day 39 -- interruptions

I had a plan today – as I have on many other of these unemployment days – to devote a concerted amount of time and energy working on finding a job.  As I am feeling a bit stir-crazy, I got dressed and ready for the day deciding to job hunt from the comfort of one of my favorite coffee shops; killing two birds with one stone and as I am perhaps the most extraverted person on the earth, I was really looking forward to the people time.  Before you get to proud of me, I must confess at 2pm I still had not stepped out the door but in my defense I had spent the morning working out, listening to a Mars Hill Podcast, sending some personal emails, journaling and last but not least straightening my hair. 

But at approximately 2:01 I got a call from a friend who was having car trouble.  Could I pick her up at her mechanic’s in a little bit, she asked.  Of course, if I were her I would call me too because after all the fact of the matter is that I am not working and have LOADS of free time on my hands.  And she is probably one of my closest/dearest friends in the whole world who I would give a kidney to but she in effect hijacked my day.  Also, her car trouble set me back yet another day in the job search.  

Day 38 – Slumdog Millionaire

Just got back from seeing Slumdog Millionaire and I think everyone everywhere should see it.  If you have not seen it stop reading my stupid blog and go see it right now.  Leave work (really working is over rated anyways), skip dinner, skip drinks, and skip whatever else you might be doing instead of watching Slumdog Millionaire. 

I have seen four of the five Golden Globe best picture nominees and as my friend and fellow blogger Catherine said it is hands down the best – the pick of the litter if you will.  While although I loved The Reader, Revolutionary Road and most especially The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Slumdog has it all.  It has the full range of human emotions – the classic case of good prevailing in the end, the underdog (and in this case the slumdog) over coming insurmountable odds and for the romantic in all of us the boy gets the girl.  There is even a nod to Bollywood for good measure.    Just what someone who recently submitted an application to wait tables (yes, friends it has come to this – did I mention I have a Masters degree?) needed to feel good about life. 

I don’t at all pretend to understand what it is like to grow up in abject poverty but working in skid row for four years, doing relief work in the second largest slum in Africa for a few weeks (Kibera, Kenya) and traveling to one of the poorest countries in the world (Burma/Myanmar) as crazy as it might seem I am glad I have learned from firsthand experience what poverty is like.  I hope Slumdog Millionaire might draw attention to the plight of the urban poor most especially it’s children.  

Job Hunting – Day 37

Today was the first day in a few weeks (all year – sorry I can’t resist that terrible joke the entire first week of January) I have devoted any significant attention to job hunting. Strange, as I am unemployed I haven’t approached this whole predicament with more urgency but the truth is I have really been enjoying not working.  And in my defense, I have, rightly I think, surmised the types of agencies I am interested in working at would not do much hiring or activities related there in around the holidays.  To prove my point, on December 14^th when I turned in an application at Pasadena Unified School District, they informed me their offices would be closed until January 5^th.

But today, I flexed my job hunting skills and have a few updates.  Tomorrow, I have a meeting with a friend from grad school who knows everyone there is to know in the community development world in LA and I admire greatly.  I am hopeful he might be able to point me in the right direction as its not what you know but who you know.    I also have a pending fourth interview that hopefully will be sometime either this week or early next week – trying very hard to not put all of my eggs in that basket even though I think the job would be a great fit (every day it feels more so).  I contacted two other friends regarding openings with potential and am waiting to hear back. 

Meanwhile, I am very happy to report that the Daily Show is back.  I love John Stewart and look forward to the day when I am a guest on his show.  Perhaps by 2010?  Just enough of a window to become an accomplished writer (or celebrity of any genre really) accruing enough notoriety to warrant an invitation to be a guest on the Daily Show.  Note: I will have to do something related to politics and or current events.  

Day 36 – Neighbor

I am told shoes thrown over power lines is an indicator for drug dealing – like a modern day tell similar to how people found their way to Speakeasies during Prohibition.  There is a pair strewn over the power lines just a few houses down from mine.  To get to my parking space, I have drive through an alley way often flooded with sketchy looking people so the drug dealing isn’t that surprising.   What is surprising is my own ambivalence.  I should muster a neighborhood watch group, call the police or at least seek out others in my area who are bothered by drug dealing and the crime apt to follow including the recent shooting on our block.  But I sit here instead glad that my specific complex is gated. 

Growing up I knew the names of everyone on my block many of whom I had routinely stepped foot inside their homes.  Now, I know my next door neighbor’s name but that is only because sometimes I get sent her mail.  I have never been inside her house even though we have lived four feet from one another for the better part of three years.  I have no idea the names of the others in my small complex, I might be able to pick them out by sight and have a faint idea of their respective cars.  Who they are escapes me – what are their hopes, dreams, fears, etc.  Are they upset by the shoes over the power line in our alley?  Are they the drug dealers?  Do they even know? 

I know my life would be richer if I lived in something closer to the kind of community I grew up in.  I have tried in my years of apartment living to cultivate more of an openness to those around me but over the years became resigned to anonymity.  Perhaps it’s the turn over, perhaps it’s the rhythm of my twenty-first century life where I am more apt to invest in cyber community (hence this blog) than the flesh and blood a stone’s throw from my door, or perhaps it’s my general apathy that prevents me from getting to know my neighbors. 

Some might contend the community you create for yourself is your true community superseding those physically around you.  Maybe and I do love my self-created community.  As well, I could say I have maintained healthy boundaries whereas the over involved neighborhood relationship could be taxing.  Right, if I did become B-F-F’s with my next door neighbor coming home and laying on the couch not talking to anyone for hours might not be as easy to do.  Or worse yet, if we got in a fight it would be very difficult to avoid her.  Whereas when tension arises with my longer distance friends, we don’t have to see each other until it blew over. 

Still, I wonder every time I see the shoes over the power line if I’d be better off knowing my neighbors.  

Day 35, Reborns

Note: for my theologian friends, this post has nothing to do with the Christian concept of rebirth

The other night I watched an ABC special on a line of very life like dolls called Reborns and their bizarre following.  The people featured in the special were painted as weird at best – creepy, disturbed, peculiar and diagnosable at worst.  But I was most taken by the artist herself who links her arts to a series of miscarriages she suffered some time ago.  There was one doll in particular she refused to sell because she felt like it looked what her baby would have looked like had it lived.  The doll slept with her, had a crib and she and her husband often took it out passing it off as a real baby.  I couldn’t help but think of the character in Charles Dickens’ Great Expecations Miss Havisham who after being jilted at the altar wears her wedding dress for the entirety of her life.

Having never suffered a miscarriage or struggled with fertility issues, I don’t pretend to understand what a painful experience it is.  But as a fellow human who has endured loss and studied grief, I know pain is both universal and individual and quite simply something everyone copes differently.  That being said, I suppose this woman, the Reborn artist, has found a coping strategy that is both profitable and more importantly healing. 

 http://www.reborn-baby.com/

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Story?id=6517455&page=2

 But suppose she is in the same boat as Miss Havisham – wearing her pain like a badge to her dysfunction?  Is she, to evoke the imagery of the U2 song with the same title, “Stuck in a Moment?”  Worse yet, have I created my own dysfunctional device for celebrating my unemployment through this blog?  Is the time I am spending on creating these clever blog entries a diversion from the bona fide process of finding a job?  Am I averting the possible rejection I might experience if I whole heartedly pursued employment, i.e. actively submitted résumés, went on interviews and so forth? 

Day 34, naked baby

 

Earlier today I had breakfast at Bean Town in Sierra Madre.  My friends have an eighteen month old son who is maybe the cutest toddler ever.  Their family moved to northern California a few years back and as I dearly miss them, while they visit I try to savor as much time with them as possible – hence the 9am breakfast on a Saturday morning.  But after a few hours at Bean Town, the reality of their drive back north today set in and it was time to end the sweet reunion. 

We slowly strolled out of Bean Town, deciding to walk together to the bank.  Side note – if you’ve never been to Sierra Madre it is absolutely wonderful, I feel like I have a bit of a crush on the whole town and it is only a matter of time before I wind up there.  It is like a small town mountain community nestled just outside of the sometimes soul less seeming other parts of my native Southern California.  Trust me; if you go there you will want to move there also.

As we were meandering up the street towards the bank, a young woman passed us pushing a baby about the same age as my friend’s in a stroller.  The baby was clad in a jacket, hat, leg warmers but peculiarly wearing no bottom what so ever.  Yes, my friends no diaper, no underpants, no pants, note even a binky to shield his little manhood from all of Sierra Madre residents ambling about on a quaint Saturday morning.  And worse yet, he had, as one of my friends bore witness to, what could only be described as, his words not mine, a baby boner. 

If this baby was a grown man his partial nudity would be considered lewd, indecent and even a crime, right?  Or at the very least socially unconventional and perhaps more suitable summer behavior.  The lines are grayer for children, but I still question this mother’s choice of going to the length of putting her son in leg warmers but failing to provide him with bottom covers – he was obviously cold.  I have heard of parents experimenting with nudity as a means of expediting the potty training process, which might have been the case this morning; still this seems both socially inappropriate and indecent.  I know also young children love to be naked – it is understandable – but again, still behavior more appropriate for home not public.  Finally, it is very possible that the child had an accident but unbelievable the mother found herself with no other item of clothes for the boy.   Not meaning to be a prude, but I think naked baby should have stayed home.  

Day 33, Donate Life

In honor of this being my thirty-third post, I would like to dedicate it to my thirty-three year old friend, Stacy as the number holds much significance for her. 

Yesterday as the world’s eyes were on Pasadena and amid my marathon double hitter of going to both the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl; there were moments when I felt like the entire world was actually in Pasadena.  However, instead of reflecting on the festivities, USC third consecutive Rose Bowl win in particular, I would like to go in a different direction. 

My father and I have sat in the same Rose Parade grandstand for the past few years.  Last year, unbeknownst to us, we were seated among the Donate Life organization.  Without exaggeration, we have been the only non Donate Life people in the bleachers.  I knew very little about this organization prior to us sharing New Year’s Day together for two years running, but have since done a bit of homework, still by no means a member or a expert.

http://www.donatelifefloat.org/prod/components/

Donate Life exists to promote organ donation.  Their float in the Rose Parade, among other aspects of the organization, pays tribute to those who have donated organs – in many cases upon their deaths.  This year’s float featured pictures of organ donors, again most if not all of them deceased, fashioned in the shape of stars.  Many of those in the bleachers had not only Donate Life shirts but also carried pictures of their loved ones.

It is very sobering to sit among so many who are unified by the death of a loved one.  At the actual moment the float past, my eyes flooded with tears as it did last year.  I was happy, sad and honored to ring in the New Year with those, who despite the pain of their loss, are rallying together to bring healing and promote awareness.  There was an authentic, raw, honest fellowship in that grandstand that I imagine wouldn’t be dissimilar to that of a recovery group and I was very blessed to be part of just for a few minutes. 

The Donate Life group reminds me that 2008 unfolded quite differently for everyone.  Some married, some buried, some bore life, some tackled new adventures, some moved to Kuala Lumpur, some divorced, some fell in love, some bought houses, some lost fortunes, some traveled the ocean blue, some received accolades, some came home, some got clean and some, perhaps myself included,  were caught in the middle of the spectrum of human emotions hopefully expecting. 

It might be easier to cruise through life oblivious to the majestic power and often rapture of the human experience.  Instead of tackling the depths, we’d rather talk about the weather or the game.  But I wonder what my life would be like if I could bottle even a dose of the Donate Life group’s authenticity and take it every morning?  Would I be as quick to dismiss the waitress who is giving me terrible service?  Or the driver who just cut me off?  The Donate Life people were easy to pick out, but how often does my life intersect with those who have born witness to great loss and I am insensitive to their experience?