Ce no quiero librame

It's funny, isn't it?

You spend months redundant, out of work, a faithful member of the dole queue, and you dutifully apply for jobs. Lots of jobs.  Big ones, small ones, awesome jobs you aren't really qualified to do but that you try and talk your way into anyway, jobs in Starbucks even though you don't actually drink coffee, and after what seems like forever, you land a job.  You feel like a rock star in your dark suit and Tom Wolfe shoes.

Then a little more than a month into the job, the rot sets in.  The glow of having a job to do, knowing you are being paid and being taken out to lunch a couple of times in the first week, it all fades.  You look at yourself and think, am I really a salesman?  Quitting is not an option.  Jobs are too few and far between to just be given up, but you start thinking in terms of authenticity.   What is the real you, the authentic you?  Maybe it's too soon to know.  Maybe 3 months in, 6 months in, you'll be smiling to yourself as you rake in the commission and you'll say bollocks to "authenticity".  But maybe you won't.

You go to a job interview on the sly -- making up that you have a doctor's appointment, a believable enough story, since the day before when you were feeling particularly unsatisfied with the job people kept asking if you were feeling okay -- but before the interview feel disloyal, feel like you would be better off staying put.  Then the interview seems to go well, you are reminded why you wanted it, and you forget about feeling disloyal -- you don't owe anyone, anything. Other than the student loans company.

Your boss sits down next to you one day out of the blue and asks you how you are finding things, if you have any questions or anything you want.  You bring up training.  There was none for this job, a couple of days of learning how to use the software but that was all -- so you say how you would like training.  Not just in sales but in other things -- web design, marketing.  Your boss tells you as nicely as possible, that's not your job.  We have people to do those things, you are here to sell.  Don't remind me, you think.  So what?  That's what spare time is for.  There must be books you can teach yourself with.  If you have a "teach yourself" guide to Zen, there must be one for CSS out there.  Although it will probably not be any easier to get through.

But you're left with a choice just the same.  Stay put, stay as long as humanly possible -- which should really be more than a year, given your bad luck with work, hope that the focus shifts from sales to marketing, hope that with time you will be able to move sideways in the company, or at the very least you get good enough at your job to not care.  Or else look for better.  Look for the job you wanted to begin with, while keeping this one -- look to move as soon as possible to make it clear that this was only to get you back into work.

What's funny is how quickly being back at work turns into looking for something else.  Maybe what you seek is inside yourself, maybe you need Zen more than CSS and need to learn acceptance.