On Hitting the Wall, and Getting Back Up Again.

These days, it feels that I’m not just hitting a wall when it comes to finding a job. It feels like I am sprinting into the wall and body slamming it, over and over again. Each week I peel myself off the floor and get back up, ready to sprint. All this sprinting and slamming is getting pretty exhausting. (Almost as exhausting as all these metaphors.)

I keep daydreaming about when I can finally make that victorious phone call to my dad—“I got the job!”—but these days, I’m so disillusioned, I don’t even know what that job would be. I feel like I’m applying for anything and everything I find posted that has the word ‘writing’ or ‘editing’ in the description. Then, I wait. Then, I follow up with phone calls and e-mails.

If I’m lucky, I get a response.

The more time that passes, the more terrified I become that I’m going to be waiting tables until I’m 40.

Nothing hurts the very essence of my being more than that thought.

So what do I do after I body slam the job search wall yet again? I blog. I watch “Sex and the City” episodes. (Yes, “Sex and the City” episodes. I love it. Get off my back.)

Or, like yesterday afternoon, I force myself to walk away from my computer that holds all the jobs I’m not getting, and I go sit outside at Starbucks, drinking a $4 chai latte that I have no business drinking, and I read Anna Karenina. Why is it I feel like a more valuable person when people see me sitting and reading a book than I do when people see me serving food at my job? I need to get over myself. Nobody gives a shit. But the truth is, I sat there and hoped that people thought I was a grad student. Because for some reason, that makes me feel better than when I’m at the convenience store and a guy recognizes me and says, “You’re that Logan girl!” That happened Sunday.