationship, that really was a bad thing. We had the same type of argument roughly forty billion times. And now we won’t anymore. Oh wow, writing that almost made me sad. Because on some levels it was fun to fight. But I really don’t have the energy anymore. Relationships require a lot of work. I knew we would never work in the long term, and after a certain point it’s just not worth the effort anymore.

And I am single again. Shocking.

Yesterday my current boy got back from his trip, meaning it was the first time I’d seen him in a month. It was the same as it was before he left, no different. We’re the same exact people, in the same exact relationship. Which isn’t a bad thing really. I enjoy his company and it’s not like I have to be with him forever. I just have to take it day by day. (Which is insanely difficult for me, when it comes to relationships, but I am trying.)

And it’s not necessarily bad that I haven’t found a job yet. I talked to a few friends and they’ve assured me that it’s normal for the process to take months. My roommate applied to 40 jobs and only got 3 interviews, one of which luckily worked out. I haven’t applied to 40 (yet,) so that’s when I’ll begin to panic perhaps. Two friends also promised to get me more temp agency numbers. I just have to keep trying, even when it seems like all my efforts are doing absolutely nothing. (Which is exactly what it feels like when you keep applying and nobody even has the courtesy to tell you why they don’t want to even interview you. Hell, they don’t even tell you that they don’t want to interview you, it’s just silence on their end. Creepy, unsettled silence.)

It’s going to be okay. (When we graduated undergrad, I have a friend who posted that sentence repeatedly, on his Twitter, in increasingly frantic capitalizations and punctuation for the first month. I love him.)

The day before yesterday I agreed to work as a production assistant with Roommate 1 on some tiny budgeted indie movie. It was the most stressful day ever (and I’m only being paid $20, out of Roommate 1’s pocket, not the movie’s.) I had to wake up at 6am. I had to drive a large truck on highways. I had to carry many, many cases of water. I didn’t know what was going on. While some people were nice about my cluelessness, others were very rude and snappy. I felt like an idiot 87% of the day. There was a voice in my ear all the time (from the walkie) and I had to press a button to be heard. Everyone talked in weird codes that made no sense to me. People looked at me strangely for saying “okay” instead of “copy.” I had to drive around strange neighborhoods in Queens looking for a corner store and a parking spot where I wouldn’t crash the van when I parallel parked. I had to find my way back to set without a map or GPS. In the middle of one task, I was told I had to come upstairs to change immediately, without being told why or into what. Eventually found out I had to be an extra, where I got chided multiple times by the lead actress to “stand up straight.” I had to drive pretentious actors through Manhattan at 10pm on a Friday. I had to remember to make time to eat a granola bar so I didn’t faint. I didn’t get home until 3am.

Roommate 1 does days like that every day, roughly 6 days a week. She gets paid better now, but when she started she was doing it all for free. On our way home, I marvelled at how anyone could subject themselves to such treatment, day after day. I couldn’t do it. I mean, I could. The first day is obviously always the hardest and once I got used to it all, it’d be way less stressful. But I don’t want to work 16 hour days. I don’t want people to talk down to me. Ever. I don’t want to be told to do one thing, then another before I finish the first. I don’t want to sleep any less than 8 hours a day. I don’t want to have to say goodbye to my social life. Roommate 1 said she could find me more PA jobs if I was willing to do it, but I am definitely not willing to do it.

I really just don’t want a job, maybe. Maybe I just want to wallow in laziness and ennui forever.

Before my road trip I was talking to a friend and he said that I had good “bounce back.” I had no idea what he was talking about, so he elaborated. He said that a conversation is a lot like playing catch with a topic/words/whatever else you’d like to metaphor onto the ball. If you’re good at it, he calls it good bounce back. And there are two basic types of people who suck at it:

1. The type of person whom the ball hits, but then it falls to the ground and dribbles off pathetically. This is equal to a person who responds to a comment with something that cannot be continued by the original speaker and doesn’t offer any ground for further conversation. I.e. “I went fishing the other day.” “Fish are okay.”
2. The type of person who catches the ball, then throws it two miles away over a fence. This is equal to a person who responds to everything with non sequiturs and self-involved blah blah blah, which never ends and leaves no room for the original speaker to rejoin the conversation. I.e. “I went fishing the other day.” “Well, I had ice cream for breakfast and it was chocolate chip cookie dough and it’s basically my favorite. My mom says I shouldn’t eat it for breakfast because it makes me hyper, but what does she know. She’s not a doctor. She’s an accountant, which I could never do. I want to be an astronaut!”

I feel as though his theory on conversation should be coined and popularized. I also feel as though my good bounce back should be something I put on my resume. But alas, it’s not, it’s just something I feel personally proud of. So proud of it, in fact, that I pretend to tell you this so that you will learn my friend’s theory, when really I am telling you to indirectly praise myself. Enjoy!