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Time to look for a job again, the cycle continues

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Post by Glides Thu Sep 20, 2018 7:01 pm

I read a post I wrote almost at this time last year and I'm almost amused because I'm in an identical situation and I feel too worn out to feel properly afraid about it.

Not that there hasn't been any fear. And I've applied dutifully, though honestly there wasn't a single position out there that even remotely excited me. I resorted to copying and pasting variations of the same cover letter because I was so thoroughly unenthusiastic and thoroughly under-qualified for literally everything.

This is my life. This is what it will be till I die. Maybe I'll find something else, I always find a way to pull myself back from the brink after a little while, I have my anxiety attacks and do stupid shit for a while. Maybe my luck will finally run out. I'll be told everything is OK again, as always. Nothing has really changed from last year, though I've got a little more savings than before. Once again, it'll take so long that I'll blow through my savings before long. I don't plan on being old anyway, so I've got nothing to save for.

This is why we're alive, friends. We're just alive for this. It's so meaningful. I love every second of it. It's a gift, that's why it's called the present.

Food service is out, I got fired from my last food service job a whopping three years ago. Anything involving customers is out because I'm too abrasive and rude for their liking. I don't enjoy being nice and having to do that. Trying that again will end up the same way. I can't hide my moods. I dunno what other freelance shit is out there. I never learned how to network, everything would mostly work itself out.

Last year, no one had any helpful suggestions, not for lack of trying. How do you help someone find a job if they're qualified for nothing? I can't simulate enthusiasm long enough to get someone to hire me at a place.

On a whim, tried auditioning to become an audiobook narrator, was told I have a nice voice. Had a panic attack ten seconds into the recording, had to turn it off and give up. Shame. Tried setting up an account on a voiceover website and the site didn't work. It's been a great day. I haven't done shit. Everyone else is suffering, I can't deny that. Still, can't I be suffering and have money again?

Worst part is that I wasn't even fired, it's just my employer ran out of money and can't pay me anymore unless the project I was working on sells to a distributor, which it won't. I was paid the most in my life for this. So I mean, I wasn't fired. Technically, I'm still employed, but I'm an employee making nothing until a distributor responds, which they won't. I'm tempted to just try and get her to fund one of my ideas but that's one of the longest shots possible and might piss her off. I don't really know what to do now. Everything is kind of a haze.

How much more can I lose this year? Why do I wallow in my self-pity instead of searching for solutions? I mean, I know why. But I wish I could be resilient and hopeful and just apply to everything until something clicks, be inspired! Make a difference!

Until then, I'm just going to sit, I guess. Literally just sit. I fell asleep for most of the day, there wasn't shit all else to do. When I didn't sleep, I sat. I said nothing to anyone else, how could I? They're all working. And it doesn't matter how hard I work, doesn't matter that I spent nine months on this project. I'm back where I started. In the space of this project, I broke up with my girlfriend and my grandpa died and the past nine months might as well not even happened. My grandfather might as well be alive. I'm exactly where I was while he was alive. I wonder if there's anything else I could do.

I dunno, man. I'm not eating much right now, so I can just sleep a lot and go on a walk and then blindly apply to shit and that'll be my life so at least I can't be accused of being lazy. Probably gonna have to eventually stop going to therapy. That'll be fun. I've been told to sit back and relax because I've got savings, but they'll be gone before long. It never stays.

This is my life. I started posting here at 18 and nothing has changed. I'm 23 and I'm the same I was at 18.

Glides

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Post by Enail Thu Sep 20, 2018 8:00 pm

Oh come on, you know perfectly well that it's absolute garbage that nothing has changed. Like, you can't possibly expect us to believe that at this point.

And "qualified for" is often over-rated. An awful lot of entry- or junior-level jobs ask for a lot of things that are neither needed to do the work, nor realistic for the employer to expect to attract and they're going to land up hiring someone who doesn't tick all those boxes. So don't pass over jobs that look a little out of your qualifications.

And the audio narrator thing sound cool, if you want to try again for it, might be worth doing some practicing on your own to see if you can get more comfortable with it?
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Post by Hielario Fri Sep 21, 2018 9:53 am

Your circunstances may have become the same, but you're a different person. And this time you know things can change. If it's happened before, it can happen again.

Good to hear you're throwing cover letters left and right; if nothing else, you can claim that project as relevant work experience (are you able to speak freely about it? I always get curious when you mention the stuff you're working on!).

Also, why are you afraid of pissing her off by proposing a project? Might as well try. Or at least ask her for advice, maybe she'll like the idea or will be able to give you some good pointers.

Also, about the voice: I know of a struggling voice actor who turned to narrating stuff (classic poetry, old literary stories...) on youtube. You could do the same for practice, it's public but it's not live, so maybe you can sidestep your anxieties that way. I'm pretty sure you can do it without showing your face if you're still insecure about how you look.

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Post by Glides Mon Sep 24, 2018 9:33 pm

So uh, the issue partially resolved itself in the most unexpected and ironic way possible.

When I first began posting on the original forum, in 2013, I was in my last year of undergrad, in a degree I hated (Business Management, oh boy), despite wanting to make films, at the only college that offered me an academic scholarship, the only way I even got that education in the first fucking place.

I have worked at this college in some form or fashion for a good while because I kept getting offered positions there. I worked as a tour guide, I worked for their A/V department, I parked cars during the events, I worked as a freelance videographer and editor for them, did some basic web design for them (because the dumb fuckers didn't realize how simple Wix is to use), I moderated lectures and seminars for them, filmed at those same lectures and seminars from time to time, helped with new student orientation (and awkwardly held crying people who were overwhelmed and feeling separation anxiety a few times).

I've done a lot at this school, almost none of it happily, despite all these various gigs and jobs paying well and essentially keeping me afloat for the last few years when I wasn't doing godawful internships or working jobs I either was unqualified for or hated. I've worked as a dishwasher at a nursing home, an office assistant at a dinky ass museum (and for a few horrible months, taught the arts and crafts classes for kids there), I did production assistant gigs whenever I could get them, served as a script consultant exactly once for a project that didn't even get funding as a feature, and (before my "current" job) did social media management for a tech startup that outright refused to pay me once the whole thing imploded on itself.

And a couple jobs here and there as an assistant director or script supervisor for tiny local productions that didn't know what the fuck they were doing, one of which resulted in me driving over 2000 miles in the space of two days. Yeah.

I've done a lot of random shit over the years, out of necessity. None of it is particularly impressive or anything to brag about. My entire career as a wannabe filmmaker is charted in perpetual hope accompanied by almost inevitable failure and I've gotten used to it.

Anyway, I'm leading up to the irony of it all: I was just asked to interview for an adjunct faculty position at the college, teaching its film courses.

My undergrad was NOT a film school, it's a small four year college that isn't particularly impressive in any way but does have accreditation.

But even so, it has a few film courses, and because my former English professor (who taught them) is retiring, they need a guy for that. And he asked me despite not having said a single word to him in four years.

This guy hated my guts, or so I thought. I was actually kicked out of his class for showing up late from my internship on a couple occasions. Despite our mutual contempt for each other, I took every one of his courses because he was the only one teaching film classes there and I wanted to eat up as much info as possible. He was my first exposure to classical cinema, and as much as I hated him and his pretentious airs and his nasal voice and the way he talked like a thesaurus, I got to see some truly astounding films in his class, films that put me in tears, that reminded me why I so badly wanted to be a part of this medium in some way, because nothing else in the world made me feel like this.

And we hated each other, and it was a source of a lot of laughs to a lot of students and faculties how often we butted heads and what an idiot I was for wanting to be a filmmaker in a school full of not-filmmakers, and how I kept taking his classes because of it. I'd stay after every class asking him as many questions as I could, and I knew how much it pissed him off but I HAD TO KNOW EVERYTHING.

And then suddenly, four years later, the guy suddenly contacts me out of nowhere, after all of this, after he'd taunted me at my graduation saying he'd never expected me to even be able to do that, and asks me to take over his classes, and says he's already sent a letter of recommendation to the dean of that department saying I'm the most qualified person for the course, and that if anyone's gonna do it, it has to be me, because nobody loves film more than me. The students would love to have me as their teacher.

Where the fuck was this four years ago? He's acting like this is goddamn NYU and I'm gonna be teaching the next Spielberg or something. Because he's going out of his way to keep the class alive by getting an instructor for it last minute like this. He can just as easily let it be canceled, because it's not a film school.

Did the dude ever hate me at all? Was this my negative self-talk doing all of this? Did the guy actually like me the whole time? I don't even know. I haven't talked to him in four years and suddenly he's trying to get me a teaching job when I didn't even go to school for that.

I'm an anxious person. I don't know how to teach. I don't know how to socialize. I can barely keep my shit together most days. But I need the money, and I need it fast, and this is consistent pay when I most need it, doing something I'm really awful at.

Fuck.

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Post by Enail Mon Sep 24, 2018 9:44 pm

Wow, fantastic, congratulations! I think the fact that a former prof you thought hates you contacted you from nowhere to offer it to you probably means you're not as awful at it as you think you are.
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Post by Hielario Wed Sep 26, 2018 8:08 am

Some faculty members are just unpredictable. I've had teachers like that, in both directions.

It will take you a while to figure things out, that's normal, but as long as you lay your explanations with a clear structure and maintain a basic level of coherence everything will be OK.

And you have a little practical experience in the sector! Even if it's small stuff, practical examples from real-life experience always help, they ground explantions in reality and help the listeners to remember.

Is there any written material you could rely on?


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Post by Glides Wed Oct 10, 2018 10:09 am

I didn't get the job.

What the fuck is the fucking point of any of fucking this?

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Post by Glides Wed Oct 10, 2018 10:10 am

It's almost criminal how bad at job interviews I am.

And if I dare complain about how much better everyone else has it I hear the sheeple bleating about "social media distorts things, everyone is miserable." NO THEY ARE FUCKING NOT I AM THE ONLY PERSON I KNOW STILL LIVING WITH MY GODDAMN PARENTS AND I CANT FUCKING TAKE BEING LAST PLACE IN THIS RACE I HAVE BEEN LAST PLACE MY WHOLE LIFE CANT I BE FIRST FOR FUCKING ONCE

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Post by littlebluedove Wed Oct 10, 2018 11:33 am

I'm sorry you didn't get the job, Glides. Since you found the idea of teaching film interesting enough to apply, could you try starting a film YouTube channel or blog to teach them about it instead? You mentioned earlier that you've been sitting around a lot, so even if you don't eventually monetize it somehow, it could give you something to do when you're not applying for jobs.

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Post by Glides Tue Oct 16, 2018 12:13 pm

It's been a month. Still jobless. Sending out applications left and right. Still jobless.

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