Domestic Geek

Three days left of the old silkscreen job. Starting to panic a bit about finding work, but I'm trying to remain positive that a better position is just around the corner. I've been tempted to apply for jobs not in the field just to get by, but I'll get comfortable, get stuck and never get back into the graphic design field. I need to tough this out and not take the easy way out. What sucks is there are lots of jobs listed on Craigslist and Monster that are in my field, they're just not within driving distance of my house. Poo.

I worked on nothing job-related again today. I actually worked on a t-shirt for Marcus and one for me. It's my last chance to get things printed that are my own designs. I was feeling guilty about it until the art director asked what I thought of a shirt that he had made yesterday while I was out on jury duty. After that I was like, "Screw it--I'm going to work on my designs." So, I did. The company's deposits had holds on them again and the art director's check didn't clear this week. He was on the phone most of the morning trying to clear up the overdrafts on his account. Man, glad that wasn't me. Still a good thing that I've been given the boot. Employees shouldn't have to worry about paychecks clearing. Nobody's come right out and said it officiall, but I believe the company is toast. All the signs are there.

Speaking of jury duty, I obviously didn't get picked to sit on the panel since I was back at work today. Glad I didn't get picked because the trial was a civil case dealing with guaranteed loan defaults of defunct telecommunications companies. Dry stuff. I had already made up my mind about the case with just the kinds of questions the lawyers were asking those in the jury box. No way I could've been impartial. So, I may get called to serve again next week. This Federal court jury picking system is screwey. I've had to call every weekend to see I had to report the following Monday for over a month. I wasn't picked for Monday, but this week was told I had to call back on Monday to see if I was picked for Tuesday (and I was). Oh, well. Small world, though. My art teacher from Platt (Marty) was there. So I had a friendly face to shoot the bull with while waiting for us to be taken up to a courtroom. He got picked to sit in the other trial, so I have no idea if he's a juror or not. He had to report Monday, wasn't picked, then had to come back on Tuesday. Like I said, screwey.

The dog is having horrible gas tonight. I hope that doesn't mean a repeat of last week. He had horrible gas the night before the sickness set in. I need to go to bed but I'm afraid to try and sleep with him farting like that until Marcus gets home. Figures this is racquetball night when he gets home later than ususal. *sigh*

OK, I guess that's about it. Exciting, huh? Please send good employment vibes my way.

Well, I had a lead on a job that would've been perfect for now. Five minutes from the pizza job, 40 hours/wk, $10/hr. The only problem is you have to be willing to move to New Mexico in January or February to be considered. Huh? Why don't you just wait until you move your damned company and then hire down there? Idiot. It's not like he's even going to pay to relocate you. He seemed like a scatter brain and when I told him I had studied web and graphic design he was like, "I do web design, too. I did our site." Well, I saw your site. It sucks. Yet he has somehow managed to get himself into a half-million dollar home. What the hell am I doing wrong?

Starting to panic now. I was bawling after I got off the phone with him. I hate trying to find a job. Especially when I don't really want one. I want to start my business, but that takes start-up capital and I don't have any. Unfortunately, the bills are still going to come, so I have to find something.

I don't want to be here today. Deep depression is setting in--not good. I'm getting that feeling I get every five years or so where I just want to hide from everyone and everything. I end up turning into a total hermit.

Stupid art director makes me listen to his crap music every day. When I put on something I want to listen to ('80s), he puts his iPod nano on. Can't even hear when people are talking to him. Oh, well...one week and all this won't matter anymore.

Well, since I'm refusing to do any work today, back to the job hunt.

Wow, things are really weird here at work. It's like everybody knows something that they're not talking about. Nobody seems to be doing any real job-associated work. The art director worked on his resume again yesterday (yes, I'm nosy). He and one of the owners has been talking in cryptic sentences around me. Art files are being put on CDs for customers to come get. A couple of other employees are working on starting their own business. It's like everybody is getting affairs in order. It's kind of creepy. I personally have been surfing job boards and playing with Wordpress all morning. If I ever get the nerve to start my own design business, I need to know more than just MT and EE.

I'm back. I had planned to return in a couple of weeks, but cut my hiatus short because I just had to share this little bit of news:

I got the following in my inbox early Tuesday morning and didn't think much of it. The art director was working on his resume on Monday and I chuckled to myself that maybe he was planning on leaving and I was going to get a promotion.



Well, guess what happened at work yesterday? I was given my two weeks notice that my job at the screenprinter is being eliminated. Sales are THAT BAD. When the art director broke the news, he informed me that he was looking for other work as well. I wonder if the company is finally going under. Anyway, as of November 1st, I am again underemployed. So much for leaving on my terms, eh? Oh, well. At least I got some art production experience under my belt. Like the horoscope said, I'll probably be better off because of it. We'll see.

Even though I was expecting something like this eventually, the shock didn't hit me until I was standing in the aisle at King Soopers. I suddenly went numb and would've started bawling had I not been in public. I had to fight the urge to buy every comfort food within the place. I had to remind myself that I had I finally fit into my smaller pants last week. I've been bike riding with Marcus every weekend since my birthday and I'm finally firming up. Did I really want to sabotage that? No. So, everything went back on the shelves except one bag of M&Ms. Yay, me! Besides, if I don't find other work soon, money will be really tight and I would have felt really shitty about blowing money on junk.

In other news, my poor old dog has had explosive diarrhea for the last three days. Even though I had planned on milking the screenprinter out of every dollar possible the next two weeks, I took today off to tend to him (and me since he's kept me up the last two nights). I'm not sure if the Immodium I gave him is working or not as I don't want to follow him outside in the rain to see if his poo is runny. The poor guy is exhausted, though. I feel so bad for him. I also hate cleaning up poop out of the carpet. How do you moms do it? I don't think I could deal with so much poop on a daily basis. You women are saints.

Well, other than that, my life has been the same the last few weeks. I've still been slowly going through my junk and throwing stuff out. Why do I own so much freakin' junk?

I was playing with the Google Maps API last week at work. I had planned on implementing it into the company website before I got the news I was canned. That thing is really cool. It's too bad there's no reason to put that on any of my personal sites, but it's still a cool thing to know. I wish my javascript skills were better. I'm sure I'd pick the scripting of it up a lot quicker if they were.

I'm also trying out a new font manager. I haven't had one since my free trial of Suitcase and Font Reserve ran out a looooong time ago. I found a post about it over at Mezzoblue. It's put out by the folks over at Linotype and it's called Font Explorer X. Supposedly a Windows version is in the works, as well. It's very iTunes-ish. I haven't had much time to mess with it, but I like what I see so far. I hate Suitcase with a passion and swore never to waste my money on it. Speaking of fonts, I wish foundries would lower the price for their fonts. Offer fonts for $.99 like the Apple store does music and see how many people would actually buy legal copies of fonts instead of pirating them. I bet the foundries would make more money. I know I would have less of a problem buying a font for a couple of bucks as opposed to $25 or more. It's working for iStockPhoto. Just a thought.

Speaking of iStockPhoto, I'm seriously considering getting myself on there as a contributor. I can do vector illustration just as well as anybody on there. It would never make me rich, but hey, everybody could use a little residual income here and there, eh?

Well, guess that's about it. I'm sure I'll have a lot of posts coming in the next two weeks because the screenprinter probably won't get a lot of work out of me. My motivation is totally shot. That's why I'm all for severence packages and being let go on the spot. Let's hope the next company that hires me can actually afford to provide the benefits that I was promised after 3 months.

Man, I had just typed up this long, insightful post and went to another site in another tab to get a link I wanted to post that I found this morning and the damned site locked up my browser. Buh bye loooong, insightful post. I so don't feel like writing all of that again right now. Maybe when I get home. *hrmph*

I just about jacked my keyboard at work when I knocked over my water bottle. Fortunately, the water spilled in front of it and I only got a few drops on the spacebar. Whew. Not that I'm doing any work today anyway. I have to beat the art director about the head to give me work to do and I'm tired of it. I've gotten such a bad attitude here. That's what my post was about. Maybe it's a good thing that the browser crashed. Maybe all I really needed to do was get my anger and frustration out and I did and there is no record of it. Hmmmm.

Anyway, I've been doing The Artist's Way for the last week. I started doing it a while back and never made of habit of it. I think I gave up after a week. This time I'm determined to see the process through. I've got a major creative block and some self-confidence issues. I do some serious mental self-sabotaging and I need to get to the root causes and fix it. One of the main excercises in the program is a thing called morning pages. Every morning you write three whole stream-of-consciousness pages of all the crap floating around in your head, no matter what it is. That's probably why I haven't had much to say here. Once it's on paper, why bother typing it again?

I can't remember how I got there, but I was reading this site called The Lazy Way to Success and I read this quote: Man, how true that is. I don't care if I ever become rich, but I'm tired of being an employee. I hate it. I'm tired of my income being dictated by the work ethics of other people.