Inner-View

There is nothing like a good, intense, two-hour interview to really help you evaluate your worth as a human being.  It’s also an experience in self-promotion.  Not only do you have to prove you are qualified, but also prove that you have the ability to explain exactly why you are in articulate, clear pronouncements.  Experience, successes, jobs, classes, degrees, promotions, goals, aspirations, oh my. 

It’s hard to find a potential job that seems just right.  Location, pay, experience, required skills- too many factors to name.  It seems that in ”Today’s Job Market” (aren’t you sick of hearing that phrase?) you need to have started gaining experience in a particular field from infancy if you want a shot at a good career.  Even companies hiring for entry level jobs want candidates that have very specific skills and experiences to make them eligible for the position.  Many times have I seen a job that I would be perfect for, if only I spoke fluent German or knew how to disassemble a laptop with a bobby pin. 

It is both ironic and beyond frustrating that the hardest, most challenging, most stress-inducing, most rewarding job I’ve ever had is not one you can put on a resume.  For anyone that has grocery shopped with two kids under age 3, or gotten out of bed for the fifth time in the same night to feed a newborn, or tried to explain to a 2 year old that punching their mother in face will not actually get them the lollipop they are crying for, you might understand.  But it’s true.  I’ve never worked harder or been more proud of anything. 

I define myself as a mom, first and foremost.  But it was a huge confidence building exercise to spend those two hours selling myself.  To be honest, I did talk about my kids in the interview (a move that can either help or backfire, depending on the audience).  At the risk of sounding Parent’s-Magazine-cliché, being a mom makes me a better worker. 

Can you handle stress?

“Yup. Yup yup yup.”

How do you deal with multitasking?

“Give the baby a pacifier and run with the 2 year old to the potty.”    

Have you done budgeting before?

“Diapers are cheapest at BJ’s but if you are in a rush, Target sells them for almost the same. And I always have a coupon.”

Are you afraid of getting your hands dirty?

“Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.”

Wish me luck!

9/11- Remembering

I can clearly see the blue pattern on my sheets and feel the sun filtering in through the windows, in that exact moment after my radio alarm went off.  I had planned to get up and go to the gym before my classes started later in the morning.  But my bed was so comfortable and the will to work out was weak that morning.  I hit the snooze button before the words of the usually blithe and sarcastic radio DJ had really sunk in.  Something about a plane and a fire.  I distinctly remember thinking that it was one of their normal jokes.  I slept for seven more minutes and when the radio clicked on again, they were still talking about the plane.  I started to listen, sitting up on the edge of my single dorm room bed not yet knowing that this was a moment, a day, that I would never forget.  I was 20 years old. 

            Several other moments from that day remain remarkable clear to me.  My roommate yelling from her room that “They just hit the Pentagon!”  The horror beyond anything I had ever known as the first tower collapsed, as if my stomach fell with it.  A student whom I didn’t know, standing next to me in a crowd around a TV in a classroom later that morning, turning to me with vacant eyes and saying “I know someone that works there. He won’t answer his phone,” before he walked slowly away. 

            I assume most people have similar memories of that day, just as my parents and grandparents will never forget where they were the day Kennedy was shot or when Armstrong landed on the moon.  In fact, my own kids will most likely refer to 9/11 in the same way some day- mentioning how their their parents were moved by events that they read about but can never truly understand the experience of living through.  It’s hard to believe 11 years have passed and the memories are still so clear.  I hope they will always remain that way, because I think we all can agree that remembering such a day is important.  Remembering not only pays tribute to those who were lost but also keeps in the forefront of our minds the greater lessons from 9/11- knowing what is important, what is valuable and what is worth fighting for.  

Beginning of a new fictional story.....

It is not possible to stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon and not imagine falling in.  The extraordinarily vast emptiness where solid rock should be, pulls with long-winded fingers, drawing eye and breath and balance downward.  A person cannot but search the descending slope beneath them for a safe way down, a path to traverse, a way to safely discover what lays at the bottom.  Vertigo snakes out, threatening to push a body over, making it necessary to shut the eyes, reach out for a railing, turn towards safe ground in order to rebalance.  Even the bravest feel a nip of fear deep in the stomach, knowing that pain and death are only one wrong step away; an ending preceded by a long, rock-pierced, dusty tumble to the canyon floor.  

Yet crowds line the edges, testing their resolve, wondering at the depth and distance.  It is the same in other such places.  Niagara Falls- where the water has the potential to crush, wash away, annihilate, and drown, as well as mist and fascinate its visitors.  Alaskan bound cruises- where people seek to know the cutting glaciers, the jagged mountains and the untouched edge of wilderness, safely aboard a slow moving vessel.  Helicopter rides over the Hawaiian volcanos- teetering over the steaming craters and lava-hot peaks, reveling in the swooping ride over untouchable danger, but knowing that solid ground is only moments away.  It is the threat of danger, the opportunity to imagine disaster close-up, that drives people to those destinations, ever ready to pronounce that they did it, they tried it, they survived to bring home a postcard and a picture of themselves next to the sign. 

Lute Balthasar and Ari Stone had been there- yawned at the Grand Canyon, blinked at Niagara Falls, passively passed over the volcanos and pyramids and hungry rivers of the world.  They weren’t looking for postcards or snapshots or clichéd, prepackaged adventures.  Through ten years of trying, the two men had spent more time lamenting the inability to find truly novel experiences then they had doing pretty much anything else.  Everywhere they went, no matter how distant, how uninhabited, how off the edges of the guide-books’ maps, they knew that someone had been there before them. 

They had found gum wrappers on mountain tops, burnt-out fires in deep caves and frozen gloves on Artic wastelands.  There was no place new to discover, no final frontier.  The world, for them, was simply not big enough.