written Monday, March 26
Well, I did it. And it feels sweeter than I ever could have imagined.
Last Thursday I received the call that I could only dream would ever come. I received an offer for a financial reporting position for The Associated Press.
For the two weeks that have passed since the interview, I have spent a lot of time in my own head. A lot of time trying to visualize something this wonderful happening. A lot of time praying for it, and trying to think of reasons why I deserved it (that has been the hardest part.)
For the four days that have passed since the offer, I have spent a lot of time in my own head, too. A lot of time thinking that this could not possibly have happened to me. A lot of time replaying the conversation, trying to confirm that I, in fact, heard him right. "Congratulations," the editor said, almost bashfully, before he went into a slew of information about salary, benefits, and other things that I don't remember.
I don't remember because I was distracted with wiping the tears from my face, and feeling weak in the knees.
I know that there are a lot of things that can happen in a span of a lifetime that have a lot more weight than this. I know that there are people, lots of them in fact, that are going through the most difficult of times and yet have been there to support me every step of the way. But right now, I'm taking this in for all its worth.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Reading Between the Lines
Disclaimer: Scout realizes that she has absolutely no business posting this blog; in fact she thinks it may be seriously damaging to her career karma. But it’s just too damn funny to keep to herself. (And when did she begin referring to herself in the third person? Scout is worried.)People have been dropping like flies in the office lately, either getting fired or finding jobs where the phones work, ceilings don’t leak, and deadlines exist for the well-being of all the cute little editorial drones.
So part of my responsibilities now include sifting through the electronic pile of crap, A.K.A. the 500 resumes we have received for a single job posting. The whole experience has made me realize exactly how competitive publishing is in this city, and how lucky I was to make to the top of at least one of these piles. But I digress.
As I sifted, one of these resumes stood out, but not for the reasons you want to stick out to a potential employer.
Of course, his name has been changed to protect him from the laughing and pointing that would surely commence when people found out what he put on his resume.
Ok, Frank, here we go.
OBJECTIVE: To obtain a position in the field of mass media.
Me: Mmm Kay.
EDUCATION: BA in Broadcasting, Telecommunications, and Mass Media. (Cum Laude)
Me: Ohh, he’s smart. This guy has potential.
SKILLS:
Me: You know, numb chuck skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills….
OK, good. Wait…what the hell???
Just then I saw the reason I wouldn’t be calling poor Frank for an interview. Under a sub-head of “Transferable Skills,” This Cum Laude had listed the following:
Servant-like attitude. Concerned for the good of the workplace and the audience.
Servant-like attitude? What does that even mean? And why are you putting it on YOUR RESUME??????
Poor Frank went on to list:
Proactive, Motivated, Innovative. Works Overnights and Weekends. Ready to Learn.
He deemed the following so important he gave them separate bullet points an increased the font size to about 50.
Functions Well Under Pressure.
My head is feeling pressure.
Willing to Relocate.
Scout really hopes she doesn’t get sued for this, or she'll have to relocate. I hear South America is nice this time of year.
Monday, March 12, 2007
W.W.M.D.?
I woke up on Saturday to find no one home. With three roommates, it just doesn’t happen that often. Someone is almost always passing by, or on her way out or in.
So, to celebrate having my beloved-yet-cramped New York apartment all to myself, I left my bed head the way it was and I dragged myself out of my room to the kitchen where I made pancakes and ate very quietly as to enjoy the full depth of the experience.
I sank deeper into the sofa; I listened to the birds chirping (well actually they were pigeons, and I think they were making so much noise because they had gotten stuck in the air shaft, but this is inconsequential to the end of this blog.)
I could do anything I wanted — as long as I didn’t leave the apartment. I had staked my claim on the place, and for a few hours, I was determined it was going to be mine, and mine alone.
Should I do yoga, or clean my room? Watch a movie, or lie around and read for hours? The possibilities were running through my head as I walked into the bathroom, slammed the door, and like one of those slow-motion movie scenes, went straight for the door handle and realized I was stuck. In the bathroom. With no one home.
Not only has our bathroom door been painted and repainted so many times that it sticks shut, but last week the inside knob somehow became disconnected to the whole apparatus, and it was locking my roommates in like prisoners in solitary.
While we waited for the super to fix it, the temporary solution was to leave the door ajar while we were, ehem, in there. But this time I found myself stuck, and completely alone.
The heat in that tiny room made it feel as if the walls were closing in. So I opened the window and sat on the handy chair provided for me, complete with the frilly seat cover.
I began to think: What Would MacGyver Do?
I grabbed a hairpin out of the medicine cabinet and began to pick the lock. Nothing. Right about now I was kicking myself for not paying more attention to the MacGyver episodes my ex used to watch.
I pounded the door with frustration. Not only was I stuck, but my few precious hours of alone time were ruined.
I thought about climbing out the tiny window. But I live on the fifth floor, and concluded the chance of hurling to the ground was too great to plot escape.
I started to pick at the lock again with a decorative seashell. Still nothing.
After almost an hour, I decided the only thing that was going to get me out was either to scream like a little girl or kick the door until it broke. I did both.
The screaming got a concerned neighbor to come to the front door, only to realize she didn’t have a spare key to our apartment. So while she stood there, helpless in the hallway, I kicked the door until it split clean down the middle.
Soon after that my roommates came home. I went to my room and took a nap.
Richard Dean Anderson, I salute you.
So, to celebrate having my beloved-yet-cramped New York apartment all to myself, I left my bed head the way it was and I dragged myself out of my room to the kitchen where I made pancakes and ate very quietly as to enjoy the full depth of the experience.
I sank deeper into the sofa; I listened to the birds chirping (well actually they were pigeons, and I think they were making so much noise because they had gotten stuck in the air shaft, but this is inconsequential to the end of this blog.)
I could do anything I wanted — as long as I didn’t leave the apartment. I had staked my claim on the place, and for a few hours, I was determined it was going to be mine, and mine alone.
Should I do yoga, or clean my room? Watch a movie, or lie around and read for hours? The possibilities were running through my head as I walked into the bathroom, slammed the door, and like one of those slow-motion movie scenes, went straight for the door handle and realized I was stuck. In the bathroom. With no one home.
Not only has our bathroom door been painted and repainted so many times that it sticks shut, but last week the inside knob somehow became disconnected to the whole apparatus, and it was locking my roommates in like prisoners in solitary.
While we waited for the super to fix it, the temporary solution was to leave the door ajar while we were, ehem, in there. But this time I found myself stuck, and completely alone.
The heat in that tiny room made it feel as if the walls were closing in. So I opened the window and sat on the handy chair provided for me, complete with the frilly seat cover.
I began to think: What Would MacGyver Do?
I grabbed a hairpin out of the medicine cabinet and began to pick the lock. Nothing. Right about now I was kicking myself for not paying more attention to the MacGyver episodes my ex used to watch.
I pounded the door with frustration. Not only was I stuck, but my few precious hours of alone time were ruined.
I thought about climbing out the tiny window. But I live on the fifth floor, and concluded the chance of hurling to the ground was too great to plot escape.
I started to pick at the lock again with a decorative seashell. Still nothing.
After almost an hour, I decided the only thing that was going to get me out was either to scream like a little girl or kick the door until it broke. I did both.
The screaming got a concerned neighbor to come to the front door, only to realize she didn’t have a spare key to our apartment. So while she stood there, helpless in the hallway, I kicked the door until it split clean down the middle.
Soon after that my roommates came home. I went to my room and took a nap.
Richard Dean Anderson, I salute you.
Thursday, March 8, 2007
The Religous Experience
I went to church last night. I sat there, trying to enjoy the huge, silent cathedral in the heart of Manhattan, but my mind was racing. It was then I realized I don’t do this enough. I don’t sit alone in the quiet, because sometime in the past two years quiet has become uncomfortable. The noise is deafening outside the church, and the glare of Rockefeller center, the women in the Coach store buying expensive purses with their iPods blaring.
This is the atmosphere I am accustomed to now — the constant clambering, pounding, screeching.
My roommate, who is very religious, asked me if I had gone to church yet when I told her about the big interview. I explained that it felt strange to be asking for something after I had spent so much time away, so much time avoiding the silence. She encouraged me, and I wanted to go – in the past I have gone in for mass, or to light a candle, or just to sit for a few minutes before returning to the noise.
But a conversation with a close friend this weekend put the idea back in my head, as I counted up the times I have been to church, or even stopped to take a deep breath and say thank you for the life I am living, which, right now, feels like the one I have always asked for.
Of course religion for me, like it does for many people, brings feelings of guilt along with any feelings of relief it provides. I remember going to mass once or twice when I was a kid, (we were Holiday Catholics to the extreme) and never knew the reason why I was not permitted to go up to the front of the church and receive communion. Maybe I wasn’t old enough, maybe I wasn’t (fill in the blank) enough, but we never went to mass frequently so it wasn’t something I felt I needed to ask my mother about. It was only when I was an adult that I finally put all the pieces together.
I knew I wasn’t baptized as my brother and sister had been. I just assumed my mother, a single parent, had stopped going to church over the years, and didn’t think it important to go through this ceremony with me. Through pieces of conversations when I was younger, I learned my brother and sister (10 and 8 years older) were adopted and my mother divorced her high school sweetheart when they were little. It was not until I was a young teenager as my mother tucked me into bed that I said something about her being married twice. She looked away, the Catholic guilt stained her face. She corrected me, saying she was only married once, kissed my forehead gently and walked out of the room.
I lay awake for hours trying to piece her history, and mine, together in my head.
Now that I am older, these conversations with my mother are more clear and linear. I am still afraid to some extent to ask big questions, but she is no longer so hesitant in giving me the answers.
His name, my father, was Stanley Harris. He was a working-class man, an elevator operator. My mother was alone, with two small children when they met. They were together, although my mother perhaps knew she would never love him the way she was supposed to love a man. He was a comfortable place for her to fall, although he was little support when she really needed him. After I was born, they arranged to get married, picked out a suit for my brother, and a flower girl dress for my sister. Her side of the story, the only side I have ever known, says that he was never fully reliable. Always wanting to come and go as he pleased, and never committing to the idea of marriage, or being a father.
So one day, when I was five or so, she told him to leave and never come back. And he never did.
I have told very few people that my parents were never married. I have dealt with it in my own way, but it will never stop being my little secret, I suppose.
So I let the silence engulf me last night. I sat and observed the other visitors, all better Catholics, better people perhaps, than I. I sat in the pew for a half-hour before my head calmed, and I could pray. I asked God for the strength to wait for an answer from the AP. I asked for the result I wanted. I asked for patience. I asked Him to show me the right way to pray. I asked for forgiveness for not being a better Catholic. I lit a candle.
So now my world is spinning again. But I am calmer. The calm is, however, peppered with questions. And I guess, to some extent, those will never stop.
This is the atmosphere I am accustomed to now — the constant clambering, pounding, screeching.
My roommate, who is very religious, asked me if I had gone to church yet when I told her about the big interview. I explained that it felt strange to be asking for something after I had spent so much time away, so much time avoiding the silence. She encouraged me, and I wanted to go – in the past I have gone in for mass, or to light a candle, or just to sit for a few minutes before returning to the noise.
But a conversation with a close friend this weekend put the idea back in my head, as I counted up the times I have been to church, or even stopped to take a deep breath and say thank you for the life I am living, which, right now, feels like the one I have always asked for.
Of course religion for me, like it does for many people, brings feelings of guilt along with any feelings of relief it provides. I remember going to mass once or twice when I was a kid, (we were Holiday Catholics to the extreme) and never knew the reason why I was not permitted to go up to the front of the church and receive communion. Maybe I wasn’t old enough, maybe I wasn’t (fill in the blank) enough, but we never went to mass frequently so it wasn’t something I felt I needed to ask my mother about. It was only when I was an adult that I finally put all the pieces together.
I knew I wasn’t baptized as my brother and sister had been. I just assumed my mother, a single parent, had stopped going to church over the years, and didn’t think it important to go through this ceremony with me. Through pieces of conversations when I was younger, I learned my brother and sister (10 and 8 years older) were adopted and my mother divorced her high school sweetheart when they were little. It was not until I was a young teenager as my mother tucked me into bed that I said something about her being married twice. She looked away, the Catholic guilt stained her face. She corrected me, saying she was only married once, kissed my forehead gently and walked out of the room.
I lay awake for hours trying to piece her history, and mine, together in my head.
Now that I am older, these conversations with my mother are more clear and linear. I am still afraid to some extent to ask big questions, but she is no longer so hesitant in giving me the answers.
His name, my father, was Stanley Harris. He was a working-class man, an elevator operator. My mother was alone, with two small children when they met. They were together, although my mother perhaps knew she would never love him the way she was supposed to love a man. He was a comfortable place for her to fall, although he was little support when she really needed him. After I was born, they arranged to get married, picked out a suit for my brother, and a flower girl dress for my sister. Her side of the story, the only side I have ever known, says that he was never fully reliable. Always wanting to come and go as he pleased, and never committing to the idea of marriage, or being a father.
So one day, when I was five or so, she told him to leave and never come back. And he never did.
I have told very few people that my parents were never married. I have dealt with it in my own way, but it will never stop being my little secret, I suppose.
So I let the silence engulf me last night. I sat and observed the other visitors, all better Catholics, better people perhaps, than I. I sat in the pew for a half-hour before my head calmed, and I could pray. I asked God for the strength to wait for an answer from the AP. I asked for the result I wanted. I asked for patience. I asked Him to show me the right way to pray. I asked for forgiveness for not being a better Catholic. I lit a candle.
So now my world is spinning again. But I am calmer. The calm is, however, peppered with questions. And I guess, to some extent, those will never stop.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
The Fire
In an attempt at clarifying my last post: The truth is I didn't run out of ideas. I just had so many ideas, so many things happening to me, all at once, at what seemed like warp speed, I couldn't even stop to take a breath let alone sit, contemplate, and write about it.
I am still in the job that I don't want in the city that I do, but since I last put hand to keyboard I have been promoted, and taken on so many new responsibilities I can't always remember what happened 20 minutes ago, or where I left my keys so I can go home to sleep for a few precious hours before having to return to the deadline that never seemed to end.
I was flattered by the promotion, and so far I have taken it extremely seriously - working 90-hour weeks and trying to make as many changes as I have the power to. But this magazine, this office, was turning long before I stepped onto the stage. I know for sure that I didn't start this fire, but in the effort to satisfy some personal goal to be a success at this, I have started to put out the flames with my bare hands, which is simply exhausting.
Of course all deadlines end eventually, and my first ended almost as uneventfully as the others. I am avoiding the calls from co-workers, even though they are some of closest friends, because I know that inadvertently the conversation may drift back to talk of "The Office," and my shoulders tense up and begin to tingle with pain. I will see them at work and apologize for not returning their calls next week, I think to myself. Just a few more hours to enjoy the quiet.
But the quiet does not hold me for long, because my brain is racing about tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.
In the heart of last week's deadline, I took a short lunch break with a co-worker. We had made a rule that there would be no talk of the office during this much-needed venture outside those four walls, which left us with absolutely nothing to say. We sat, quietly, until my cell phone rang. My shoulders once again began to tense. It's my editor, I thought, there is something she needs, something I haven't done....why can't I even get out for 20 f-ing minutes without a call from that b---
But it wasn't a number I recognized. I picked up. A woman began to speak. She was from Human Resources at The Associated Press, looking to schedule an interview. I got a cramp in my stomach. I made the appointment, trying to remain as calm as I could possibly be after receiving the call I had been waiting for for two years. The call I was beginning to admit, that I thought would never come.
So as I sit here, on a lazy Sunday afternoon, my shoulders are tense again. Not because of deadlines, or angry bosses, or added responsibility. But because my future is going to be decided tomorrow morning, at 11 a.m., when I walk into the offices of The AP.
Sure, if I don't get the job, other things will come along. But for some reason, this time, this interview is different. The stakes are higher, much higher, and I just hope that it's my time to jump out of the fire.
I am still in the job that I don't want in the city that I do, but since I last put hand to keyboard I have been promoted, and taken on so many new responsibilities I can't always remember what happened 20 minutes ago, or where I left my keys so I can go home to sleep for a few precious hours before having to return to the deadline that never seemed to end.
I was flattered by the promotion, and so far I have taken it extremely seriously - working 90-hour weeks and trying to make as many changes as I have the power to. But this magazine, this office, was turning long before I stepped onto the stage. I know for sure that I didn't start this fire, but in the effort to satisfy some personal goal to be a success at this, I have started to put out the flames with my bare hands, which is simply exhausting.
Of course all deadlines end eventually, and my first ended almost as uneventfully as the others. I am avoiding the calls from co-workers, even though they are some of closest friends, because I know that inadvertently the conversation may drift back to talk of "The Office," and my shoulders tense up and begin to tingle with pain. I will see them at work and apologize for not returning their calls next week, I think to myself. Just a few more hours to enjoy the quiet.
But the quiet does not hold me for long, because my brain is racing about tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.
In the heart of last week's deadline, I took a short lunch break with a co-worker. We had made a rule that there would be no talk of the office during this much-needed venture outside those four walls, which left us with absolutely nothing to say. We sat, quietly, until my cell phone rang. My shoulders once again began to tense. It's my editor, I thought, there is something she needs, something I haven't done....why can't I even get out for 20 f-ing minutes without a call from that b---
But it wasn't a number I recognized. I picked up. A woman began to speak. She was from Human Resources at The Associated Press, looking to schedule an interview. I got a cramp in my stomach. I made the appointment, trying to remain as calm as I could possibly be after receiving the call I had been waiting for for two years. The call I was beginning to admit, that I thought would never come.
So as I sit here, on a lazy Sunday afternoon, my shoulders are tense again. Not because of deadlines, or angry bosses, or added responsibility. But because my future is going to be decided tomorrow morning, at 11 a.m., when I walk into the offices of The AP.
Sure, if I don't get the job, other things will come along. But for some reason, this time, this interview is different. The stakes are higher, much higher, and I just hope that it's my time to jump out of the fire.
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