Not Being a Chicken

The Statistics Canada people called back to follow up on my employment status. Did I work in the last 30 days? Well, yes and no. I got a job offer. I went somewhere on my employer's dime and I worked hard at learning things, but I didn't get paid and I didn't get a job out of it, so no. I just tell them the story and let the interviewer encode it the way they want. He probably had a training course on it, and everything. I was looking forward to being a positive datum in the survey. I redouble my efforts to make that happen next month.

I hate online application forms that require me to enter "expected salary" and won't let you go to the next page without it. At least with a paper one you can enter a range or write something vague. Some of the ones I've hit lately ones verify that I enter one proper number. I apply to a couple of jobs at my current level, jobs I should be able to get, but not jobs that advance my career.

The phone rings, I answer with my name. The person actually listens to what I said, then uses my name as he asks to speak to someone else, a male name. There's no one by that name who lives here. I tell him that and he thanks me and hangs up. I psych myself into believing that he bailed because he didn't like the way I sound. I try to knock myself out of that headspace to in order to write sincere, enthusiastic cover letters.

When I run spellcheck on what I've got and it complains about my e-mail address, the non-blog e-mail on my resume, not the cockpitconversation one. It suggests I replace it with one of:

magnetohydrodynamical
electromagnetically
recrystallization
buckminsterfullerene
inapproachable

If you can reverse engineer that, send me an e-mail!

I make a note of that for the blog, then read some e-mail and write an unrelated blog entry. Now what was I doing? Oh yeah, I was revising my resume.

I didn't apply for a job in Yorkton. Nor to another one in the north, posted by an employer who doesn't know the difference between the shift and the caps lock key, for a company that ten years ago had a 'don't bother applying' reputation where women were concerned. The guy probably thinks ovaries interfere with the operation of the rudder pedals. You can picture him, in a tractor hat, typing with two fingers and a pained expression on his face. He can skin a moose, load it into a plane, fly bush IFR and finish off a mickey of rye on the way home. Be assured I'm not implying anything about the particular operator. I don't know him, and for all I know the shift-key-challenged person is a twenty-five year old female. It just amuses me to construct a picture of the boss I'm not applying to serve. The job is in a town where I really don't want to live, and I don't have the particular time they favour, anyway.

Actually, I always summon up a picture of the person I'm writing to. Sometimes I know what they look like, and I usually know what their airport and hangar look like. I imagine them reading my e-mail and looking at my resume and being pleased with what they see. I also picture myself there. I'm not doing it as some kind of New Age visualization process, it's just what I happen to do. I commit to things.

It's irritating the number of little changes I made in my life because I thought I had a new job, and now I have to undo them, or just feel their reminder all the time. They were tiny things like changing the default airports and towns I see the weather for when I check my iPod touch, and rearranging my sock drawer to make it easier to grab the black ones when I get dressed in the morning. The black ones used to be at the bottom, or permanently in my suitcase. I did a bunch of menu planning and associated grocery shopping to make flight bag lunches, so I have to use that up, and kick myself every time. It's also harder to settle down and apply to okay jobs when I can still taste the fine one that got away.