Life is just a bowl of business cards

"Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they're not trying to keep up with you." Erma Bombeck


My career fair checklist goes like this: Stapled copies of resume with business cards in upper left, also stapled (to the stapled resumes or stapled with a third staple on top of the stapled resume for easy removal should the recipient be annoyed by the presence of the business card whose only business is to mention that you know enough to have a business card made up to advertise you are available for hire). Check (I guess.) Business cards (already covered in item one). Check. Writing samples. (oy vey-even the intended audience doesn't enjoy reading those, heh heh I'll attach my blog, what the hey). Double check. Outfit? Oh please.


Cheri (esteemed Zen teacher spoken about vociferously in prior posts on the offchance anyone reading this has never heard of me)-- speaks about the idea that suffering can be ended the moment one decides to do so. Say what? Say I agree with that or at least am intrigued by the idea-- HOW?

The 'how' is both the easiest and hardest process I've ever engaged in. In simple terms, how is often just opening my mind to the idea that something else exists. In the contradictory way that Zen appears-- we start with the sense that we have the control to divert our attention to a more harmonious inner experience, and then proceed to work with the notion that harmony involves staying put here until we experience what appears to be out there, perhaps in someone else's purview.

A lot of my early practice experiences with this idea have centered around being able to recognize thought patterns that I thought really represented who I really am gloves off, and coming to believe they not only weren't me, but items in some regard 'just there,' generated from who knows where (or cares) inside my head. 


Sure I'm the one wracked with worry about approaching strangers at the job fair knowing the balance of their interest will be in the subject matter experts for whom I have written all these years. Yet those fears are comprised largely of thoughts, if I can pause even for a moment to let one or two of them into my consciousness. That realization alone is the point at which another hateful voice comes along and starts filling me with the idea that I'm having the 'wrong' experience, and hardly one of nonsuffering. Again, with pause, or even the ability to breathe and physically look away, the notion comes along that that two is a thought, randomly generated, yet appearing to intimately connected with the reality that is my current experience.

So how does that make my job today one of nonsuffering? I'll be sure and let you know when it's all over. I arrived early and had enough clarity and love for the human that holds these thoughts and this consciousness to decide to put 'her' in the company of others going through the same experience. So I'm actually typing in the career center and about to head over to 'the fair' center shortly.


A lovely side effect of the willingness to pay close attention (notice everything and *try* not to take things in your head personally- don't believe everything you think! as a bumper sticker beckons)- is that the minute you are in it just for the view, you not only start seeing a kind of space around content that you might otherwise run toward and cling to, if only because that seemed inevitable- but other ideas make themselves known as well-- such as be kind-- really be kind-- to you as the container and watcher of these hateful/hurtful thoughts. 


Just as a thought to the effect of, 'you are totally unprepared and going to come off sounding like you don't know anything about any company you approach,' so can a less intrusive thought of, 'hey, it's ok-- you won't be alone,' or even 'gosh I'm proud of you for doing this.' It's all there, in your own head, I promise-- all for the noticing.


Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities crept in. Forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you should begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

My ears and whiskers*

"The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at a time."
Richard Cech


So, I have to assume that if the above is true, I am doing many MANY things all at once because I am doing many things but few to completion, or few that don't need to be re-completed (isn't that the same thing?) like, my resume. Any idea how many versions are required to get one person one job? or even one half or one-quarter a job? (That is, if you cast a net to include part-time work.)


Thankfully (and I thank all of you reading) very few, like only one, or one-half or one-quarter person has asked me what I'm doing with my free time. We out of work persons, and I'll speak for all of us, even though I'm so new at it, *really* appreciate it when that (the free time question) is *not* asked, however logical it is.


Before I was out of a job I remember telling John that I would 'quilt every day' should I have the misfortune to get laid off. And of course with the extra work everyone I know is either taking on, or feeling like they have to take on to invest in whatever security, real or perceived is available, getting laid off can have a lottery ticket feeling to it.


Somehow, I have spent less time quilting since I got the news, a bit more time with childcare (and they are hardly children might I add) oriented tasks if you consider flex accounts drying up by the end of last month and the need to get everyone their checkups, glasses, and oral surgeries-- yet, much more time cleaning up old email, learning my new computer, stopping the presses of making a master plan for income generation in several different arenas for the sake of following up on one small, big, or medium lead as the case may be. That generates a flurry of activity, often requiring asking favors from others (thank you Facebook friends!) only to get no response at all from the lead, or a thanks but no thanks note because the market is simply flooded. So that feels like a back to square one situation even if in fact the lead follow up involved more work on a resume or a furthering of a course charted out earlier. What remains after one of these goose chases is massive disorientation as to what path I was headed down 'before' the lead was forwarded, and a stack of people who I doubt will continue to think of me as their friends if I don't make time for them in some form.


So, what am I going to do about it? My question to myself, if not anyone else's. I'm going to face down this conundrum the way I face down just about everything else-- why I'm going to write about it. Not here (just in case you are not interested in how much time I spend down to the minute going to yoga and the grocery store on the way back)-- but I will see what I can unearth as to the time suck culprit. Work has deadlines, meetings involving reports and all manner of things to either sum up what we've done, or notice what we haven't done. Some of that exists now in the form of my job search work team and certain productivity tools we are asked to generate.


More soon.


"What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know." St. Augustin

*Title is by Lewis Carroll from Alice in Wonderland, "Oh my ears and whiskers how late it's getting."

Bonus round: guest bloggers wanted-- I will be away the week of October 18 and would love to feature a guest or 2 for the October 18 and 21 blog entries. Yyou can write about any subject you choose!