Things Are Looming Overhead.

Two years ago to the day (give or take a days maybe) i graduated from college and was on a plane to New York for my post grad adventure. I cannot believe it's been two years. I must say, I do not know where the time has gone.

It's absolutely funny (now) talking to recent grads these days. They have this sense of entitlement , that I must have possessed too, in regards to the job market I cannot help but find hilarious. Like me, they believed graduating college would automatically lead to a job. That after four or five years of undergraduate study they would come out alive, with a diploma and a sweet job offer after crossing the stage. But of course they find out that that is not the case, and life has a way of sucking hardcore for a while.


Case in Point:

I work with an incredibly annoying girl named Heather, who just got her B.S from a university upstate. She was a seasonal worker a couple of months ago because she finally graduated with her undergraduate requirements. Once she graduated and moved back home she started working more hours at the bookstore, to the chagrin of the rest of us.


Heather is nice. But she is a surface level person. You never get the sense that she has a sincere bone in her body. She's made of air. Very light, always there but totally completely void of tangible substance. So she is nice but to the point of annoyance.


She wants to be a High School teacher but of course she can't find any jobs in the area. Because of this she took a full time position at the store a few weeks back while she lives at home with her parents and younger sister. In a heartbeat, she's gone from 'this job is great' to 'i can't do this anymore Beckett. I just can't. I graduated from college for god sakes'

I wish I could feel sympathetic for her, but I cant. I've been out of school for two years and with two internships under my belt finding a job is still very difficult. I hate it at the bookstore every single day. I hate the customers, I hate the b.s of working in retail, but more importantly I hate the grind. The incredible amount I put into working there for chump change. I feel like I spend more time cleaning up after people (thank you to all the assholes who leave books and magazines around) than actively engaging people about literature. And with the edition of a new E-Reader, the store is becoming more heavy in the digital aspects of consumerism.


Now that I don't want to go into Publishing working with books has lost it's luster. I still love being around books ( i could get lost in the fiction aisle for days), but I'd rather be around my own or at least in the confines of a huge collegial library; lost in the stacks of volumes and studies.

Everyone is talking about the Jet Blue flight attendant who went ape shit on a plane after getting smacked in the head by bag because of some queen bitch of an unruly passenger. Lets just say he didn't take that too well. He cursed out the passengers, quit his job and then curtailed it off that plane as fast as one can do. Despite the attention his whole rant is getting, I don't really find his actions heroic (as some people have claimed) or even the event that interesting, and for that reason I haven't made any comment about it when people bring it up at work.

To me, public proclamations about how much you hate something (work, high school, people) is a little bit too dramatic. I liked to keep my disdain for things in little internal mind pockets that I write down when it gets too much (I am however a fan of public proclamations of love. I'm talking to you John Cusack) but I can see what all the attention is about. People are assholes. Not all people, but a very large sum are shitheads. Working in retail you can't help but get a sense of this. That people like taking their frustrations and general nastiness out on strangers. It's the equivalent of being told to punch a pillow when you made. The pillow has no face, no history, no memories. It is just this plush item that feels no pain no matter how hard you drive your fist into it's imaginary face.

And everyone has contemplated doing what this JetBlue guy did. To say 'fuck you, fuck you, an definitely fuck you' followed by throwing back a beer or two and exiting with a sense of self worth. Because while people are assholes they have a tendency of bringing out the asshole in you. Even when you want to be the bigger person.

And maybe that's why I can't feel any sympathy for Heather as be goes on and on about the trials of post grad life. I want to tell her to shut up, suck it up and take one for the team. She is not making it any easier for the rest of us who don't want to be there when she keeps making comments about how sick she is of...being there.

I only bring her up because a while back we jokingly agreed that we would make really good roommates. Okay, she joked about it while I smiled on as if she had just drank crazy juice. Did I mention that she is annoying. I can't even sleeping over her house let alone being roommates with her. But today she came into work, pissed of course, and said that she was done with this place and would start to look for jobs in upstate New York.

'as soon as I get a job we can start looking for an apartment. it won't be that hard for you to transfer from this bookstore to one closer to where we will live'

Excuse me? Did I hear you correctly?

I am a very defensive person. I quickly get offended by actions and words that denote my self worth. And for some reason I was so...hurt by her complete ignorance to my wants in life. So, i may have halfheartedly nodded by head to a joke about moving into together but when did all of my plans for myself, two years in the making, revolve around moving to Upstate New York when she get a job where I would live happily working at a new bookstore. I was so infuriated I wanted to....tell her to go fuck herself. In a very polite way of course.

Instead I just stared at her, laughed nervously and then made some excuse so I could get away from her.

I can say that I didn't see myself being in this position two years ago. And with every glimmer of hope that things will get better there is a setback that throws me off kilter. I have not heard back from the job in regards to setting up an interview. They re posted the ad online which gave me some hope that they hadn't interviewed people yet and that I would get a call or email to set something up. But the fact that I can't get in touch with the HR Lady makes me feel crazy, as if the whole voicemail was a tease.

I want to be persistent without being annoying but this situation is driving me crazy. Limbo is a horrible place to be. I can't go back, I can't go forward so instead I just feel stuck. I don't know the proper steps to take to make things better. I called last Tuesday, left a message with an Office Assistant on Thursday and tried another attempt this Tuesday. But nothing. At all.

I feel weighed down by things. Stress, anxiety, and life. I hate admitting this because it almost feels like defeat