Running To Catch Up

It's approaching a month since we've returned home, and being “idle” (are people who are searching for work “idle”? I think NOT) has started to gently nibble at my joie de vivre.

I just a couple of days ago received a form letter via email from a prospective employer thanking me for interviewing but informing me that the position has been filled. Most other applications I've made have been via website and email, a process I find much more stressful than face-to-face interviews (for instance, I can't modulate my tone or my charm based upon the elevation of the interviewer's eyebrows if I can't see them); that's the challenge of job-hunting irrespective of the method: convince the interviewer one is more engaging/intelligent/serious-minded/talented/willing to shovel [stuff]/kowtow to every whim than one, in fact, actually is. There is a phrase I like to use to identify the sort of person who is truly convinced his everyday in-the-skin persona is sufficient to land him or her any job he or she chooses: jobless sociopath. Yes, there are employed sociopaths, but they have learned the art of camouflage at least in defense against those to whom they report directly (to the dismay and rage of the rest of us).

So I suppose my point here is that, enamored of the innerwebz as I am, it has proven to be a large thorn in my side by dint of it being this wall of ones and zeroes between me and those I have to seek to impress in order to once again be a productive member of society. What have we come to that, entering a place of bidness wearing my best aloha shirt and the biggest smile my face can produce, I can nevertheless be turned away with instructions to access a website where I might be able to get in the damned door I ALREADY WALKED THROUGH IN PERSON?

I'm kidding about the aloha shirt. C'mon.

At one point I almost fell for that temp-to-perm crap. I went for that for my first job in Albuquerque, and my trust level went to NIL after the first two shifts. Engage three workers employed by a temp agency that just happens to be run by people connected to the company for whom they are engaging said temporary workers, to eventually fill ONE position? This is apparently legal. It is also apparently impetus for Rob to jump ship after a month in favor of employment with, well, another pit of despair, but at least it was on my own terms. At least I LEFT it on my own terms. This is MY logic, feel free to conjure your own.

So now we're home, and jazzed I am about that. I missed my foggy, damp, spooky, cranky city, yes I did, and I didn't realize how much until we crossed the bridge and saw the welcome sign. That being said, I obviously can't expect the job market here to hug me back. I have to confess now that I was naïve about one idea I had, that the company for which I worked here had sufficiently recovered to hire me back in relatively short order. Oops. Since returning to Portland the company has released two more of my former work-mates, one of which had only a couple of weeks prior encouraged me to try getting hired back. This, of course, makes me feel ten kinds of awful for everyone involved, me included. I feel confident they would hire me again if they could, but it seems that won't be soon. And, to be achingly, hatefully honest, I have to ask myself if it would be in my best interests to return there before the evidence of a solid year of profitability. I'm thinking no. Man. Honesty sucks.


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So guess what! I actually ran on a track two days ago! It sucked ALL varieties of Sucky Town but I managed to jog the equivalent of, say, half a mile of a total of a mile-and-a-half. Are you snorting at me? Because I plan to do it again today, beeshez. You watch. My legs still ache, but it feels good in the way that exceeding one's own expectations always does. I ran on our young neighbor's elementary school track because the nearby high school track was off-limits due to a football game. It was a spontaneous decision on my part to actually run; my intention was initially to keep the missus and her friend company while they walked around the track. I don't know what came over me, I just started trotting. I swear I felt like I was audibly clanking like a rusty suit of armor, but I kept it up for as long as I felt I could without tripping over a lung. I think spending a year and a few months at a higher elevation actually helped me out, because whereas my speed was essentially negligible (my wife disagrees there, but I can only report how it felt to me), my breathing wasn't nearly as labored as I had expected it would be. Or not nearly as SOON, anyway. So I'm going to keep it up. Maybe this time next year I'll run a 10K or something.

It could happen. Keep your flying monkeys to yourself, kthx.

In a few minutes I'm taking the bike out on the Springwater to ride my old route to work. Just for nostalgia. If it rains on me, so be it. I live here, and it's all good.