I prefer to think of myself as short and interesting

I spend many of my waking hours online these days. Unlike my Bulgarian days, it's not to converse with friends or explore my interests - it's solely to find a job. My list of unreplyed to emails grows longer and longer. Part of that is due to the complete lack of separation from my work and home (having neither, they blend seamlessly). Part is due to the fact that explaining you are in between phases and parts of your life is tiring. Not sure where I am or where I'm going, I don't wish to blow the dust of my confusion and internal conflicts in order to present them to someone else. If it's not broke, don't fix it. But what about when it's broken, then what? I search for a job with the triad of good pay, interesting and... there's a new addition: some place where having a personality isn't a liability. It's striking how well people convey the exact type of person they want in an ad. When we posted in my last 'real' job we did it too - adding words like 'quirky' and 'sassy' to attract people who'd fit in. Reading job ads requires more savvy than the NYC real estate ads. Too much use of "must" means there's a predefined way to do the job and you'll be judged by that mold. "Preferred" qualifications mean they'll only hire people who have them, though they don't intend to pay the appropriate salary for that level of work. If a job description is so long and boring you want to skim it, it doesn't bode well for the actual position. There's a right way to say everything - it's all corporate-speak, carefully phrased to appease the HR director, lawyers and hiring manager. I've never been a fan of governing by committee. In the end it all seems like a long pointless paragraph describing a job that reflects its description. And I'm left to wonder: why am I doing this? What do I want from it? What would something better look like? Where would I fit in?

Out-of-the-Boxed In

I was asked in an interview not long ago how I spent my days. I said that I felt that looking for employment was a full-time job and I was doing just that. Luckily, the interviewer didn't press the issue too much. While I do indeed spend my days and some evenings looking for work, it not as fruitful as you might think for a city the size of Chicago. Instead of finding tons of listings to apply to, I find that most are nothing I would want to do, even for the short term. Jobs seem to have become very nuts-and-bolts somewhere along the way. Manage collections, data, IT, HR, marketing. The job descriptions are long and detailed, having long since been defined to fit a niche in the organization (yet few having anything to do with the actual product the company sells). It's clear from these descriptions and the requirements attached to them (MBA, 10 years experience doing the exact same thing in the exact same field, further certifications in that field just in case there's any doubt left) that they want someone to peacefully come in and fill the slot so that it can be included on the next quarterly report as a handled issue and then everyone can go about business as usual.

The exception to this is work in the non-profit world where they actually go as far as to state "must be familiar with local leadership" - meaning you must have connections. They too often want advanced degrees and multiple years experience all so you can earn $25k/year. Those without local connections seem to be relegated to the more junior positions, none of which come with opportunities to actually make those connections and are instead operations and office work... desk jobs.

Being on the tail-end of the Gen Xers, I was raised to think that one reason to go to school and work hard was so that you could do something you loved. Spending the bulk of your conscious hours at work means, on some level, you are what you do and you wanted that person (and thus that job) to be a great as possible. The more passive Gen Y generation, barely remembering the 80s at all, were raised with college educations and white collar jobs being more of the norm and something you just accepted would happen. You play by the rules, you meet the success markers and you are rewarded for it. Who you are and what you do can be outside of that. They were a generation raised to think of Nirvana as cool, though a wee retro and on mainstream radio. There's something we Gen Xers got from the 80s duality of the Alex P. Keatons and the Joey Ramones that they seem to be missing. There's something we got out of having non-Gap flannel. Something goes awry when 'alternative' and 'indie' lose their edge and become mass marketed for the part-timers stopping in after the office. What's left, in the Colbert-coined term, is truthiness.

The interesting thing about the masses being able to afford college (on some level, a great myth), is that we've taken the Me Generation, American Psycho love for labels and embraced it in education. It's not that you went to school, but where that matters. A top-tier school in the East Coast gets you into the club, but in the Midwest, where local schools and Greek memberships still carry weight, it just means you aren't a PLU ('people like us,' an actual term used). To carry that further, there are advanced degrees and certifications that 'earn' you a place at the table. I know a guy who went from doing all non-profit work to being a consultant to executives as a result of getting his MBA. This is not to say the guy isn't bright (he is) or can't do the work (he can), but I don't really know that the MBA is what made him able to do that work. I've spoken to other friends with MBAs and while they say that they learned the 'proper' vernacular to use when talking about things, they didn't really alter their strengths - that people go in with a zeal for ideas and innovation or they don't. Given my, er, lack of subtlety I asked if they thought an MBA was a $100,000 finishing school. A pregnant pause later... "that's exactly what it is". The problem is that it's the MBAs that are doing hiring and if they paid to be in the club, why shouldn't you?

In the pursuit of work, I've been networking with people near and far who can offer advice and/or assistance. In one of my discussions I asked someone the honest question: companies complain about not having 'out-of-the-box' thinkers, yet they actively recruit people with straight and narrow experiences - how do they expect to get those thinkers with that strategy? I immediately withdrew the question, apologizing for its confrontational nature. But... I really don't understand it. I don't understand how people are expected to be innovative when they spend years being forcefed ideas and systems. I don't understand how people are surprised by the sheep mentality we have when everything is set up to encourage just that.

My resume has been making its rounds in Chicago for about two months now and the results are pretty consistent - great resume, we just don't know what to do with it. It seems like I just don't fit into a lot of pre-set expectations. On some level, I'm glad for that... but it doesn't solve the unemployment issue any faster. I'm a Gen Xer - I'll leave my orange Pumas at home to go to the office, but... on the inside, the mentality I have and the skills that I offer are those of a girl with orange Pumas. It's the mentality of a girl who, years ago, wrote on her Chucks "ask why". I suppose I still am.

The good new days

I've never much minded aging, unlike most of my contemporaries. Sure, my relationship with Gravity becomes strained as he stubbornly pushes things down and out, but my body does nothing less than show the growing pains and battle scars of a life I learned a lot from. I see myself, not less than I used to be, but more than (thanks for that, Gravity and Pastries). I grew up with parents who had me at a young age and 'missed out' on the late teen and 20s experience, leaving them to always ponder what could have been and to wax nostalgic about the glory days. All of this could have inspired me to really relish the years they missed, but instead I saw it with some sadness - the sadness that comes from thinking the best days and years are behind you. I vowed at a young age to never be guilty of that, and to see my life - and my best days - as always being ahead of me.

I turned 30 a week ago - without much fanfare, something I wanted to skip. I didn't feel the horrible weight on me that I'm now old or past my prime. Instead I felt some relief. See, while many people remember their twenties as being a grand time and full of parties and chaos and general hedonism, I viewed my twenties as sheer torture. In addition to not having the 'typical' experience, I just found it to be a lot of pretending and fakeness. I found it to be trite. The twenties were, in my opinion, the least earnest decade - though, of course, I haven't had that many to choose from. The experience was all about acting like you knew who you were and what you wanted while you were always looking over your shoulder to see if it was working. The twenties were about proving you could be the first, the best, the biggest, the something. Somewhere though, in the late twenties you finally realize your train jumped the status and preprogrammed track and you, rather hectically, must actually choose the track that fits. Something in my mind, always said that 30 was the age when you knew (or at least better knew) what parts of 'having it all' were for you, and which parts you viewed as not at all appealing... and, more importantly, you were comfortable with your acceptances and rejections.

When asked the question "don't you wish we were [insert a younger age] and could do it over again?" my answer is a resounding not just 'no,' but 'hell no.' I can't think of any lessons I'd want to relearn or relive, even if it meant not making the mistakes that lead to my twisted path. There was an episode of Star Trek (um, I don't really watch that show - honest to god) where Spock wished that he knew what he knew now in the beginning, and in some sci-fi suspension-of-some-serious-disbelief way that happened. The end result? He turned out to be half the man he was, with the moral being: we need to make mistakes, possibly even great ones, to become all that we can be. My life and choices haven't been perfect, but I don't look in the mirror and wish that I'd turned out differently. So, even when I think of the wretched parts of my life that I'd have rather not had, I do not look back with regret - only with wonder at just how much it shaped me.

The turning point of 30 has made me listen differently and think differently. Think about how this decade will be greater and better than the last, what I want from it and what regrets I don't want to have. The difference in listening... well, I realize just how many people gather round to tell band camp stories or other stories of the past. I realize how often, if at all, people talk about the future... and if they link it to present situations. I turned 30 with good laughs and good friends - not with tales of the good old days, which weren't so good and are so very old.