Happy Friday, my sweets! I feel like I’ve risen from the emotional dead thanks to the power of routine and being in the same place for the past month. I am a functioning adult and I have the cognition to prove it.
Sometimes there’s a plenty to say about a topic, and other times I just need to acknowledge it before it can get put to bed. This is one of those.
The Friday Chew. Five little things to chew on. Right now they all start with an F, or at least phonetically they do. I wonder how long I can keep that up. You’ll know it’s getting down to the wire down the line if you see a subsection titled Fajitas.
Fascinating
The slow grind toward employment continues.
On the whole since my first essay, I am feeling a million times better about my circumstances. By not keeping all of my feelings inside my chest cavity, I have truly unshackled myself from the brick wall of my consciousness and I have a renewed vigor for navigating the job market that I haven’t in months. I am faithfully applying to anything I can find on the internet, ranging from things I am deeply to mildly qualified for, not knowing when anything could potentially stick with the hiring manager. A dear friend who works that hashtag corporate life helped me revamp my CV. I have made peace with the fact that if by the time my working rights are in effect and I have not yet secured a job, I will do the classic door to door and try to sell my work ethic to any store or restaurant who isn’t repulsed by my lack of Dutch language skills.
My inner peace is not only stemming from the zen that is only found post flagellating yourself on the internet. It came from a peak behind the velvet curtain that I am so rarely afforded in this employment game of cloaks and daggers.
I applied for a very entry level marketing assistant position with a remote B2B company. The job description and their requirements were blessedly open-ended, so I felt confident. Yes, I studied journalism, not marketing. But girl I can write well, in any format, in any voice! I can produce content in any media you can name! I am a fast learner and I need a paycheck yesterday. I triple checked my resume, crafted a cover letter from scratch for good measure, and applied. All I received from the company was a copy of my answers from the Google Form I filled out.
Twenty days go by without a peep, but I don’t think much of it. I’m used to being ghosted almost as often as I receive actual communications from these companies. But this day I happened to be scrolling LinkedIn when I saw an elated and gushing post from the CEO of this B2B company, introducing the world to their new marketing assistant. This is all fine and dandy, but what stopped my breath was the stats this CEO so boastingly shared.
1,267 total applications. Napkin math will tell you that 2.5% of people who applied received the pleasure of a phone screen, while 1,235 people heard nothing in return. Not a peep, not even a crummy two sentence email dismissing them from the hiring process. How many of them even stood a chance? How many of them have been fighting over scraps? For how long?
I have helped to hire people before. I understand what a daunting undertaking it is to deal with on top of the onslaught of day to day tasks and looming project deadlines. I have sorted through heaps of emails seeking a hiring manager’s attention, from the stellar to the sincere but off the mark to the damn near incomprehensible. No matter who you are, you deserve to not be ghosted by the people for whom you spend hours crafting an application. I wish this online marketing team who probably (definitely) has an easy tool to automate a response to the people who didn’t receive first round interview invites, did us that favor.
I know that I’m in a good place because instead of my prevailing emotion being despair, I am oddly heartened by these numbers. It reminded me that I’m not unemployable. I’m just a number. I’m one of many, many, many people who just can’t get noticed amidst this cacophony. I know it’s a timing thing. I know it’s a numbers game. Onward.
Fight Me
I am from Forest Lake, Minnesota. I must own that fact, as much as I dislike that fact, because the politics of that place come part and parcel with the territory. It’s a town that has ballooned in size over the last 20 years, and it falls within the most conservative district in the state. Over the years it has been subject to representation the likes of Michele Bachmann (memorable for her beliefs that climate change is voodoo, that creationism should be taught in schools, and that the war in Iraq was justified) and our current majority whip Tom Emmer, who rules with an iron fist and now claims almost two thirds of the vote every time he runs for reelection.
However my most memorable tryst with the politics of Forest Lake are the three (THREE) attempts it took for the most recent educational bond to pass so that the dilapidated school buildings I used growing up could have their first real face lift since the 80s. It took three (again, 3) different referendums because the people of the district did not feel like investing in education if they did not have children in the school system, and even then, some parents just didn’t care enough to raise their tax dollars by an almost negligible amount to benefit the children of the school district.
Between our elected representatives and the personally held beliefs of the constituents who got them there in the first place, it’s hard to be proud of Forest Lake almost any day of the week. But don’t worry, there’s room for more disappointment. We are now entering an era that will surely eclipse the legacy of any other political boneheads from the area. On January 25th, Forest Lake native Pete Hegseth was confirmed as Secretary of Defense, after J.D. Vance broke the 50-50 split Senate with his special VP tiebreaking abilities.
Pete Hegseth is unfortunately the biggest name from Forest Lake, and his stature is sure to only grow with time. I remember the first time I ever heard his name uttered, being regaled by my high school political science teacher about having him in class, how proud she was of him for playing basketball at Princeton and serving in our military. She even devotedly hung a campaign poster from his botched attempt to run as the Republican senate nominee in 2012.
Unfortunately for Mrs. Stennes-Rogness, there’s never been anything to be proud of when it comes to this man. His misogyny and malevolent regard for the women in his life are blatant. His history of rape and sexual assault are well documented and were center stage at his confirmation hearing. I do not feel the need to regurgitate these here because there are too many sources who have collected and shared this information (see NPR for a succinct summary that isn’t behind a paywall). What is important is that it still was not enough. It’s never enough. It’s abhorrent and sickening and all too common. It’s never enough.
I was scrolling Facebook last weekend, as one does, when I saw the Forest Lake Times post a story about Hegseth’s confirmation. I was scared to read the comments, expecting a wall of supporters espousing their love for their hometown freedom fighter. Instead, I was greeted with a surprising mix of comments. A lot of them, maybe even the majority of them, read like these:
Does the first commenter mean DUI or DEI? Who’s to say! The sentiment is there. I’m just happy some people are starting to stick their necks out in that town, even if it’s just commenting on a newspaper article. Here’s to more of that in the Forest Lakes of the world.
Oh yeah, one more thing before we move on — this man DOES NOT WASH HIS HANDS.
Fiction
I am feeling so deeply refreshed with my fiction reading lately! I have not read a bad book in a long time and I intend to keep the streak going. Just last night I finished Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd. I picked it up over the summer after a lovely recommendation from my friend Emily after we perused the selection at Unnameable Books in Brooklyn. This quote struck me:
Lately my head hurts whenever I look at something. My head is pounding all the time. All these things come in through my eyes, but how do they get out? As words? As tears? What if those things stop coming? What if I can’t talk or cry anymore? Everything connected to my eyes will grow, get bigger and bigger, making it even harder to breathe. Eventually it’s going to get so bad that I can’t open my eyes (p102-103).
Kawakami has such a way of articulating how emotions show up in the body, and simply observing them. She does not rush to name the emotion, but rather sits with the welling and crashing of the energy that harmonizes between your body, mind and heart as we try and metabolize what’s happening around us. The character who wrote the quote above is going through puberty and you can tell! It really reminded me of what it was like to experience emotions at a greater decibel than before, these incalculable feelings I had no idea where to put. And still don’t!!
Keeping in the vein of books, I just started following Martha’s Monthly, and she has really inspired me to up my game when it comes to reading translated books. If I’m living in the Netherlands, I want to read more books by Dutch authors, not just what’s the latest and greatest from the American market. I want to try and read a book from every continent this year. My commitment to you!
Physical
Commitments! Lest we forget it’s January.
In a flurry of trying to create order in my life and set goals that will help me make use of my very open days, I signed up for a marathon in May! It’s the one big kind of race I have not yet tried my hand at, and I knew this had to be the year to do it. I’m really eager to train for an Ironman, but I’m not so crazy that I won’t at least try running a marathon distance before I tack it onto the end of a bloated triathlon.
It’s been almost a month now of running with intention again, and I feel really great doing about 50km a week right now. Watch this space, because I don’t anticipate I’ll feel as cheerful in later months.
Feeling
Amidst all of this ruckus, I have landed somewhere beautiful and rich with culture, and as a museum lover girl, I really don’t take it for granted. Look at this!!
Beautiful, beauty-FULL, art. And also, this doll.
I cannot believe that I get to look at this, and that millions of other humans have looked at this, and that one person spent innumerable hours painting this one thing, and if they only made this one thing it would be enough, but no. These painters have made dozens of these paintings! They are detailed and precise and lush and gorgeous.
That is all! Goodnight!
I liked and restacked (?) this I think
Keep chewin ✊