I feel that I may have blogged about this before. Or at least mentioned it in some sort of writing and/or video. This is because it is something that often comes to mind. It isn't just the obsessing over hypothetical situations (and often times having them slip into elaborate fantasies), but spending the time being angry at myself for thinking so much over hypotheticals and essentially wasting a lot my time. You would think that picking up a minor in philosophy would stop me from thinking that just thinking about things is a waste of time.
I think that I get angry because many of the hypotheticals that I draw up in my mind are things that I can actually accomplish if I set aside some time or really focus on them, but I don't always do that. Even worse, I sometime feel like I can't do anything with these things in my head.
Recently though, I have thought up of ways to make my obsessions over hypothetical situations become something a bit more useful, or at least become something that I can see in front of me. I have always thought that if I wanted to do something, I would have to do it big. I want to write, so I should start writing a novel. I want to get in shape, so I should start exercising for 2 hours everyday and run a marathon in a few months. At least, that is what the sitting and dwelling on hypothetical situations does to me. I spend so much time in my own head that these scenarios which were very reasonable at the beginning, are suddenly incredibly ridiculous.
But now, every time that something does become reasonable, or even better fantastical, I am writing it down and turning it into a series of short stories or a series of obsessive ranting that I may turn into something a comedic down the road. So, that part of problem is solved.
The other bit of backlash that has come to me from thinking a bit highly about myself in terms of the job market. I was so certain that I would be able to land some sort of job within a few weeks of applying, that I waiting until mid-December to start applying. I was afraid of the "hypothetical situation" of getting job in the summer and not being able to go to LeakyCon or, later on, not being able to go to Europe. Clearly, I was foolish. If I receive a job offer tomorrow, that would bring the end of a full three months of job hunting. If I had started it in June then I would have received a job in September according to this timeline. I know now that I can not change the past and all I can really do is keep going. But, even with all of the rejections/no replies at all, I am still hesitant to apply to a job in retail because if I got a "real job" then I would have to quit it and that could be any day now!
Today, I slammed the door on that notion. I applied to a job as a sales associate. Something I should have done at the beginning to tide me over until I started to get real job offers. It would be nice if I got a job offer within the next week, but realistically it may not be for another three months and it I would like to get some money and get out of the house for something other than the occasional run.
I am hoping these actions will help me break out of living inside my mind and not have hypothetical situations paralyze me from doing something with myself.
Side note: I probably won't be blogging anymore until next month because I am going to try to do BEDA for the first time ever. Wish me luck.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Friday, March 8, 2013
30 Before 30
I originally thought about making this a video, but then I thought that it felt more like a blog post because I found myself rambling in my mind when I thought about it. Plus, I wanted to explain a few of the things and compare it with what I thought I wanted to do when I when I was a little younger. So, here is my list of 30 things I want to do before I am 30.
- Live in another state for at least a year.
- Live in a foreign country for at least 6 months.
- Find a job/career/position that I am actually happy with.
- Visit a total of 20 countries.
- Read all the books that I own.
- Run a marathon.
- Become fluent in two other languages.
- Travel to the west coast.
- Revisit Egypt.
- Contribute to either a book that is published or a TV show script that gets aired.
- Go SCUBA diving.
- Learn how to surf.
- Go skiing.
- Go ice skating.
- Meet J.K. Rowling.
- Watch a MLB game in 5 different stadiums.
- Go to the Olympics
- Go to the World Cup.
- Hike the Lord of the Rings trail in New Zealand.
- Meet the President.
- See the Northern Lights.
- Take a road trip across America.
- Watch every Oscar winner for Best Picture.
- Have awesome abs/a six pack (even if it's for a day).
- Go see Saturday night Live live.
- Meet Tina Fey.
- Be Tina Fey (this one might be tricky).
- Be part of and/or create a viral video.
- Go to the San Diego Comic Con.
- See The Starry Night
Many of my goals involved traveling of some sort. In fact, 15 of the 30 would require me to travel to another place for the thing to happen. I realize that they probably will not all happen because traveling requires money and I do not quite know how much income I will have in the next seven years, but I like to have them as something to look forward to. Of course, there are a few things that I will attempt to prioritize before I get too old, such as hiking in New Zealand, because I don't think I would be up to doing some of these things when I am 50.
Still, I feel that this is a list that will not really change between now and when I turn 30, which is a big change from 5 years ago. I did not quite make a list like this when I was 18 years old and just starting college, but I remember the way I thought then and I am pretty sure my list would have looked something like: 1. Be a doctor. 2. Be married. 3. Travel a lot. I am not completely discounting becoming a doctor, I just know that if I do go down that path, I don't want it to be during my 20s. There is now way that I will be married by the time I am 30. The traveling part is the same though. Although, it does not seem realistic with those other two goals as they would take up all of my time that it would be almost impossible to travel often until I was much older.
It feels strange when I think back on 18 year old me. A lot of things have happened to me over the past year, but I never felt myself change from day to day. And I think that is the biggest thing about changing as a person. You don't really wake up one morning and say, "gee I've changed a lot since yesterday." A lot of times, I feel like I am not progressing in anyway. I am not learning or improving myself because I do not see a difference from on day to the next. Obviously, that is not an accurate way to measure myself as I can see a huge difference over the course of several years.
So maybe my list will change before I turn 30. Or maybe it won't. There's no way to know for sure and I think that's a good thing.
Friday, March 1, 2013
Overwhelming Frustration
I had originally wanted to post about setting long term goals, a "30 before 30" if you will. But then, something happened yesterday that made me change my mind and I decided that I really needed to write about something else. Something that has been culminating for months and yesterday it became very obvious to me how much of a strain it had put on me. It is the feeling of overwhelming frustration.
I have been applying to jobs for the past three months. Now, I know there are people that have looked for a lot longer and maybe three months is not that long. But, I had thought that I would have found a job by now that was decent. And if I had not found a job well, maybe I would have been called in for a few interviews. I have now applied to a total of one hundred jobs. I have had two interviews. One claimed that they will call me in for another interview, but never did and the other was a sales job that I thought was going to be a digital marketing job, but it wasn't. I was offered that job, but I didn't take it because it did not interest me in the least bit. And it was commission based pay. (Of course, in hindsight seeing that I have had nothing, maybe I should have taken it and just kept applying to jobs).
So I have had a lot of free time. I only spend about 3 or 4 hours applying to jobs, typing up cover letters, or figuring out the best way to enter field and that is not always everyday. I figured that I should work on some things that I felt like I did not have enough time to do before. I can work on my Spanish, I can finally write more, I'll put a dent in my books that I own and have not read yet, I can spend more time making videos and learning more about editing, and I will most definitely be able to run more so I can run a half marathon or maybe even a marathon this year. It's going to be great! I will definitely make the most of my time and after a while, I would have other skills that I can put on my resume or maybe a writing portfolio. Something to show that I wasn't just sitting around!
At least, that is how I felt at the beginning (as in about two months ago). But the frustration of not even getting call backs from the jobs I was applying to started to seep into everything else. When I sat down to write, I started to feel that what I was doing is useless. I would read over what I had written, think that it was crap, try to rewrite it to be less crappy, and fail. I stopped trying to write, even a little bit, everyday. I did not feel like my Spanish was getting much better and not that it would matter because there was no way I was going to become fluent within a few months of practicing and refreshing my memory unless I moved to a Spanish speaking country. I stopped caring to improve it. I was still making and posting videos on YouTube though, but even that was starting to feel useless. All I have to edit is Windows Movie Maker. There is only so much to learn from editing on that terrible excuse of a video editing program. But, I can't afford to purchase Adobe Premiere until I got a job that would give me money. I even was beginning to be bored with what I was reading, which is probably the greatest indication that not finding a job was really getting to me.
But, I was trying not to let it get to me. I mean I am a middle class college graduate not able to find a job, but it is not too bad because I am able to live with my parents. I have nothing that I should truly be complaining about. Why complain? Why even be frustrated? I am just being a brat. A lazy brat at that.
Not quite.
Then, a string of events over the past two days caused for the last few bits of straws to break the proverbial camel's back. My aunt and uncle had been visiting here for the past month and two days ago, we took them to the airport to head back to Egypt. There was some trouble at the check-in counter. The woman working tried to say that their names did not match (which they did) because it was not the same last name, but all of the names listed on the passport was on the ticket, there was just one less on the ticket because naming in Egypt (and many other countries I am sure) is different that in it here (shocker). Then, she said that my uncle's passport had expired because it said 1-9-2013. My dad was a bit taken aback. I think he somewhat panicked that my uncle's passport had expired while he was here. So I jump in with a "No no no! That means 1 September 2013." I was a bit angry at that. I understand that most people in the United States do not know or realize that the dates in every other country are that way, but when you work at an airport where everything there, including American passports are dated that way, you should know better.
Then, she gave us a 1-800 number to call to redo their reservation because a flight delay would cause them to miss their connecting flight. There were a few people behind us in line so, at the time, it was understandable. Then ten minutes into the (hour long) phone call, her line cleared up. And I was stuck on the phone giving information for someone to place a reservation for a another flight. Something that lady should have done. It pissed me off. Not really that she was a crappy employee, but that I essentially did her job right then and there, reading the dates for her and finding flight reservations. She has a job! She is incompetent and has terrible costumer service, but she has a job and I do not. It felt like a personal insult that she has a job and she is terrible at it and I do not when I would be excellent at it.
The next morning I went back to the airport to drop them off. Due to my dad's paranoia, I had to wait until everything was done with them. So I sat in the airport for an extra, unnecessary hour. I know it is not that big of a deal, but I had to wake up earlier than usual and the airport now reminded me of my apparent lack of something, because I could not get a job but an incompetent person can.
Finally, I got home. I had this great idea for a video and I was going to record and edit it and it was going to be hilarious and it didn't matter if it didn't get a lot of views because I would think it was hilarious and that is what matters. Then my camera fell over while I was trying to set it up. At first, I thought it was not broken because it was working. I gave a sigh of relief. Then, I tried to turn it off...and it wouldn't. The lens was bent and I hadn't noticed the first time. I tried to push it into place and it didn't work.
So I screamed for about 10 minutes straight and hit a door. Then I stopped screaming and started crying. I cried for about 20 minutes. It was terrible. I kept saying random thing out loud about giving up and not wanting to do anything anymore. This was obviously an overreaction to a camera breaking. It was not even really obvious if it was permanent because my dad hadn't looked at it and he is good with fixing electronic devices. And even if it couldn't be fixed, I had my iPad that I used to use to make videos. I had a phone that has a 720p front facing camera.
It wasn't about the camera.
I was trying my hardest not to be frustrated or not to complain about my situation, because I did not feel that it was a situation that warranted complaints that I did not realize how frustrated I was with myself and my lack of success with looking for work. It became obvious in the moments when I was done crying. It is not that I felt sorry for myself. I was just feeling an overwhelming amount of frustration that was captured by the the moment of my camera breaking when I was recording a video.
So, I went downstairs and sat on the couch and watched eight episodes of Community in a row. It worked wonders. I felt much better and it helped me release more of that frustration. I know it will not go away overnight. I don't even think it will go away the instant that I get a job either. I know that things like this blog post will help. I know throwing myself back into the extra things that I used to enjoy before getting frustrated with everything will help. I will not get frustrated with myself if I skip a day or two of job searching or work on my writing and then decide it is not worth pursuing. I will not get frustrated with myself if I take a day to watch Netflix all day. I know I cannot control what happens around me with employers not calling me in for interviews, but I can control how I react to it and that reaction does not need to be a sense of overwhelming frustration.
Well, maybe a little bit of frustration.
I have been applying to jobs for the past three months. Now, I know there are people that have looked for a lot longer and maybe three months is not that long. But, I had thought that I would have found a job by now that was decent. And if I had not found a job well, maybe I would have been called in for a few interviews. I have now applied to a total of one hundred jobs. I have had two interviews. One claimed that they will call me in for another interview, but never did and the other was a sales job that I thought was going to be a digital marketing job, but it wasn't. I was offered that job, but I didn't take it because it did not interest me in the least bit. And it was commission based pay. (Of course, in hindsight seeing that I have had nothing, maybe I should have taken it and just kept applying to jobs).
So I have had a lot of free time. I only spend about 3 or 4 hours applying to jobs, typing up cover letters, or figuring out the best way to enter field and that is not always everyday. I figured that I should work on some things that I felt like I did not have enough time to do before. I can work on my Spanish, I can finally write more, I'll put a dent in my books that I own and have not read yet, I can spend more time making videos and learning more about editing, and I will most definitely be able to run more so I can run a half marathon or maybe even a marathon this year. It's going to be great! I will definitely make the most of my time and after a while, I would have other skills that I can put on my resume or maybe a writing portfolio. Something to show that I wasn't just sitting around!
At least, that is how I felt at the beginning (as in about two months ago). But the frustration of not even getting call backs from the jobs I was applying to started to seep into everything else. When I sat down to write, I started to feel that what I was doing is useless. I would read over what I had written, think that it was crap, try to rewrite it to be less crappy, and fail. I stopped trying to write, even a little bit, everyday. I did not feel like my Spanish was getting much better and not that it would matter because there was no way I was going to become fluent within a few months of practicing and refreshing my memory unless I moved to a Spanish speaking country. I stopped caring to improve it. I was still making and posting videos on YouTube though, but even that was starting to feel useless. All I have to edit is Windows Movie Maker. There is only so much to learn from editing on that terrible excuse of a video editing program. But, I can't afford to purchase Adobe Premiere until I got a job that would give me money. I even was beginning to be bored with what I was reading, which is probably the greatest indication that not finding a job was really getting to me.
But, I was trying not to let it get to me. I mean I am a middle class college graduate not able to find a job, but it is not too bad because I am able to live with my parents. I have nothing that I should truly be complaining about. Why complain? Why even be frustrated? I am just being a brat. A lazy brat at that.
Not quite.
Then, a string of events over the past two days caused for the last few bits of straws to break the proverbial camel's back. My aunt and uncle had been visiting here for the past month and two days ago, we took them to the airport to head back to Egypt. There was some trouble at the check-in counter. The woman working tried to say that their names did not match (which they did) because it was not the same last name, but all of the names listed on the passport was on the ticket, there was just one less on the ticket because naming in Egypt (and many other countries I am sure) is different that in it here (shocker). Then, she said that my uncle's passport had expired because it said 1-9-2013. My dad was a bit taken aback. I think he somewhat panicked that my uncle's passport had expired while he was here. So I jump in with a "No no no! That means 1 September 2013." I was a bit angry at that. I understand that most people in the United States do not know or realize that the dates in every other country are that way, but when you work at an airport where everything there, including American passports are dated that way, you should know better.
Then, she gave us a 1-800 number to call to redo their reservation because a flight delay would cause them to miss their connecting flight. There were a few people behind us in line so, at the time, it was understandable. Then ten minutes into the (hour long) phone call, her line cleared up. And I was stuck on the phone giving information for someone to place a reservation for a another flight. Something that lady should have done. It pissed me off. Not really that she was a crappy employee, but that I essentially did her job right then and there, reading the dates for her and finding flight reservations. She has a job! She is incompetent and has terrible costumer service, but she has a job and I do not. It felt like a personal insult that she has a job and she is terrible at it and I do not when I would be excellent at it.
The next morning I went back to the airport to drop them off. Due to my dad's paranoia, I had to wait until everything was done with them. So I sat in the airport for an extra, unnecessary hour. I know it is not that big of a deal, but I had to wake up earlier than usual and the airport now reminded me of my apparent lack of something, because I could not get a job but an incompetent person can.
Finally, I got home. I had this great idea for a video and I was going to record and edit it and it was going to be hilarious and it didn't matter if it didn't get a lot of views because I would think it was hilarious and that is what matters. Then my camera fell over while I was trying to set it up. At first, I thought it was not broken because it was working. I gave a sigh of relief. Then, I tried to turn it off...and it wouldn't. The lens was bent and I hadn't noticed the first time. I tried to push it into place and it didn't work.
So I screamed for about 10 minutes straight and hit a door. Then I stopped screaming and started crying. I cried for about 20 minutes. It was terrible. I kept saying random thing out loud about giving up and not wanting to do anything anymore. This was obviously an overreaction to a camera breaking. It was not even really obvious if it was permanent because my dad hadn't looked at it and he is good with fixing electronic devices. And even if it couldn't be fixed, I had my iPad that I used to use to make videos. I had a phone that has a 720p front facing camera.
It wasn't about the camera.
I was trying my hardest not to be frustrated or not to complain about my situation, because I did not feel that it was a situation that warranted complaints that I did not realize how frustrated I was with myself and my lack of success with looking for work. It became obvious in the moments when I was done crying. It is not that I felt sorry for myself. I was just feeling an overwhelming amount of frustration that was captured by the the moment of my camera breaking when I was recording a video.
So, I went downstairs and sat on the couch and watched eight episodes of Community in a row. It worked wonders. I felt much better and it helped me release more of that frustration. I know it will not go away overnight. I don't even think it will go away the instant that I get a job either. I know that things like this blog post will help. I know throwing myself back into the extra things that I used to enjoy before getting frustrated with everything will help. I will not get frustrated with myself if I skip a day or two of job searching or work on my writing and then decide it is not worth pursuing. I will not get frustrated with myself if I take a day to watch Netflix all day. I know I cannot control what happens around me with employers not calling me in for interviews, but I can control how I react to it and that reaction does not need to be a sense of overwhelming frustration.
Well, maybe a little bit of frustration.
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