i'm spazzed out and stressed out and i don't know what to do. yesterday i got hit by a car and today i had a talk with my manager. everyone's hours are getting cut, all over the store. everyone but salarieds will be at their minimums. i'll be working 20 hours a week starting sunday and that's not really enough to live on. it is with riding my bike and sharing a house and having some money put away but it will be uncomfortable because i try and save. i don't know what it's like to be actively jobhunting. i've never put together a resume and i really don't want to boast about myself. i just want a job with less stress that uses my talents (or at least some of them) and an ego boost would be nice. something that could enable me to pay my bills instead of worry. worry worry. tomorrow i work and i'm tempted to call in sick, i want to do something other than stay in waiting for my alarm to go off but this is my last week working over 22 hours or so. i told the sprockettes about what i heard last night and everyone starts yelling at me: "quit!" suppose i should.

I'm not gonna lie to you, jobhunting is a terrible and depressing thing. The fear of jobhunting alone has kept me at many places i should have left earlier. I hate the fakeness it needs. The ACT. The complete change of personality and vocabulary. I hate shaking hands and making eye contact. But you're not so bad off, and only getting 20 hours a week will afford you a lot of time for searching. And you won't have to worry about money as you look. So quitting right away is not the best idea. You could also just get an enjoyable part time job if you're not ready to change to a whole other full time one. Resumes aren't hard to do, just boring. If you want, i can send you mine as a template and you can just pump in your own info. Hang in there, baby!

i don't want or need a fulltime job. 32 hours would be perfect and swell. seeing an example of a resume would be great. i was thinking about getting one of those resume programs but probably isn't really worth it. the 20 hours won't be a consistent time of day or certain days. along with the loss of hours i've lost what little luxury i've had for planning. i do have a bit saved, so that's something. i was thinking about moving to an artist's collective in forest grove so maybe i'll do that. i need to think about things a little and figure out what to do. i've gotten better at the eye contact thingy but with strangers no. i think i started making eye contact after i graduated from highschool. i want to call in sick tomorrow but i'll be kicking myself later if i do.

Least try to be like a Hermit on the mountain or be like a Mountain Man. Move away from everything , just get away from them it will relief stress, worry, and etc. Ted Kaczynski did it by himself living in a one room cabin, paying like 200-300 on bills . that's all.

good luck lapis.

A resumee is really only a big pain the first time you do it. From that point, you can just tune it. I hope you can find a job in which you can use your creativity.

I'm dealing with the underemployment beast right now myself. And like wisper says, few hours is better than no hours. So take advantage of the time you have to look for something better you will truly love, and don't quit and thereby doing, sell yourself short. And resumes are a bitch, but yeah, once you do it once you are golden. And this artists community sounds interesting, I want to hear more. It seems like you live in a part of the country that is filled with interesting opportunities like that. And what the hell, why not call in sick tomorrow. I am thinking about doing it. We could all call in sick, internationally. It would be very exciting. I just don't want to make any more goddamn mocha almond fudge. And my ice cream has been sucking ass recently and I don't want to deal with it this week, right now.

Perhap if I am about get myself a new job,A new business of my own, I think it is as if I am going to be like a Italian Mobster? I was told of that, they makes lot of money? about like 100 time of my Salary each year...

artist's collective: the nightmare collective,in forest grove. a rad-ass place that a bunch of my friends cleaned up and rebuilt with a bunch of different workshops, a recording studio and small amounts of individual living space. four members of my dance team and four members of the band i dance for (starting saturday) live there (though three of each are one and the same). they completely redid the kitchen and it's gorgeous and beautiful. the one (negative) thing about it is that it is way the fuck out of town (two hours by bus) in a little place called forest grove. between crying and talking and shivering and so on i only got about 45 minutes of sleep. i'm due there in an hour (which is still 30 minutes before the boss is due). i'd rather not get another paycheck with only 24 hours of pay if i can. maybe i can go home early. yes. oops, still not dressed. i'm gonna go and do what i've gotta do (the film) and otherwise read and write.

one nice thing this morning is that i put on a pair of socks which i love. they are the lovetwins born from the union of une chenille (catipillar) and a cucumber. fuzzy, vertical ribbed light green.

resumes are key to your survival, why not view them with great importance? i've spent the better part of two years looking for new work, with no success and only recently completely revamped my resume and getting good response from it. yeah its a chore, creating a resume just as exciting as cleaning the toilet, but so what. i have a renewed philosophy about the resume. regardless of the task you are seeking to do, why not present the best possible face. its not boasting. its telling prospective employers of your talents and accomplishments. why is that a bad thing? why is that something to dread? if you want a job to use your talents arent you going to have to describe them? confidence in your abilities is a very favorable attribute. if you view your resume as being directly connected to the possibility of not having to worry in the near future, is not important? I understand where you are at right now pez. i know whats pulling at you from two directions. whatever it is your are doing, i see no reason not to be best at it. theres nothing to lose otherwise. Im thinking a bold effort to take total control of your immediate destiny would be good for your soul and creative spirit.

would you believe i don't even know what i should really put in a resume? i've never looked at one very closely. i'm trying to put one together right now but it's difficult. there's a template on my computer that is a bit of a guideline but it doesn't serve as a good example for Clueless Girl (me). it would be fun to start a bicycle performance art delivery service. dress up in costume, ride around town, deliver small objects and perform for a fee. i picked up an application for the nearest health food grocery (the coop is volunteer run, otehrwise i'd apply there). locally owned and known to be a good employer. i know i can get good references from my managers at hollywood (where i work now) and interstate (where i worked when i moved to town) as well as from the fellow who comes in to repair and check in on our machines. i also am going to finish writing that letter to the community in virginia that i mention every so often. it's a good time to do so, i believe.

Lapis, you need to branch out from retail. I made that mistake for years and years, thinking I couldn't get anything better. You are selling yourself short. I know you probably think that retails sets you free because there are low expectations because of the low pay, etc etc, but it's actually the opposite of the truth. Having a regular job means that you can take a day off without your boss giving you shit and making you feel guilty, and your hours won't be changed or cut with little or no notice. You should look into some of the city or state jobs in Portland. You will be surprised at the variety there. You can be progressive and still have a regular job, and if you find the right one, you might even be making a difference in people's lives. It's pretty liberating. I think we should all take a crack at Pez's resume, what say you all?

Amen Agatha to getting out of retail. Also, Pez, City and Govt jobs often come with benefits, and a lot of the folks who work for the city are often progressive, hip folks. Some of my best friends work for Environmental Health, for example. We can make Pez's resume the Feb/March Sorabji Book Club selection.

good points agatha. pezzy, you put together a resume, anything, whatever....just drop some notes on a paper and email it to me. i'll work it for you and also share mine with you.

i found an ad on craigslist for a freeschool opening in the fall, looking for "staff". that's as specific as it gets at the moment. i'm guessing that they don't neccessarily need people with education degrees, so i wonder if they'll require degrees at all. if you wanna copy or what i have on my resume thus far, send me an email. i'm deliberating putting down my dance team as "experience".

Lapiso- key words in there are "free school." As in, the students don't pay, and the teachers don't get paid. That's the way our freeschool works in Olympia, anyhow. It would still be a cool thing to do, but I wouldn't reserve any hopes of getting paid. Okay, I'm sending you an email.

it's a paid position (though very part-time) that doesn't require a degree. whoohoo! it just doesn't start for a longtime. and i don't have expirience with a coop.... except this might be where sprockettes come in. village free school.

"Ability to hold “gracious space” for others and within themselves" sure, maybe after a large crap. but 'ability to hold'?

what's freeschool?

i guess the basic idea is to provide a safe place for children to do what they want, teaching them when they ask for help, so they can learn organically the most useful things they need at the time. like a bunch of kids unschooling together, in one relative space.

sounds like great intentions with little or no foundation. structure is essential to children. who are these people and wtf are their qualifications in education? not that my suspicision should disuade you from applying for a job. such a program would be a fantastic education supplement, like an after school program, but as far as I can assess certainly not a substitute or the sole source of education for a child.

there's one school that's been operating in los angeles since 1949: play mountain place. /link{http://www.sudval.org/, sudbury valley} seems to have a more comprehensive site though. there's some talk about philosophy and i think this project requires a great deal of idealism. it doesn't sound like the best system for everyone, but what is? i hope i can get the chance to be involved.

sudbury valley.

"i guess the basic idea is to provide a safe place for children to do what they want, teaching them when they ask for help, so they can learn organically the most useful things they need at the time." That sounds exactly like the gifted school i went to (part-time grades 4-6, full time 7 & 8). There was structure, but it was fluid. English class could easily break off into a full day of political science debates. One 5th grade math class had our teacher explaining the basics of nuclear physics, because we asked him to. good times. Some kids need structure. Not all. But this won't work on kids who don't want to learn.

that site is much more more encouraging for me actually and is actually a fantastic referral for me. thanks pezzy. we are needing to consider preschools sinc emany good ones have waiting lists of 6 mos or more and thats a good start. fortunately my little information vulture of a daughter is extremely eager to learn and needs constant stimulation. she also loves to use what she has learned. nate's gf and eva, after just meeting spent a half hour or more going over abc's which involved the child running to and fro the refrigerator (where he abc magnets are) and bringing her an assortment of letters to recite and demonstrate. the girl could count and do abcs all day and be as happy as a clam.

that site is much more more encouraging for me actually and is actually a fantastic referral for me. thanks pezzy. we are needing to consider preschools sinc emany good ones have waiting lists of 6 mos or more and thats a good start. fortunately my little information vulture of a daughter is extremely eager to learn and needs constant stimulation. she also loves to use what she has learned. nate's gf and eva, after just meeting spent a half hour or more going over abc's which involved the child running to and fro the refrigerator (where he abc magnets are) and bringing her an assortment of letters to recite and demonstrate. the girl could count and do abcs all day and be as happy as a clam.

so i finally wrote down a list of good (non-drugstore, hopefully not owned by ritz) photo development places in town and walked out the door. quite a few were way too fancy and intimidating, owned by huge corporations or not hiring.... but one was independently owned and the clerks were vary nice, loading me up with applications and business cards so i could call the owner specifically and at another i knew half the people on duty (worked under one of them) which was exciting. i filled out their application right then and there and hope hope hope they'll call me.