Can Has Job?

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Leaving the picture of the company's logo on this site would have violated the contract I just signed to work with them

Some Hopes & Fears

Hopes

• Get a job soon
• Happiness
• Put up some reviews of things I've read recently
• Get a bow tie
• "Come to an understanding" w/ local turkeys
• GRE: prep & take it
• Applications to grad programs: do them
• Find "pretty good" life direction, goals, etc
• Peace 
• Pay back college loans
• To not sell out
• Write and perform better every time
• Teach
• Make world better

Fears

• No job soon
• Happiness turns out to be philosophically ideal
• Put up 0 reviews, read 0 things in the first place
• Give in to internet spelling, grammar lol
• No bow tie
• Turkeys
• No GRE prep, taking
• No grad apps
• No direction
• No peace
• College loans never paid back
• Selling out
• Teach, but only lies and evil
• Write and perform worse every time
• Make world worse

Hope is the thing with feathers...

BUT IT IS NOT THIS THING

Intermittently-Risky Business

I suppose I would very loosely characterize risk (v.) as the act of opening oneself up to the possibility of loss, ideally in the pursuit of a goal. It is an important thing to be able to do! But in me, and probably in many people, the muscle for it has atrophied.

There is no way to eliminate risk from one's life. All of us are subject to chance events and cannot guard against all possible threats to our well-being. However, if one thing is true about the human species, it is that we are creatures capable of profound self-deception. Awareness of the inherent risks of living is something that can be willfully suppressed easily enough. Certain ways of life seem to involve little to no risk, and it may be true in one sense - negligible amounts of possible loss may be apparently involved in one or another venture - but the hidden risk wound up in decisions primarily made out of a desire for comfort and safety is enormous: it is the possibility for damage to be done to the human spirit. For serious.

I think it is a kind of violence to ourselves, to will to believe that it is possible and desirable to go about life without putting much on the line. And the more I practice that willed belief - the more I live and act out of it - the deeper the problem for me becomes. I don't want to believe that I do this even as I write about it! But there's not much that I would count as seriously risky in my past actions, especially in the last couple of months.

So I suppose the question is: how does a person get back into a healthy relationship with risk? Obviously not all risks are good ones, but the thing is, tons of them are good, and healthy to embrace. Some risks are even necessary to consciously accept - for example, the risk of utterly failing in front of an audience is a necessary one to take on for a person who desires to be a performer.

If there is a muscle for it, then maybe working it out will do the trick. And certainly another important aspect of changing an attitude towards risk would be a re-articulation of the constellation of goods involved in a given decision - a re-appraisal of the comparative value of different options, and a reconsideration of the things that lend those options their value. But who knows, really? Maybe at some point a person just gets forced into opening herself up to the possibility of greater losses than she is comfortable with, and when things turn out okay, she ends up with a new mindset. That would be pretty great. But to hope for that also seems rather passive, and passivity is part of the problem.

My brother is the one who has been provoking me to think about risk and my attitude towards it. Recently he got really angry about all the opportunities we (he and I) pass up because they're too risky. Here is a picture of him:

That expression pretty well sums up his outlook right now. May he inspire us all to take greater risks in the course of extraordinary pursuits. In fact, if you want to find me in the next couple of hours, just look for a lot of huge dangers. Wherever that place is, Jon will probably be there too, probably late.

Pointers for Anything Involving Turkeys

• Stand back
• Shake whatever turkey is in hand
• Just in case, repeat 2 if applicable (turkey remains in hand)
• Wash hands
• Cook it, or bury it, or try a combination
• Either will result in: all turkeys being on to you
• Confusing the turkeys will not work
• Ruses generally will not work
• Disguises do not work (unless + scent mask, then only sometimes however)
• Costumes have limited effectiveness
• Feigning disinterest works until they are on to you
• Unless they were originally feigning too
• Do not try to hide whatever it is they are looking for (if you have it)
• Offer it to appease them or throw it out to distract them (if possible)
• Don't be hopeful
• Cars are typically safe
• The house is not always safe but usually it is safe
• A tall fence does not help the house to be safe
• Doorknobs are favorable
• Handles are not
• Low handles are especially not
• A house breach usually signifies the end, unless there are fortified rooms
• It is not a good time to get distracted by your phone
• If they blitz you and still you manage to get inside and lock the door and everyone else has fled or was taken out, and all you have is a bottle of brandy and an ambien, just be thankful that you've got em and try to go to sleep if you can ignore the scratching and calling and general horror, also write what you can on the white-painted wood of the wall with the sharpie stored under the sink for this purpose; it is the turkey reckoning so you'd better come up with a clever line by which to be remembered in the human resistance
• Ambien dreams can be pretty cool but in your dreams, don't open anything
• When you wake in the morning and they are gone, the area will need a good cleaning
• Welcome to the new world order

high-ranking turkeys, surveying

* * *

Job Update, Etc.

God would have to do a miracle in order for a potential employer to remain interested in some idiot who couldn't manage to arrive any earlier than 7:22 PM to a 7:00PM group interview - but wonder of wonders, I have been scheduled for a meeting next Monday with the "regional leader," which may be the last step on the road to employment. It will be my fourth interview, following the initial group event, a double-feature with two store managers, and a pleasant chat with the "store leader." I wonder if the CEO of the company is referred to as "supreme leader."

FURTHERMORE

I didn't write this for my original "intentions" post, but my goal is to post on this blog every day until I get a job. So far, so good. It's been over two weeks of having some laughs and keeping the hope up. Here's to six more days of regular posting, and then a job.

UPDATE ON TURKEYS

Yesterday I went for a walk with two good friends, and we observed the roving turkey gang effortlessly jumping up to perch on top of someone's fence before hopping over to invade their yard. It was a tall fence. One of the turkeys even stood lookout for the other turkeys, but was facing the wrong direction and didn't see us.

I wonder what their devious plans are for our neighborhood, and despair.