Will Work For Validation...?

Kia ora again.  It's been quite a while since I've written, which is contrary to the promise I made to myself, but 2012 is a new year and one of my resolutions is to get more serious about my blog and turning it into something.  So let's try this again.

Things have been in an interesting, somewhat impromptu state of limbo since I last posted.  Summertime has come, bringing lots of yummy gifts from the garden.  Jon has really be improving on his surfing--me not so much--and he's also been entertaining several job offers.  I left my job at the pool, for a number of reasons, and am in the tedious task of trying to find other work.  Aside from that, the garden has been pumping, I've started brewing my own kombucha, making my own sourdough and I've really taken to yoga, all things good for the body (and soul).

On a cool note, we went to Japan to visit some close friends and absorb a little culture shock and pace change for the holidays.... on six days notice.  We emptied our bank accounts to fund this last minute trip, but it was totally 100% worth it.  It was wonderful to hang out with Kelly and Clint and get a further respect for what they're doing... we're both in foreign countries, but they're also living with a huge language barrier--cheers to them.  But I'll post more on Japan soon.

So the topic of work has been swirling around my unemployed little head lately, as I'm searching for work in a relatively small and highly industrial town, in a recession, with a liberal arts degree.  Yay!  To top it off, the holiday season in New Zealand is different from that of the US, where it is typically marked by people taking long breaks, sometimes almost a month, to spend time with their families and travel and bask in the fact that Christmas in this country is in the midst of summertime.  This often amounts to small businesses being closed for nearly the entire month of January, meaning that these and other offices running skeleton crews aren't really posting much in the way of jobs.  So things have been slow for me.  Very very slow.

Then one day, I was stoked to find a job listed that seemed like my dream job: volunteer oriented, involved international travel, marketing and sales, and PR.  This seemed ideal: I have experience in volunteer coordination with some of my favorite people ever in Art Alliance Austin, I have experience in sales, and my aforementioned, lovely liberal arts degree specialized in (gasp!) PR.  It seemed perfect.  I was even more stoked when I was called to find out I was one of nine people to get an interview, out of 140 applicants.

The interview went well, but I guess not well enough.  They haven't called me yet to give me the official no, but enough time has passed to leave that microscopic tinge of hope but otherwise pretty much total loser-esque feeling.  What do you do when you get passed up for your dream job?  It's that moment when you feel like all previous experience and hardships makes sense... and then wham.  You're still not good enough.  How can you not take that personally, especially when what makes something your dream is very personal in nature?

It's definitely a beating to the ego, which is healthy, but I was never told I'd be putting myself in student loan debt while working full time through college just to be fighting for secretarial scraps or peeing in a cup for temp agencies at almost 30 years old.  And it's not that I'm better than these situations.  I just want to feel like I'm living up the potential I've been told I've had my whole life.  I want to feel capable, intelligent, talented, creative and as though I'm an asset.  I feel like if I described my situation in Yahoo Answers, and ended with the question "Am I a loser?" the answer voted "best answer" would almost definitely be a simple "Yes."

This process has been pretty deflating.  It makes you question, am I just an everyman who swallowed the "everyone is special" brainwash mantra that is so engrained in the American public education system?  There is no way everyone can be special, so how do you go about accepting that that may be the case for you?  As if the ego didn't have enough going on as it is.

I get where part of this is coming from.  All over tv, in movies, in books, everywhere, you hear and see all these twenty-something movers and shakers with sexy jobs and active social lives in trendy environments.  It's an odd but widely accepted notion that your occupation is very much a part of who you are.  This is the standard that a lot of Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers have subconsciously set for ourselves.  The whole mantra of "Losers make excuses, winners make it happen" is REALLY causing me to start questioning my validity--I'm TRYING to make it happen, but it's just not.

Luckily, in my recent travels and priority readjusting and soul searching and backpack living, I've come to terms with the fact that this is complete and utter bullshit.  The only people who are that are the people who can't see beyond that.  I'm working to defeat the effects of this brainwashing, but the one thing I can't seem to mentally escape is the craving to gain that level of satisfaction from what I do for a living.  I wouldn't even say I need to be able to wholeheartedly scream from the mountaintops, "I Love My Job!"... because someone who would do that is probably kind of a tool.  Plus, I'm a little too out of breath by that point to scream anyway.  I just want to feel good about my contribution to this world.  Maybe my contribution will mean developing a greater appreciation for talents and hobbies outside of work.

I specifically remember a really gross feeling I got pretty often while selling copiers in Austin.  When asked what I did for a living at parties, I would often feel the need to mask my apologetic admission with a fake cough, long enough to create a diversion while I planned a quick escape to the bar, avoiding pitying eye contact or the need to make it sound cooler than it was.  No euphemisms can make that job cool.  In fact, I take that back, the ONLY cool thing was meeting some really amazing friends who could laugh with me about how shitty our job really was.  And while I miss those friends (who have all moved on) so much, I will never miss that feeling, never never never.

To top it off, this whole ordeal has been juxtaposed with Jon being entertained by companies one-upping each other just to get him to sign on with them.  I'm so proud of him and his talent deserves such recognition, but I can't help but feel even more like a directionless loser in comparison.

And here is another question--in order to gain experience, you have to work somewhere at some point to gain said experience.  But how are you supposed to gain it if everyone is just hiring based on experience?  Someone has to take a leap of faith of at some point, but I think those people are all hiding in Antarctica for a Experience-Giver Convention or something.  Where the hell does this chain begin?

So yeah, I just don't know where to go from here.  Here is my final obligatory whine:  waaah.  I guess it's time to strap the big-girl boots on and use one of the valid skills I did learn from copier sales, knocking on doors, and go ram my resumé down some throats.

Kia ora, long overdue...

So, I have been meaning to start blogging pretty much since we landed in Auckland, but it just didn't work out that way.  Initially, we attempted to come up with a clever URL and blog title that had to do with New Zealand, and looking back now, that was a horrible idea.  Not only were our brains clouded by jetlag and the sheer unfamiliarity of being in a new country with NO plan whatsoever... we really didn't know anything about NZ first hand to which we could apply any cleverness.

Fast forward almost nine months.  We're now both with fulltime jobs, a year lease on a beachside apartment on Fitzroy Beach, New Plymouth... just living a normal life, taking a break and saving some money for our travels to continue.  Now that we're here, I can't imagine not being here for a long time. I miss the hell out of my friends, family, my doggy and mexican food... but there's something about Taranaki... the lifestyle, it's just really easy to be happy here.

I don't know how it happened, but the first six months flew by, almost as fast as money flew out of our bank account.  We spent the first six months living almost entirely in our van, spontaneously touring the North and South Islands, letting the wind and influence of fellow backpackers lead the way.  I find it funny that I've seen more of New Zealand than a lot of kiwis we've met along the way have seen.

There is so much crammed into such a tiny little country that in a lot of cases, some of our best days on this adventure have been enjoying the scenery and impromptu stops on the way to this landmark or that "highly recommended" locale in Lonely Planet.  Seriously, there are so many waterfalls in this country that to the locals, they're just not a big deal.  Jon and I could be freaking out like we had just seen a unicorn, and the locals would probably not even look twice.  I feel like so much as a two-foot trickle in Austin would be considered a tourist attraction with significant whoa factor.  The first few weeks we were in NZ, "unreal" was probably the most-used word in our vocabulary.

But, you get used to it.  You become desensitized to the rolling green hills, the edible fruit trees on the side of the highway that just drop fruit onto the concrete, staining it, because not enough people are around to enjoy the bounty.  You only stop once to really consider how awesome it is that cows are grazing along the grassy pastures next to the beach, a site that would quickly be snapped up and exploited for high-rise, "luxury" apartments in many other places in the world.  Your definitions of green and blue change and become more vivid, of a higher standard.

But enough of the glossy romanticizing about New Zealand as a whole.  Now that I have a little more time and regular internet access, I'll try to blog from time to time.  Sometimes it will be about our travels in New Zealand (and other countries as we go--up next will probably be Vietnam and Cambodia).  Other times it will be about the little life Jon and I are setting up in New Plymouth, as silly Americans still adjusting to this laid back little community, with a little more perspective and a few more ideas, bigger plans and a limitless amount of options.

Cheers.