still believe in good days
It's Wednesday. I got up early and spent the entire morning scrolling through job postings without luck. Some days I can find a bunch of positions to apply to, and other days like today I can hardly find one I'm interested in.
The recruiter for the bilingual tech support-ish job in California called me back today. He seemed unconvinced that I could move out there immediately, and I don't blame him. I have no idea how long it will take me to get there and find a place to live either. A week? Two weeks? A month? It doesn't help that I'm traveling for four weeks in the next three months and that I don't really want this job.
Questions aside, he set me up for an interview with the hiring manager tomorrow. They seem desperate to fill this role, considering they said that if I passed all the interviews, they would like to have me start in the beginning of March. I caught my mom up and she's adamant that taking a role like this would be career suicide. She's (probably?) not wrong, but I can't imagine getting a job much better at the moment. I'm struggling to find jobs to even apply to, to say nothing of landing them.
Today I was surprised to see decorations put up in our house for the first time in many years. The only decorations we typically have in our house are free supermarket calendars, so seeing a bunch of red and gold trinkets and lanterns show up out of nowhere is a little jarring.
My mom put them up because we're having guests over on Saturday for Chinese New Year (another anomaly). It'll be an interesting mix of people, including my brother and his girlfriend, two of my mom's friends from tennis, and a college student I've not yet met who is the daughter of my grandma's goddaughter. I'm not crazy about having a bunch of people over, but I guess some variation in my routine is better than none.
Tutoring is going okay. I got some mixed feedback from my supervisor about how I handled the fifth graders (i.e. as well as my patience allowed). I'll try my best to be more kid-friendly going forward (in her words, "silly and goofy"), even though I have the personality of one of those Easter Island Moyai. If I can't find any semblance of order after a few more lessons I think the fifth graders will get turned away for the time being. Which, honestly, might be the best possible outcome. I shake my head every time I think about parents forcing uninterested fifth graders to take writing classes. Even mine weren't that insane!
On the bright side, I've been asked me to lead some larger creative writing bootcamps from March to May. Having all these classes planned makes traveling complicated (to say nothing of planning spontaneous trips), but it's been a long time since I felt appreciated at work and I intend on making the most of it. I don't make much money tutoring when you consider all the preparation I put in and sacrifices I have to make for these lessons, but at least I'm getting experience in something I actually like doing for once.
(I shudder a little when I imagine how tired I'll be if I get a full-time job and have to spend most of my free time teaching and lesson planning. I'm already so drained from everything that's going on...)
I saw this video the other day and I don't remember the last time I felt so seen. For a long time I felt deep down that things were going to be okay in the long run, but as the weeks fly by that faith is slowly slipping away. Hearing from people who are going through similar things does make me feel slightly less alone, though. I keep repeating to myself the chorus from Good Days:
All the while, I'll await my armored fate with a smile
Still wanna try, still believe in
Good days, good days, always