Why everything in the world sucks.

Yes, I'm going to whine now.

I have a job interview on Thursday. Oh, yay! Isn't that great! A job interview! No, it's for a dead-end job at a tiny branch campus of a community college. Yes, a branch of a community college, believe it or not. The job has a nice impressive title, but it's not the type of thing that'll eventually lead to anything better. There's nowhere to advance to -- advancement will be reserved for the people working at the main branch, not the dinky branch. And they wouldn't advance you very far, even at the main branch of the community college, unless you have an education degree, and I don't have one of those.

And besides being a dead-end job, it's in a dead-end town, too. I know because I've lived here before. I worked here as a reporter for almost three years. It was okay for me then, 'cause I was basically working my way up from nothing, so anything would be an improvement, and I knew that what I was learning would help me get jobs later. I could deal with it being an hour's drive to the nearest town with any amenities. I could deal with there being no entertainment, no culture, nothing to do but watch TV, go to church, and eat 'til you're diabetic.

Now, I won't be learning anything that'll help me advance. Anything I put on my resume will be discounted as soon as they see where I worked. "Oh, a branch campus of a community college? That's nice, but don't you think maybe you should work your way up to the regular community college first?"

So it's a job interview for a job I don't want. Easy enough to flub the interview and bail, right? Wait for a better job to come along, right? Well, no, the thing is, a better job isn't going to come along.

See, most of my training was as a writer. But after losing my last job as a promo writer, I wasn't able to get another writing job, and it's been about two years since I worked as a professional writer. For employers, that means that, for all intents and purposes, I've never worked as a writer. If you let any significant time pass on a job like that, they assume you can't do it anymore. Stupid, right? Nevertheless, that's the way they think. Writing as a job? The door is closed.

And my last job? It was as an online updater for a newspaper. Hey, great, I got training in computer programming and troubleshooting, right? Well, sure, but the thing is, the training I got would really only apply to the job at the paper. No one else uses exactly the same system and programs. I couldn't do what I did at the paper anywhere else, because they'd use a different system than I worked on. That door is closed, too.

This is a damn rotten economy, too. Waiting around for the perfect job when jobs are this scarce is a good way to find yourself frozen in a gutter in February.

What does that leave me? It leaves the dead-end job in the dead-end town. So I have to try to get this as hard as I can. If I fuck it up, what else is there? Temp-to-hire, if I'm lucky. And not many of them are too enthusiastic about hiring 40-year-olds with Masters degrees. "Shouldn't you be going for something more high-profile? You're over-qualified for anything we have." I don't care. I need to work. I need to pay rent and buy food. "You're a lot older than most of our candidates..."

So if I chance upon some rare lucky streak, I'll get the dead-end job in the dead-end town. And it's still nothing to be happy about. Two of my big hobbies for the last few years have been comics and comics blogging, but the dead-end town is four hours away from the nearest comics shop. That's too far away to travel to get my weekly comics fix. Frankly, it's almost too far to travel to get a monthly comics fix. And no, subscriptions are too expensive -- I've checked already. Can't keep the old comics blog running when you don't have a regular supply of new comics.

At least I'll have more time to devote to playing my online games. If the dead-end town has anything but dial-up. Oh, yes, I don't know if they do or not. I think they've got DSL, but I don't know for sure.

And at least I'll have more time for writing. Well, not immediately. See, the dead-end town actually has a housing shortage. There aren't enough apartments. There's a waiting list to get into new apartments, and no one's interested in building new apartments. I have no idea why. People must hate money. So if I move there, I'll be moving in with my parents. Yes, 40 years old, and I'll be living out of a spare bedroom for who-knows how long. Maybe I can write some stuff out longhand, then type it up later. I'm pretty sure the local grocery store sells notebook paper.

I hope I get the job. I hope I work there 'til I die. But I swear to god, I'll never be happy there, and I'll resent the job and the town for the rest of my life. I will make it a specific point to stoke the resentment as high as I fucking can. I never imagined I'd have to give up multiple hobbies just to work at a dead-end job. Whether I get the position or not, either way, it proves that my whole life has been building up to this perfect and permanent realization of personal and professional failure.

No messages, please. No, seriously, no messages at all. No chings, no upvotes. It's not something I'm keen on thinking about any further.

I am not proud of myself. I am becoming a cliché teenager and I only have two more years to stop or get good at it.

Today I had my first phone conversation longer then 5 minutes. It was an hour long.

And to make matters worse, it started as a two-way. Then it was a three-way. Then a four-way. Its sounds so much more kinky then it really is. A phone conversation with multiple people. I am slightly ashamed of myself.

What next? A cell phone?

Why am I noding?
I ignore physics homework again and an urge to urinate.
This is ridiculous.

Update- As of July 2, 2009, I do actually temporarily have a cell phone.... dammit. I"m even getting quicker at texting.

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