Frogs and Ravens

Pointless Blog

After a weekend of not blogging, I'm not sure if I want to continue this blog any more. It takes up time I don't have and these days it's more depressing than comforting. I don't know what I should expect to get out of, say, telling the world that I just spent the equivalent of four week's tedious labor in the space of 20 minutes, between rent and loan and credit card bill and other random necessary expenses -- which doesn't even include things like health insurance and groceries. I mean, what's the point?

Nor does grumping about my employment situation seem beneficial. I'm tired of the whole thing, both the jobs and the looking for jobs that don't exist. I'm not even sure if I'm going to bother with the academic job search this fall. I look at the prospects and weigh my chances and it doesn't even seem like it's worth the effort of visiting web sites, writing letters, rounding up references, etc. -- there are only 12 jobs available this year for which I might stand a chance of making the first cut, and I am more and more convinced that I'd be extraordinarily lucky to make the second cut, let alone the third or be made an offer. Even the out-of-academia job market stinks. I found two -- yes, two -- entry-level positions I could do cheerfully, and neither came to anything. Why should I expect more?

I did enjoy working in the historical society this weekend -- I even dreamed about it all the following night -- but there's no career potential there, either. If anything, the museum market is even tighter than the academic one -- maybe 30 jobs nationwide, total.

So this blog is feeling like a waste of time -- I grump about my miserable future, lament my lost potential and nothing changes, except in banal or meaningless ways. Why continue?

Weekend Off

I don't know if I'm going to post much over the weekend -- I'm tired and I have a lot to catch up on. If I feel like I can spare the time, some possibilities might be the dangers of chameleon tendencies and my thoughts on re-entering the academic job search.

Otherwise I'll be busy with exciting things like laundry and catching up on a week's worth of newspapers. Until the next post...

Small Amusements

Everyone was punchy at work today. I am not alone in wanting the weekend to come!

My co-workers in processing are a pretty nice bunch; they are hard-working and everyone in our section seems to have a sense of humor. It also doesn't hurt that we have a common adversary -- the sales agents responsible for creating the packets we put together and process. Nine times out of ten any problem we encounter with a file can be traced back to agent error -- and they get very cranky when we ask them to correct it. Plus most of them have that aggressive bulldog personality that makes an effective telephone salesperson and little tolerance for occasional sarcasm from the repeatedly aggrieved processing staff. (Many of them also can't spell worth spit. A "banine" tumor, for pity's sake!) It makes for an interesting and often entertaining dynamic, to be sure.

(Ooh, look, I'm using "we" not "they"!)

In between bouts of shared snarkiness, I've been devising ways to keep me entertained:

I try to find the best way to use the staple remover, or test out new ways of writing quickly yet neatly, or strive to master the art of precision wite-out application, or learn new keyboard shortcuts, or try to figure out the best way to line up a new signature stamp on the line -- you get the idea.

When these skills-based amusements pale, I turn to the sociological. How many people, I wonder, file as couples rather than individuals? What is the point of including a child on a life insurance policy? Is the client population really skewed toward people in the South or is that just a misperception? Are there really that many people with speeding tickets out there? If I started sorting people by birth date, would any patterns emerge?

Another option is to think about the people who are applying and try to figure out what is going on that would prompt them to seek life insurance. What's the story about the couple from the Caribbean? Or the young father with a 2-month-old child? Why did this mother of four only list two of her children as beneficiaries? Are the two women filing together relatives or a couple? When did this guy take up sky diving, and what keeps him doing it, despite the risks?

Obviously, more questions are raised than answered, which makes idle speculation an amusement in its own right.

Another Exhausting Day

The good news is that I processed 7 more applications than I did yesterday. Unfortunately, that's also the bad news.

It's only day two and I'm already feeling tired by this job. Probably a large part of it is the result of being genuinely tired; I am wonderful at getting up at the crack of dawn if I have enough sleep, but getting up when it's dark -- fugeddabout it. Too, I find myself trying to make up for the tedium of the day by cramming all sorts of little activities into the night (like catching up on the blogs) and, because I'm tired, I have poor judgement about the best use of my time or the will needed to go to bed by 9pm. How people manage to do jobs like this and have social lives and kids I have no idea. (Although I suppose that children, tending to be early risers, would be good alarm clocks.)

Coupled with an increasing disinterest in the job itself and its larger context, this is not good. I'm not bored, exactly -- I'm too busy for that -- but I don't feel inspired, either. Nothing about the job speaks to my interests, or my goals, or even really my skills. All one needs is a good eye and memory for detail to do a good job here.

Now, I know that some of this is par for the course with any entry-level job. Yet I look around me and have to ask -- just what am I entering here? Do I want to supervise other people doing this very same tedious job? Do I want to brainstorm ways to bring in more clients? Would -- shudder -- sales be a way to move laterally? There's no job in the place that I'd rather do than this one, and I don't really want to do this one! Sure, I could probably find a way to rise in the company, but what an empty life. (I will admit that this is my own prejudiced perspective; if others find it rewarding and fascinating, more power to them.)

I've heard that one way to deal with such a scenario is to treat the job as a way to make money that allows me to then do more rewarding things. This is fine in theory, but in practice? In the evening I'm too tired and brain-dead to manage much more than a brief bit of web surfing and maybe some tv plus make dinner and call D..

Even if I were lively and perky, what would I do? All the archives and libraries I've used before close by 5pm (most of them are government organizations) and most don't open on the weekends (which are in any case reserved for grocery shopping, laundry, bill-paying and squeezing in a visit with D.). Hiking and drawing don't work so well after sundown. In fact, most of the places I like to go are closed after hours; I'm not a hang out in a bar kind of person. Evening yoga class is the only thing that I might be able to enjoy -- and so far I've been too exhausted to consider it.

So, not only is this job a dead-end in a career sense, it is deadening me in a larger sense. Not good. Yet, even so, I worry that my stint will end soon, because I need the money and can't afford to "indulge" my desire for a more fulfilling existence.

*sigh*


{Edit} When I woke up (well, was woken up) this morning I realized how self-indulgent much of the above is. I mean, really, in some ways I'm only frustrated because I've lived a privileged enough life that I can reasonably hope for more. Were I a third-world farmer or an inner-city single mom, a job like I've described would be a godsend -- clean, reasonable hours, no heavy labor, benefits, etc.

Maybe thinking on this will help at work today?

Funny Search Phrases

Here's a phrase that someone used to find my blog: "yellowing frogs." How bizarre.

Leaving Academia

Here's a nice poem on the subject by Kevin. It says a lot in a small space.

Corporate Droning

Today began at a ghastly hour -- dark and misty and far too early -- followed by an eye-opening commute through heavy traffic.

The rest of the day was not bad, though I would never say that it offered a desirable model for the rest of my life. I was paired with a trainer -- the first such any of my temp client companies has provided -- and we spent the day going through client applications together. Lots of highlighter pen and yanking out unnecessary copies of unneeded forms and stamping lots of stamps. It was tricky, and certainly gave my memory a work-out (not a bad thing) but, again, it was one of those "check your brain at the door" kind of exercises.

As I think about it, I didn't have one thought about anything beyond which button to push and which line to highlight and how to sort the papers properly except during lunch and for two brief moments during my break.

I don't think that this is going to be the break-through job that sends me winging upward toward intellectual bliss. It will, though, cover my student loan payments for this month and maybe some insurance. Yay...

Academy Girl

In the mood for some feisty academic snarkiness? Here you go.

Grump and You Shall Receive?

Shortly after posting the previous bit, several things happened in quick succession: I got a call from the volunteer folks at the historical society; my agent called to offer me the insurance job on a temporary basis; my colleague rang me up to see if I wanted to come by to chat and see his new house. So things are a-poppin'!

In particular, the meeting with the archivists at the historical society went really well. We all got excited by the idea of me coming in to work on several of the larger projects -- the tasks sound really interesting to me -- but now I'm going to have to call them back and say that I can't do it, at least not until this current temping stint runs its course. I did warn them that my schedule is erratic in the extreme, but I am disappointed that I didn't have even one day to play with the old stuff first.

Well, maybe, given that I'm to report in at a hideously early hour tomorrow, I'll get off in the afternoon with some time to spare. Probably not, but I can always hope!


Also, the new cell phone proved important today in all of this. Nice to know that it's earning its keep!

Is There Such a Thing as an Independent Scholar?

One unfortunate side effect of my current employment situation is that it is hard to think about much beyond the need for money, or the desire for something more stable. Even simple hobbies like knitting or yoga have fallen by the wayside, as they either themselves require money or I feel too antsy just sitting about the house when there are Jobs to Be Found. I suspect that this is typical -- a weird mix of apathy and anxiety seems appropriate for the un- and under-employed.

What is more annoying, however, is the effects this is having on my scholarly persona. You'd think that having all of this unscheduled time would be a boon to the never-a-free-moment academic who's behind on her research, wouldn't you? Yet this is not the case. I haven't cracked a non-fiction book since I left the Midwest, unless you count handspinning bibles and the like. I haven't written a lick beyond the blog. I haven't revised my permanently in-progress article-to-be-submitted-to-a-respectable-journal. I haven't gone anywhere near an academic library or archive or museum.

Lately, I've been trying to figure out what has happened. I think part of it is that the whole exercise is seeming increasingly pointless. I did agree to write a book review, for example, but one of my thoughts on reading the offer was "Why can't I be paid for this?" I've been trying to contact the local historical society to offer my services as a volunteer -- repeatedly -- and have heard nothing back from them. Until this week I've been reluctant to hole up in an archive away from my phone (I finally broke down and obtained a cell phone) . And the idea of academic job searching is not appealing -- it's become lumped into a larger search for jobs that won't make me puke or move to rural Alabama rather than a quest for a home in the ivory tower.

In short, I feel stripped of purpose beyond finding a tolerable job that will keep the roof over my head. It's difficult to think about contributing to the greater knowledge of humanity when this small bit of it feels ignored and irrelevant.

I also feel isolated. Perhaps if I had colleagues in similar situations to chat with regularly things would be better. Unfortunately, there's only one in the area and he is busy, busy, busy himself trying to scrounge enough part-time work to support himself and his family. D. and my grad school friends are good for emotional support, but their experience of research and writing at this point is so different from my own, even without the job complications. The people I encounter in the course of temping are no solution, either; I often feel like I'm checking my head at the door when I walk in with my timesheet -- it's the only way to stay sane.

So I ask the question posed in the title again, but in a slightly different way: can one be a scholar without financial support and in isolation?

I'm afraid that the answer has come to look like "no."