Was it all just a dream? Or maybe a vision? No, the embarrassment and the frustration I was dealt by the hand of another was very real. Little did I know that what happened to me then would be the prelude to a battle, a battle against myself more than anyone else.
Where I live now, we have something called the Job Service, it's a part of the state Bureau of Employment Programs (BEP). They're supposed to help people who are out of work and can't get jobs any other way find work. Since I've been unemployed for five years, and had a recent bout of bad luck with direct applications, I went to my local office of the Job Service to see what employers had posted jobs with that office, and to apply to a few. I had no idea what I was getting myself into by doing that.
September 16, 2005, a quiet, comfortable, Friday morning with a few billows of cloud drifting lazily across the sky. I got up early and headed down to the Job Service office with a couple family members who were also looking for jobs. We went in just as they opened and looked through the job postings, pointing out the jobs we thought each other were possibly qualified to do. That session generated three possibilities for me, which I inquired about at the desk, and was given the proper applications to fill out. I sat down and filled out all three applications, making sure they were as complete and honest as they could be, then I went to turn them in at the desk. The person working at the desk was taking care of another client's needs, so she passed me off to a kind looking gentleman, but looks are most often deceiving as I quickly found out.
The man looked over my applications very briefly before addressing me rather smugly, in my opinion, saying: "The employers will not accept these applications without references." Needless to say I was under the impression that I had wasted my time, that my applications would not be submitted to the employers. I wasn't in the office for a minute after I was told that. I grumbled something like "then do what you do with them." Not knowing what the Job Service did with "unacceptable" applications, I assumed they destroyed them due to the sensitive information contained on them, and I hurried out the door. As I was leaving though, I made a promise: "I'm writing a letter to [the] State," and that was it. I left the office before I did or said something I would regret later.
It took me almost four hours to completely draft a two page letter to the BEP Commissioner when I got home after trying for two hours to calm myself down unsuccessfully. I took the extra step of sending copies to my state Senators, knowing that if the BEP didn't do something, they would have some serious explaining to do somewhere along the line. The letters went into the mail the next day, and after that, the issue was out of my hands, and I didn't expect anything to come of it. I decided to take my job search out of town, at the insistence of some relatives who live out of state. It was while I was away on this trip, that a phone call came for me, unexpectedly, from the manager of the Job Service office that I had written about to the state BEP, one day short of the three week mark, that's October 6th if your counting. That caught me off guard, because I wasn't expecting anything like that to be done. I expected them to handle the issue quietly, and not bother to contact me about it all, so I was surprised.
I decided it was not in my best interest to call the man back, but I needed to satisfy my curiosity about what he wanted, so I contacted him through the e-mail address that's provided on the Job Service website. I communicate a whole lot better in print than I do in person, which was my reason for chosing e-mail to conact him anyway. The manager suggested meeting with me to "fine tune" my application and make suggestions for applying to jobs, but he insisted I call him at the Job Service office to make the arrangements. It took a few e-mails to get a meeting date set, Tuesday October 18, 2005
The meeting I had this morning (today is the 18th of October after all) went okay, there were no major hurdles thrown at me, and I did learn a few things that might, just might, help me in my continued job search efforts. Still, I have my doubts. My personal experience with the Job Service hasn't been a very good one to date, so this light sense of minor progress for me isn't enough to convince me I can let down my guard. I may have been talked into applying for a few more jobs today, and though the suggestions made to me were actually usable, I will not know if I have made any progress with Job Service applications until I get more than one call back for an interview. When I am sure of that progress, I won't have to worry quite so much. All I can do now is wait.
I saw the teaser page for the Art of Otaku project the other day. I have to say I'm even more interested in it now. I do hope there will be a way for someone like myself to get a hard copy of it though, no one seems to be saying how that guide will be delivered yet, but I'm sure there will be provisions for us non-credit card holders. I'll keep pushing for a hard copy version anyway. I know I've been critical of the project in the past, but I would like to see how it was handled considering the call out was for ten artists and they ended up with eight. Call it an invested interest if you will, a casual fancy of mine. I want to see this project that appears to have turned out so well, even though I didn't believe it could based on my limited perspective at the time it was announced. I guess that's a good sign of my progress, accepting something that I didn't agree with at first, but have been convinced that it may just be a good idea yet. Time will tell on that one too.
That's my story, it kind of explains why I've been acting weird lately, and my posts have been erratic, if I made any at all. Rarely do I get the chance to go that far in depth into my life, but then again, rarely do I experience something so profound that my very core is rattled loose from its mental footing. Learn from your experiences, that's my advice.
Anime Dreams
P.S. I lost my cable again, so I was watching the extras on my Escaflowne box set and had to take the mechanical animation director up on his suggestion of watching all 26 episodes in one sitting. Let me tell you over nine and a half hours of Escaflowne may sound like a good idea, and you do get an exceptional understanding of the whole story, but it's not a good idea, trust me.
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