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[Jul. 20th, 2009|05:06 pm] |
I quit my job at the bakery!
The boss there, Michael, kept promising me things and then not following through on them. Plus, I wasn't getting paid enough. Plus, the work was agitating my back and my wrist. Plus, Michael screams at people when he's upset. He screams! At his employees! Fuck that!!
So, I'd rather be broke and happy than broke and miserable.
Plus, Gabe is coming this weekend and he's staying for three weeks! We were worried about how we would work out the whole "Oh, shit, both of us work full time and we have a ten-year-old to entertain for three weeks" thing. He'll be in a camp (CIRCUS CAMP!!) for a week, and I'll be able to hang out with him, show him around, take him out on adventures, and generally have fun with him the other two weeks. We're totally going to Disneyland! I can't wait!
My last day at the bakery is tomorrow, and I am so ready. SO READY!
I'm applying for jobs like crazy and have a couple of good leads. One of them is as a course transcriber at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Damn, I would love to work there. The other lead is at none other than Pixar! They need production assistants, and I would love to assist some production at Pixar, let me tell ya!
Nico, I think it's time to flex that finger of yours. If either one of these jobs worked out, I'd be on Cloud Nine-and-a-half.
Huzzah!! |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 1st, 2009|10:28 am] |
Been having a hard time lately, and been putting a lot of effort into putting on a happy face.
I'm grateful to have a job, any job, that pays something, anything, but damn, I don't want to be a sandwich jockey. So far, the job has been almost 100% making sandwiches, which is not what I signed on for. I want to be responsible for more than chicken sandwiches. Michael, the dominant owner and general manager of the shop, is stressed and frazzled most of the time, which makes it hard to approach him with any inquiry or piece of information that might distract him from his immediate task. One of his challenges as a business owner is to get ahead in an organizational sense. I get the strong impression that he manages from moment to moment, like a person might live from paycheck to paycheck, with similar results. It's very hard to affect change in that kind of environment.
As a consequence, he hasn't been able to focus on the potential I offer him. The analogy that works best right now is that he's a construction manager and I'm a stress expert, and he's got me standing with my finger in a hole in the dam, when I could be focused on reinforcing and organizing the dam's repair.
I find that I don't have a ton of patience right now, and the reason for that is two-fold. First, it's a blow to my self-esteem to be standing with my finger in a dam. A monkey could do that. I'm not a monkey, but you wouldn't be able to tell judging from the work I'm doing. I'm capable and worthy of so much more. Second, monkeys get paid in bananas, and bananas don't translate into rent and bills. I gotta make more money. That can't realistically happen until I'm given more responsibility, which can't happen until this leak in the dam is fixed.
I do believe that Michael will eventually get around to training me to do more than sling sandwiches, but it's really REALLY hard to tolerate the monkey-level pay and respect in the meantime.
All of this is married to the sense of inadequacy and inequality building in me in terms of my relationship with Josh. I have always been the breadwinner, seeking partners who couldn't keep up, who I came to resent, and whom I ultimately rejected. You can imagine how it feels to me to be on the other side of the equals sign here. I've been bottling and shoving and displacing my feelings about it, but it all came rushing out last night in a marathon cry session through which Josh was very tender and supportive and understanding and helpful and loving. He is helping me keep things in perspective: It's a tough economy, there's a lot of competition for the kind of job I want, and I've only been here three weeks. I should give myself a break and give things a chance to come to fruition. That all brings a sense of relief, but it does nothing to truly calm my insecurities. That won't happen until I reach a place where I'm able to contribute to our life and our lifestyle in a more significant way.
Fucking sigh.
The cherry on the sundae is that Moscow is not working out. I've got calls in to behavior experts and rescue groups in a two-pronged effort to ensure that I have, indeed, tried everything, and that there's a safe place for her to go. It's going to break my heart to give her up, but I can't justify the misery and stress it's causing me to keep her in the family. I'm disappointed in her every single day. It's awful.
So, it's a gloomy day outside and inside. I have the day off, and I plan to take a bike ride out and around the city. I have some errands to run and it'll be nice to combine some physical activity with a sense of accomplishment.
Oh, look: A ray of sun... |
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| California: The first 12 days |
[Jun. 23rd, 2009|05:31 pm] |
So, I live in California now. It's not as weird to me as it was on Day One, but it's still a little bit of a mind-blower. Two weeks ago I was unemployed in Texas, today I'm a manager at a bakery in Oakland, California. Ain't that a kick in the pants!
I am a happy homemaker. I do laundry and make the bed, I do dishes and make banana bread. I make breakfast and coffee and sweet, sweet lovin'. Josh paints my toenails in bed (not a one-time thing, much to my delight!), squeezes grapefruit so I can have fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice, even though he can't drink grapefruit juice because of some medication he's on (cholesterol, what a bitch), and takes me for motorcycle rides to primeval forests north of the city on Father's Day. We are a good pair, like shoes that fit AND look great with all your favorite clothes.
The second day I was here, Charles Ekabhumi Ellik and his wife, Felicia, came over to make grilled cheese sandwiches, check out our place, and help me move heavy stuff up two flights of stairs. Good friends!! Then Charles and I walked down the street to Bakesale Betty for brownies and pie. I told Charles, "I want to work here!" and later that night I told Josh, "I want to work there!" After hearing a big, fat nothing from all but one of the dozens of places I'd submitted resumes to for writing jobs, and considering that the only interview I'd scored was for a gig in the city that pays WAY less than my time is worth, I whipped up a service resume and walked to Bakesale Betty to see a man about a job.
Michael, who owns the place with his wife, Betty, sat down with me and talked a bit about their vision. He liked my resume and asked me if I'd be interested in management. I chimed in with a big ol' Hell Yeah and he told me to start on Saturday. It was seriously that easy.
The place is crazy. It's the size of a shoebox and literally 40 people are working there at any given moment. It's a rat's maze of people chopping veggies, cleaning fruit, rolling pastry dough, frying chicken, pulling whole racks of cookies out of the walk-in oven (seriously Biblical), slicing banana bread, juicing lemons, mixing cookie dough, making chicken sandwiches, wrapping chicken sandwiches, bagging chicken sandwiches, expediting the sale of chicken sandwiches, and giving out free samples. The energy in that place is through the roof, and that's one of the reasons it's so popular. If it's late in your morning and the coffee didn't quite juice you enough to get you through til lunch, step into Bakesale Betty for a ginger scone and an adrenaline injection. The music's pumping, people are yelling orders to each other, everyone's bouncing to the beat, and every single face has a smile on it. It's fucking magical. And now I'm a part of it!
They're opening a second store in downtown Oakland in about three months, and things are going to enter a state of flux. It's going to be exciting and chaotic. I'm really happy to be a part of it.
I'm not gonna get rich (or even make very much of a dent in my debt) working at the bakery, but it'll get me by. And if some freelance writing comes along down the line, I can drop a shift or two at the bakery to make some real bread. (Sorry, couldn't resist the pun.)
Plus, I'll be going back to school this time next year, which I imagine will work nicely with the bakery gig.
It's not what I pictured when I imagined my life in California, but you know what? I am really happy! I'm really LIVING in my neighborhood. I live here, I work here, I serve the people who live and work here, I work with the people who live here, I put my money back into the community at the farmers' market and the local grocery, and I get to see my neighbors' smiles each and every day.
I don't just live in California now, I'm becoming a citizen. |
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| Aaaaaand... begin. |
[Jun. 9th, 2009|09:48 pm] |
Hey, guess what?
I totally left Austin this morning!
My mom and my sister's boyfriend Jacob helped me finalize my packing and load the trailer yesterday. Actually, Jacob pretty much loaded the trailer single-handedly. He is my hero. :)
We all had dinner last night at Curra's and my mom, my sister and I went back to my place to spend the night. In the morning, I tossed the last of my stuff into the car, grabbed the cat, kissed my mom, and hit the road.
There is a long-held slam tradition of starting every roadtrip at Tamale House on Airport. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) red_five made sure I got off on the right foot by meeting me there for migas this morning, and it was the perfect send-off. Mike and Sonya were the first friends I made in Austin. Mike, in particular, has been a big part of my life ever since, between being my boss at the Electric Lounge to being my coach on the slam team, to just being my friend. Let's hear it for symmetry.
just_jeff made me a handful of mixed cds to listen to on the road, and I popped 'em in as soon as I got out on the highway. It was like having him there with me, listening to Mary Lou Lord back in my old apartment on Riverside, or listening to Blood on the Tracks in his old apartment on 45th. I smiled and laughed, and when the Beatles sang "Two of Us", I cried.
I enjoyed tweeting my journey across west Texas. I felt inspired and alive, excited and ready! And now a third of my journey to California is complete! I am in a hotel room in El Paso, with the hum of the highway singing me a lullaby, and it's time to crash. Tomorrow I hope to have lunch with MJC and Rainy in Tucson before stopping for the night in Blythe, California, where another Motel 6 awaits.
Thank you Austin, for fifteen wonderful years. California, you have some very big shoes to fill. |
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