hoodwinked!

as i may or may not have mentioned before, job hunting is far less fun than pretty much all of the other things i hate:
grocery shopping on sunday afternoon;
arguing with a 3 year old;
moving your entire residence without the help of any sober individual;
listening to hilary talk about how she is going to "let" barack run on HER ticket;
waiting for comcast to attend to a service problem;
running into a significant ex at the gym;
you get the picture...

it's a game. it's like your goofy best friend from high school. it will lift you up just high enough to see over the fence into your kick-ass future, only to pull your legs from underneath you and laugh as you fall to the ground. i think that i've learned to play... the trick is to grab onto the fence before you fall and figure out how to swing up and over. i'm still hanging...

so last week, i got a phone call letting me know that i'd finally scored an interview at the company i've been wanting to work for ever since i went back to school. my interview at ann arbor radio group was yesterday and it went like this: i arrive, feeling good, looking professional and i meet the guy who's going to interview me. he seems like a pretty cool, laid back guy... he's in jeans and a button-up so that puts me at ease since i'm definitely more comfortable with the "casual" crowd. we have what i think is a great interview, although he does throw out a few questions that make me wonder "why did he ask me that?". he wraps it up and asks the customary "do you have any questions?" question. of course i do. i'm prepared. so i go into what it is i do understand about the position and ask if he could tell me a little more about what my responsibilities would be. the look on this guy's face was one of pure confusion and embarrassment. turns out, my resume was passed along to the sales department and he was interviewing me for an ad sales position, unbeknownst to me. let's pause and imagine my shock and dissapointment. i thought this job was going to be my ticket into the radio biz, out of the U, and perhaps into my own condo. i know my great future is out there, i just don't know how to get to it.

another pause, this time for a tom petty lyric: "god, it's so painful when something is so close... and still so far out of reach"

subsequently, i went home with my tail between my legs and drank it away. today, i am able to laugh it off but haven't shaken the disappointment yet. it reminds me of my time in california job hunting and/or soul searching. i went in for a sports marketing interview one morning and was somehow tricked into going door to door in dress shoes for 9 hours in the rain. i don't even remember what the hell i was selling. note to potential employees: if you have to be tricked into a position, you probably shouldn't take it.

although i can say i'm in quite the predicament now. i don't want to sell shit, but i can certainly think of less appealing things to sell than radio advertising. people think they are straight celebrity status once they hear their name or voice on the air. the salary is higher than my current salary and i'd be earning commission on top of that. maybe it's something to think about. when i was first offered an internship at greater media, i originally turned it down. it turned out to be the best thing that has happened to me in the business, and regardless of where i go from here, i will always credit the people i've met there for jump-starting my career. maybe this is another "door close - window open" situation. everything good that's ever happened to me has happened on accident and has been the result of me taking leap of faith. analysis and advice is welcome...

the adulthood disconnect

after some friendly chit-chat amongst my web-world parent friends the other day, i began to think about why we feel so disconnected from the rest of the world once we become parents, spouses, professionals, whatever. i guess i was a little surprised to find out that a large percentage of them felt the same way, because usually i imagine myself as somewhat of a recluse compared with others. where did all of these insecurities come from? at work, we spend most of our time trying to act like a "grown up". in social settings, we preoccupy ourselves with attempting to be funny, witty, casual... most importantly, likeable. when did our own skin become so uncomfortable? i reminisce on days when i thought the entire population loved me just as much as i it. now it seems to me that as we grow older, we allow most (if not all) of our relationships to weaken. perhaps it only seems that way to me because most of mine were not meant to be strong in the first place. i am currently sacrificing geographical proximity for emotional proximity. the people that are close to my heart are actually quite far away. illinois, north carolina, california, nevada, northern michigan, etc. it makes me wonder, though... would i still feel the same way about these people if they were across the street? or would that just be too close? my simplified conclusion: i think that although we all long for a deeper connection with others, it's just easier not to. there's less risk involved - less chance of being dissapointed because we "don't fit in". and thanks to this wonderful thing called technology, it's even easier now to monitor our own level of disconnect. oh, how i love the art of text-messaging and emailing. what better way to "connect" to people without truly connecting?