The Maelstrom

I am looking for a job. I am actually looking to use some of the skills I have been teaching to college students for nearly ten years: copy editing, technical writing, proofreading. But the past sixteen semesters have been bound up in academia. It's a cheap duvet, is academia - warm, but full of sharp feathers: uncomfortable, and designed to undermine your confidence - but it is pain and fear in familiar terms. It has become my primary discourse: my first language. I know where I fit, and what I can expect, and sometimes I even know what is expected of me.

I have been working with some amazing professionals to find a place for myself in what my rhet/comp friends call "alt-ac," or "alternatives to academia." These people I work with are impressive; men, for the most part. They have sharp resumes, dark tidy suits, and a familiarity with business discourse that I absolutely lack. And they are all facing the same thing I am: joblessness. We swirl around a maelstrom, struggling to avoid the hopelessness against which everything we do is mere panicked bracing.

I awoke this morning choking. I cannot see myself employed, and if I can't see it, then I can't make it happen. When I worked as a volunteer missionary in Germany, I remember feeling this way exactly. I remember how we counted the people we spoke to, and how those numbers could fluxuate, but our success never varied. I could not see anyone listening to me.

At a dark moment, when I realized that all of my hard work was pointless, I stopped. I stood still on the street, looking out at the people passing under the steel-grey sky, carefully not looking at me, at us. I just watched them. I looked at their faces, at the set of their shoulders. I don't read people. I am not always sure what facial expressions mean, but in those moments, I stopped forcing myself to contact everybody, and started looking for people . . . I can't even describe what I was looking for. It wasn't strength, it wasn't light, because that's what I wanted to give them. But it wasn't the opposite, either. I spoke to one person. And another. After that, my statistics dipped a little, and did not drastically change, but the numbers I reported became more meaningful. I was no longer collecting rejection: I was meeting people - making momentary friends.

I need to have contact with a certain number of companies and people per day in order to get an interview. That's difficult to do when I cannot see the end. I cannot imagine anyone hiring me. I can't even imagine what it's like to get an interview. I know there's a group, a cause, a company that can use my intelligence and education. Somebody wants my words. Instead of throwing myself at everybody, I need to stop, and watch, and listen, and then move forward carefully. The numbers will care for themselves: I care for people.