The new american dream – Day 2

“Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.”
–Theodore Roosevelt

So begins another day on the ever elusive job hunt. I had work all day, which actually came with a relief. An old co-worker, who’s spirits are always joyful and hands are always ready for labor, who moved away several months back, came in to visit family and friends and decided to use this day and the next to work and earn extra cash. It was good times from the start, seeing him and receiving his joy throughout the day. Work mixed with play filled the day, rather than hunting for that million dollar job that I know is right around the corner. As the great George Costanza said – “The first million dollars is always the hardest”. Huzzah! Little did I realize that while I had taken a break from hunting, I became the hunted.

From the moment I stepped out of the car at the shop where I work at, till just an hour ago, I have been bombarded by overly pushy phone calls, well articulated text messages and overall the completion of my phone’s voice mail memory of “job opportunities”. I had no idea I was such a desired worker. It must be my body, employers like my body.

At first I welcomed the calls as if it were a gift on Christmas morning, one too many to count I would take five and hear out these one dimensional, monotone, they’reontheothersideofthephonelinereadytopullthetrigger sales associates pitches at making a part time, minimum wage, “you’re investing in something bigger” jobs out to be a dream come true. Seriously, you could have passed off purchasing 2,000 easy bake ovens as a good investment to Martha Stuart before selling me on their crack pot scams. Yes. That’s right. We’re back to calling them scams.

With the overwhelming amount of phone calls, you’d think I would have began yelling like a howler monkey into the phone as my greeting, but I remained calm, which made it all the more bothersome when they would lose their composure at me for not taking their bat crazy, “imperative that you take this job now”…job. Honest, that was one of the line’s a lady used. “It is imperative you take this job now while we have an open position”…imPERAtive. Really? I think it would be IMPERATIVE for me to leave the house if it’s on fire. It might be IMPERATIVE for me to gather up all the coffee I can find when the world ends sometime within the next two weeks. It is probably IMPERATIVE I *do not* put fully cooked T-bones in my pants when taking a stroll through the local zoo’s lion’s den.

*ahem*

You may or may not have just read one of my infamous, “people are stupid” rants.

Anyway, back to my point; I remained calm, they did not. I would say I have another opportunity I’m looking into and they would get mad at me. I would think “How could you possibly NOT think I would be looking elsewhere? Why would I have put out so many online applications unless…”, and that’s when it hit me. I did this. To myself.

I.

Did.

This.

In some subconscious, masochistic parallel mindset I must have flipped a switch that did not think things through! I jumped to the island of conclusions without even bothering to take out my captain’s extendable telescope (my mind might sometimes be a ship…I’m the captain) and have a look-see. Has having internet since windows 95 taught me nothing? Was this foretold within some prophesy book and was therefore beyond my complete control? Was I always doomed to make such a fatal error in judgement? If you do not know, sending out online applications with YOUR PHONE NUMBER is never a good idea. E-mails you can unsubscribe from, it’s a technological response to your clicking you mouse (do people still have those?). Overly caffeinated, vindictive sales associates are like the Mcdonalds slave workers of the phone service. Spit in your burger = lifetime of “keep calling this guy”. Drop food on the nasty floor = “share his number with all your ‘trolling’ friends”.

That’s it. I have to change my number. There is no going back from this. Sad, I’ve had this number since my first cell phone. It doesn’t spell anything with t9 or any other letters you can pull from the single buttons, believe me, I’ve tried, but it was still a cool number. Good bye contacts who I’ve had for years but have not talked with since forever ago. I’ll miss you guys.

Oh, and the quote at the top? Yeah, feel free to miss an opportunity every now and then and do not put your number up on the internet for grabs. Caio

The new american dream – Day 1

“It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?” – Henry David Thoreau

As the daunting tasks of life pile up high like the mountain of clothes in my hamper, so my need to do something about it is becoming more and more apparent. At twenty three years old, I am stuck in most American’s position; My job pays my bills (of that which I am fortunate and glad), I hate my job, I would love to work from home while sipping the hot water saturated in roasted brown beans and most of all – I am in debt.

To you, this situation may be ideal, however, when you really think about it, if you had the time to zip through some random, dissatisfied, young man’s ramblings, you are more than likely better off than most people. You would have a usable computer, internet access, maybe even transportation to visit a local coffee shop for said internet, clothes that are publicly acceptable to be experiencing such outings, the list continues. I would be in the same situation, I by no means attempt to portray my “first world problems” as being overwhelming, but rather a crucial inconvenience, like having too small of shoes, suffocating your poor little toes. Perhaps it is also like being “grounded”, only as an adult, and the other adults hold you accountable for making or not making enough money to “pay them back”. Either way, life continues rather normally, nothing life threatening like the zombie apocalypse (which I feel I’m better prepared for) or an angry mob of gophers storming my house.

After quickly understanding the lack of certainty of the outcomes at which my financial position might lead me to, I progress into the solutions for the problems, easiest of which is for someone to hand me 10,000 dollars a year to cover all my bases. When I find out that the government is not going to do that (though there is a nifty bill trying to squeeze it’s way through the House and Senate that follows such protocols), I let up on the lazy pedal and switch it into 2nd.

I turn my sights to my chum, Google, in hopes that my fun facts friend will cough out an exorbitant amount of enjoyable, easy, stay at home, work four hours a day and make over 3,000 dollars a month job. Simple right? Well, actually, it was quite simple. You see, I stumbled across hundreds of opportunities, where it was understood that if I paid a quick, easy 37 dollars, I could get in on the job of a life time, no experience required! Silly entrepreneur scammers, I do not have 37 dollars to burn. Do they not realize that my immature mind would justify such a purchase and waste time wandering about the internet looking for saps like myself? Like a dog who chases the stick the master did not throw, so I almost played the fool for the online businessperson.

So here I sit, uncertain of what to do about my job/financial future. Maybe there’s a guy selling magic beans on the corner; I *do* have our last milk goat I could barter…