Nothing is Wrong with Me!/What is Wrong with ME?
I have been slacking and procrastinating coming here to write, and it only took a bunch of Kevin Smith videos to encourage me to finally get back to it! Here's a good part of one of them:
Kevin Smith encourages people to use their unique voice. He says: "Nobody hears it as often as they should...You Are Smart, and You Are Good!...". It would make a great children's book title actually. It could involve some anthropomorphized animals...with names like Carleton and Jewel. In the town of Shrewsbury...Anyway! Because of trying to continue receiving 'food stamps' (long story), I ended up doing a really great Spring and Summer stint as a regular volunteer at an after school program called Shine. It didn't actually help me reinstate the food assistance, but that's okay. It was extremely valuable experience, starting out as an assistant, and then leading a class myself. The kids were, as they usually are, amazing. I 'sincereously' encourage everyone to start participating in volunteer work as soon as you are old enough to walk and talk. I encourage parents to volunteer with their children. It's great, do it!
I wish that I had volunteered long ago as a child, but I didn't. But I do it now! I can do better, and be better, now that I know better. And volunteering can lead to bigger and better things. It's really like an unpaid internship job that you get to choose yourself.
So while I was volunteering there I applied for about ten different jobs on the school district website. Different things, from library aide to nutrition services. A couple weeks later I got a call for an interview to be a substitute lunch lady. I was like, cool. I can do that again, I did it at the other sub job, but this will be more regular and closer to home. It's part time, so I can keep pretending to pursue my artwork and writing, and probably qualify for SNAP again. On the negatory side, it's food service, which I have sworn off many times (long story). The person who did the interview, a really nice lady, she shared practically her whole life story, which was really interesting, how she used to be a dressmaker and ended up in management at Nordstrom's, never having gone to college, she was very successful, before becoming a cafeteria worker herself, and then working her way up into management of the whole department! Anyway, I sent her a thank you email afterwards and she wrote back and said nice to meet you too, and yer hired! Pending an HR required physical.
Wow, Cool! I got a job! It doesn't pay more than my other sub jobs (11.00 an hour) but it will be cool. It's not in a classroom environment, but it's in schools, and I can observe and interact and take mental notes for my future ( say a little affirmation)books! I'll probably get a free meal! I was talking myself into it more and more. See the positive! Be optimistic! Then I didn't pass my physical. My still healing broken finger, and my heart murmur caused them to say Nope, pending a letter from the doctors stating these things would not interfere or compromise my ability to do the job. Oh, no! So I made appointments to take care of that. Then I get an email that I have an interview for one of the other positions I had applied for! A higher paying job! With people, not food! I was pretty excited. I wore, as I did for the first interview, my nice, gently used clothes I got from Dress For Success, applied a little makeup, and I felt pretty confident. It didn't require a physical, and wasn't a sub position, so it would be at the same location. It would be 35 hours, so would qualify for benefits. I told my boss at Shine about it and he said he would be glad to be a reference for me too. (Which turned out to be very helpful, as the reference I had put in my application didn't respond.)
I went to the interview in the Special Education offices and who should work there but Tammy Piscatelli, the former head school secretary from the school where I did SMART and book room volunteering! It was nice to see a familiar face. And then, when I went to the HR offices for the benefits meeting for the group of new hires, who should come up and say hello, but the former principal from there! It was pretty cool. So, fast forward, because I haven't written about each of these things and events as they were happening, and I'm just trying to catch up now, without writing every little detail...
It's September! I had a fantastic birthday last month with Awesome Steve, and now have a (hopefully) fantastic job to start next week! Some advice I heard recently from the speaker at a DFS meeting was that you should go home each day and write down a positive accomplishment from the day. I will try to remember that, next time I think about writing, then put it off.
Signing off,
Kaet
P.S. Here's an amusing excerpt from a Kevin Smith interview:
I feel like my entire generation grew up smoking weed and watching Clerks and Mallrats.
See, that’s something I never did until fairly recently. It was [Seth] Rogen who turned me on to it. I’d smoked weed in the past, but treated it as a recreational, once-in-a-blue-moon thing. But Rogen was just so impressive and productive as a stoner, and the only stoners I’d known filled the stereotype, but this is a guy who works against the stereotype, since he’s always working on, like, nine things at once. He introduced me to the notion that there’s a whole community of productive stoners—not just in this business, but everywhere.
It’s a really mental wall, but once you concentrate and bust through that wall, you can be very productive.
Exactly. Some people are like, “I can’t imagine working stoned!” but for me, part of the fun is working through it, where it’s like, “OK, there’s something here but it’s clearing cobwebs and making me look at it from a new perspective.” It doesn’t give you any creative ideas, but it removes fear from any equation so you have no fear of what will happen.
