Alas....

...I was rejected today for the casino job. Oh well, I don't feel as bad about this one because I think I really did well on the interview, I guess they just had someone else who was a better fit for them. Wasn't meant to be. I'm too busy reading THE LONELY POLYGAMIST. Very funny book, surprisingly it reminds me of Larry McMurtry, the same hapless middle aged protagonist whose personal life is in a state of chaos, except in this case instead of one wife he has four.

I was essentially an entry level person, and I think the job might have called for someone with a little more experience. That has been the recurrent theme over the past ten months.

But things look good for unemployment to continue at least till the end of this year, so I'm not too worried.

Call damnit call....

Playing the Waiting Game. Did not get anything in the mail today, so no news is good news. I keep a pen and paper with my cell phone at all times, even when I'm out running errands [in the past they've had a penchant for calling when I'm driving somewhere.] I still wouldn't be surprised to never hear anything about it--if I get no news in Saturday's mail, I will assume that's what happened.

Found a new government type job to apply to. Hopefully I can put my interviewing experience with the county job to work…see, no experience is ever wasted. I try to make some kind of sense of all the various misfortunes over the past few years, sometimes I can, sometimes I can’t. I’m hoping that eventually I will have enough “close, but no cigar” interviews in order to finally reach the point where I can do a good interview. Right now…well, I don’t think I’m really bad at it, just that there are always problems with me as a candidate. I can’t mention often enough how disappointed I am with my performance in that last interview. When stressed I tend to ramble and I’m sure it is really irritating to the interviewer.


It’s strange…I used to be much more comfortable in those situations than I am now. I used to speak in front of relatively large groups, took a course in Public Speaking [where I earned an A] and so on. Now I can’t even interview for a job without either seeming all shaky and panicky or else messing up some other way. Don’t know what the solution is, but I’m hoping that I improve a little bit each time. Interview I had before this one, my mind wandered too much while they were talking to me and I think they noticed. This past one, I was able to focus more, but rambled too much in answering questions. I try to imagine possible questions and responses in my head beforehand, rehearsing everything, but tend to crack under pressure.

Part of it may be because I often have to say things that aren’t necessarily true. Does everyone do that? I talk about how important it is to be able to communicate well with co-workers and supervisors when working on projects, yet one of the biggest complaints on my final evaluation at the Big Firm was my inability to do just that. I suppose it isn’t a lie since I am aware of the importance of it, I just have problems doing it, although I really think that next time would be different.

I wonder where the line is between "puffery" and outright lying. I've never made anything up, I've just glossed over things that are issues for me. A lot of the skills people look for these days are things that I have trouble with. I don't think there's anything wrong with saying you are good at things that may not necessary be strengths, as long as there are no outright fabrications [like saying you worked someplace you didn't, had experiences you didn't, etc.] I suppose nearly everyone does this, but sometimes I think, "Well, what do you expect? Your qualities are generally the opposite of what they want." But that's probably just me being negative. Still difficult to form a plan for interviewing when the main activity is to conceal things that would most likely be a red flag to interviewers. I probably shouldn't worry about it, doesn't look like my attempts at subterfuge have worked yet.

This other government job sounds like a better fit for me, seems to consist more of basic accounting functions for a single entity, although it would be a more limited range of experience than the county accountant/auditor job.

SOUND AND THE FURY is in transit, can't wait, although it will be hard going. I believe I've tried Faulkner before, but I am a more focused reader than I was then. I've had lots of practice over the past four or five months.

Almost time to start the Fitzgerald bio too!

Hitting the wall. A sort-of Library Saturday. Writing about writing.

I think this may be the longest I've gone without an entry. I suppose this is the point where people often quit. Not me.

The rug remains below our feet--my wife's job is still on, and it is just HR being HR as far as why she hasn't gotten any official offer or anything. We are in good shape until the end of summer, where I will have to go through the whole unemployment extension merry go round again. Unless of course, I get a job.

Still haven't heard, don't expect to until next week sometime. The good news is I haven't yet gotten a rejection letter, I've had interviews where they obviously sent the rejection letter off the very next day, if not the day of the interview.

Anyway, I'm trying to put it out of my mind.

I always like it when I am the first to get a library book--I've had that experience a couple of times recently, for new books that have just been released and I've put on hold. Reading THE HEIGHTS by Peter Hedges [the guy who wrote WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE, and went on to do screenplays and some directing.] It's a little too New York and yuppiefied for me, but I will finish it. Reminds me somewhat of Tom Perotta's LITTLE CHILDREN. Wonder when Perotta will have a new one, I read THE ABSTINENCE TEACHER a while back and enjoyed it, although I found it lacking a little bit in substance.

Just picked up biographies of William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, two writers that I have never had enough time to read much of. It's something I'm hoping to rectify soon. I've found it's good to read biographies of writers when I'm trying to get started reading them. Of course, in some cases it's not necessary [some would say it's never necessary, but I disagree] but sometimes it helps me get into the work a little more.

Visiting the video-game people again tomorrow. I guess it's good to get out every so often--I'll probably bring some really bad horror films to watch [the husband is into that, but is a neophyte in bad-movie territory so I am glad to teach him the siren song of crap.]

In a poetry writing mood. I won't subject you to it, but I find my mind going more toward poetry when I can't seem to focus long enough to write anything else [besides blog posts of course.] Raymond Carver once said that the reason he wound up never writing anything other than short stories, poems, and the like was because he had two children to look after. It sounds like he was joking, but he wasn't, he wrote an entire essay about it. The recent biography RAYMOND CARVER, A WRITER'S LIFE is an excellent read. When I was an undergrad English/Creative Writing major, he was considered like some kind of god, we had to read "Where I'm Calling From" in more than one class back then [although the all time record was "Heart of Darkness" which I had assigned to me five times over the course of my undergraduate career.]

Of course, he had only been dead a few years back then and quite a few of the people teaching had actually known him and been in the same writing programs [Iowa and the Stegner Fellowship at Stanford] with him. I wonder if he has the same influence today, although I would not be surprised if he still did--a friend of mine who went back to school a couple of years ago and took a writing class told me that most of the stuff they were telling them was pretty much out of the same playbook, everyone trying for the same hyper-realistic, unadorned, gritty style. But it's one of those things that looks easy, but isn't. And if someone has to try to do it, they probably shouldn't.

Post interview blues....

Well, at least it's over. Government job interviews are always rough, and this was no exception. Unlike the private sector, there is generally no attempt at friendly banter or rapport. I was given a sheet of paper with questions on it, and then had to answer each one. I did not always have a good answer. Actually, I'd say very few of my answers were good.

After that, I was able to ask questions of my own, and that went a little bit better.

All I can do is think about things I did wrong, times when I did not communicate well enough, and the feeling that I had the deer in the headlights look throughout the entire interview. I do not have anywhere near the type experience they want, but it is allegedly entry-level. We will see what happens. I can at least take comfort in the fact that my feelings about an interview have never been a reliable indicator of how it went--there have been several times when I thought I knocked it out of the park only to get a rejection e-mail or letter a few days later. This time I feel uncertain, so maybe it worked out?

Job will be a huge stretch for me, but I guess that is how it should be. I try to tell myself, "If I don't get the job, it means I was wrong for it." I should hear something by the end of next week. Also, we are anxious about my wife's job now, she starts in a week and we have yet to receive an "official" offer or get anything from HR. I am trying not to think about having the rug pulled out from under us, but it's always in the back of my mind.

I Am an Auditor for the County.....

...or hope to be. Today I got a call about a county government auditing job I had applied for back in January. I'd taken an accounting test last month and placed 4th out of probably around 100 people. I was not sure if that was good enough to get an interview or not since I figured it might be a situation where you have people tied for various places, but apparently it was.

So I'm brushing up on governmental auditing standards [found an auditor quality assurance program that they have on their website.] Have zero auditing experience, but I'm looking at my old CPA review material. Unfortunately I don't have the Auditing book, but I think I can find most of the important info online.

Having the CPA will help.

Things could be turning around, but the key is to be prepared.