Unemployment and Phone Jitters

I'm feeling uninspired at the moment, so I'd just like to do a no-frills recap of the job hunt.

It sucks.

Kidding. Mostly.

Basically, I applied to the few job postings I could find in the city and followed up with one or two classmates that said they might have something for me to check out. Neither of them went anywhere. After much hesitation, I finally decided to do some cold calling in order to dig up some sort of lead. It took me about a week to put together an "A" list of studios in the city and find specific creative directors to contact, along with their contact info. It should've taken me two days.

Finally on a Monday morning, I decided it was time to pull the trigger. I sat down in front of my computer, with phone in hand, and promptly spent the next two hours squirming and procrastinating. It was really strange; I could tell that there was some very reactionary, instinctual need to not touch that phone. I mean, yeah, I generally don't like calling anyone as a rule. But this hesitation was 10x worse and felt like a physical object lodged in my nervous system, preventing me from dialing. And the thing was that I knew I had nothing to fear. Worst case scenario, I call these people I never met and they decided they don't want to speak to me further. That's it. I had some fear of people I've never known not liking me. And even if that happened, there's a solid chance I would continue to never meet them. So... What's the big deal?

It was just one of those things where there's a severe disconnect between the logical and instinctual parts of the brain. On one hand, it's kind of fascinating to see what happens when you push yourself to such a limit that you have such a tangible reaction you can't control. On the other hand, it's also a giant pain in the ass because it keeps you from doing something you want to do.



Eventually, and with the friendly prodding of a friend called Maria via chat, I picked up the phone and dialed the first place on my list. I got the receptionist, who told me that the person I wanted to speak with wasn't currently in. I asked when they'd be available. She told me. I thanked her and hung up.

Well that was easy.

Then I went through the other 12 places on my list over the next 45mins. I only got ahold of 2 people I wanted to. I've interviewed at one place with encouraging results (they liked my stuff and want to give me a freelance project. If that goes well, I might get a 3 month contract. If that goes well, I might get a proper job). The other person I got ahold of sounded slightly annoyed and wanted me to email them my portfolio URL and cc the HR person. I figured that was just a brush off, but he emailed back a week or two later saying that he'd like to meet with me some time after Labour Day.

Not bad. That means that over one hour of work, I managed to get ahold of 15% of the people I wanted to speak with. Of those, 100% agreed to see me. While I still don't quite have a job, that's still not bad.

And yes, I know that I currently have a lead that might turn into a job. I'm a bit hesitant to be hopeful, though. Even if things do go well, I'm still looking at another ~4 months before I have a full time position. But it's something.
-Cril

And there's no desert sun that is hot enough to feed your fire
We shipwreck like fools only to become the ocean's choir
And the sun dies until it's reborn
But there's no road that ain't a hard road to travel on

Got lost on the way, but you found the road again
Stay true to your friends, 'cause they'll save you in the end

Sam Roberts - Hard Road

Drinking All the Heat

So this week. It was a thing.

I had my first interview on Friday at a marketing firm. It went well. Long story short, the creative director liked my stuff and said there's the possibility of a freelance project. If that goes well, there might be a 3 month contract. And if that goes well, there might be a job. So I'm a bit conflicted; I'm excited at having a solid prospect on the horizon, but I'm a bit scared that I'll maybe maybe have a job in 3-4 months. That's a ways away. But at least it's something. 

My biggest stress right now is that I'm still couch (er, guest room) surfing with my friends. Don't get me wrong, they're some of my favouritest people in the world and I love being a part of their home and they haven't been anything other than incredibly gracious and generous. But I know that they aren't particularly looking for another member of the household to take up space and eat their food. I'm antsy to get work so that I can get my own place. The last thing I want to do is overstay my welcome or take advantage of their hospitality. 

On a bit of a whim I actually went out to Banff/Lake Louise with them for a day trip on Saturday. I was supposed to only be at their house for breakfast, and then they talked me into coming along. I had a good time, I enjoy spending time with them. The scenery itself was breathtaking, but the throng of tourists was vomit inducing. I guess that's what you get for visiting a tourist destination on an August weekend.

It's scary that the summer is almost over. I feel like I don't a lot to show for it.

I don't have much else to report at the moment. I'm feeling slightly uninspired and apprehensive.

-Cril

I was in a prison with imaginary bars
I was riding shotgun in imaginary cars
One was filled with wind twisting through an iron mouth
One was made of trees with no keys to shimmy out 

When the sun fell down and fell asleep
Drunk from drinking all the heat
It made a splash onto the sky
The stars stayed up 'til morning

Imaginary Bars - Great Lake Swimmers

Dear Mister Fantasy

So Robin Williams died yesterday. I can't say that I'm a huge devoted fan of his or anything. Yes, I saw Aladdin and Hook more than a couple times as a kid. Yes, I thought he did a great job in Good Will Hunting, Insomnia, and Jakob the Liar. Even seeing him in Hamlet was a pleasant surprise. I never made a point of searching out his movies though, and never passionately watched and re-watched his material. But like almost everyone in western society, we knew and recognized the guy whenever he appeared on the screen. Laughs, and at the very least a few chuckles, were sure to follow.

And consistently, too. In the same way we know that Pixar will make good movie, Coldplay will put on a good show and John Stewart will tell it like it is, we all knew that Mr Williams would simply be funny. In a way his ability to do so was almost magical. Connecting with people in a way that you can make that smile is no small feat, and he seemed to do it every time no matter the circumstances. "That relentless energy, brilliance, and comic genius..." we'd remark, if only in our heads. I could never fathom what it might be like to always be "on" in that regard, as if being ready to crack a joke is the equivalent of a bomb being armed.

So, unsurprisingly, it was a bit of a hit in the gut to see the man die at 63. If it was a stroke or car accident, we'd just shake our heads at how fickle life is and curse at how cruel the universe can be. As if it was the one getting the last laugh, in a twisted way. But instead Robin Williams killed himself.



You can't be mad at the guy. It'd be selfish to lament how much entertainment you'd be missing out on as a result of his selfish act. Yeah, I don't think anyone out there will claim that there's nothing wrong with suicide. As someone who's been graced with the ever-roaming presence of depression, though, it's hard to fault the guy. And yeah, maybe he was relatively wealthy and well off, but our problems are all relative. What I'm stressing about right now can't be too far off how those at the top and bottom of the food chain are feeling. The guy had his demons. And it just so happened that this time they got the best of him.

Because he was such a brilliant comedian, though, I think we hold him to a slightly higher standard. He had the holy calling of being one who we turned to in order to distract ourselves from our individual demons and darknesses. And because Robin was so consistently good at this calling, we placed him so much higher on the pedestal. A therapist will only help you believe that life is okay and worth living. Mr. Williams made us believe that it's worth laughing and smiling about.

We trusted him, and borrowed his belief that the world is a better place than it actually is. But apparently he didn't quite have that belief. We were borrowing something that didn't exist. In a way, maybe you could claim that he lied to us all. You can get angry and cynical about it, taking The Watchmen route. As the Comedian put it, "It's all a joke."

But instead, though, it just makes me profoundly sad. The underlying plot is not glorious or dramatic or incredible. It just turns out that sometimes the world sucks so much that the man who made so many smiles didn't have any left for himself when he needed it most.

As a user commented on one of the many online related stories, "I don't want to live in a world where Robin Williams commits suicide."

Well Mr. Williams, wherever you're at now I just want to thank you for the laughs and smiles, and I hope you're having a few of your own. You deserve 'em.
-Cril

Dear Mr. Fantasy play us a tune
Something to make us all happy
Do anything, take us out of this gloom
Sing a song, play guitar, make it snappy

You are the one who can make us all laugh
But doing that you break out in tears
Please don't be sad if it was a straight mind you had
We wouldn't have known you all these years

Steve Winwood - Dear Mr. Fantasy


While writing this out at the dining room table of my uncle's house that I'm watching over, I pretty quickly knew that Dear Mr. Fantasy was the right song to use. So I typed out the whole post, and then went to the Googles to collect the lyrics. And every single link resulted in a blank Chrome page stating "This website is unavailable." Checked the internet connectivity. Working. Searched for other songs. Working. Searched again for "Dear Mister Fantasy". Not working. Tried incognito, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. Not working. Went to a lyrics site. Searched for "dear". Worked. Searched for "dear mister". Worked. Searched for "dear mister fantasy". Not working.

WHAT. THE. HELL.

I was at the point of seriously considering that I had someone contracted the world's most obscure and oddly specific virus, when I realized that my cousin is an absolute fan fiction fiend. So much so that my uncle has to use a word filter to block out relevant sites, lest she completely disregards her homework in search of unofficial Harry Potter short stories. It's probably safe to say that "fantasy" was one of the words on that filter.

Many thanks to the steadfast Mr. Frank for copy/pasting the lyrics through a chat window at stupid o'clock.

Like a Child

Kids are incredible.  Since I've been back from New York, I've spent a couple weeks with my sister and brother and law, and with two very close friends of mine. Both couples have a kid just over 2 years old. The common problems apply of course; a strict schedule, a lack of free time, disturbances, messy meal times and "don't touch that"s. I can tell just by looking at them that the parents are left pretty exhausted. Yeah, a lot of it is due to the fact that the kids need constant supervision just for safety's sake. The other half is probably for the house's safety's sake. Lots of objects end up being placed on higher, out-of-reach shelves, lest they end up being placed in strange locations and in various broken pieces. I've come to appreciate how tiring this constant vigilance is. But at the same time, I'm in a unique position where I get to play observer and appreciate the pure mayhem a child brings with it everywhere.

What I'm getting at is... Due to the constant and relentless nature of these disturbances, the parents have become grizzled veterans, regarding the various range of 3-foot-shenanigans without much interest. But I find it fascinating. It's incredible to watch a tiny, new mind explore the world around it by pushing and pulling and prodding everything. It's almost as if you'd be dropped into a completely dark and unfamiliar room, where the only way you can comprehend your surroundings is to experiment and interact with every item you stumble across. These kids are trying to figure out what the world is made of and how it works. And they can't learn it from Wikipedia. Only first-hand knowledge will do. And when working with a very limited knowledge base, the results are fascinating.

Writing with forks. Plugging a USB cord into a speaker. Hats as seats. The list goes on and on and on.

There are two parts that I find amazing to the whole process. First is the sheer range of ways an object can be interacted with. A toddler can get into trouble with any, any given item. I guarantee it. When we look at a cup, all we can see is a container to drink from. The only variable we can comprehend are the different liquids we can drink from it, and even those are usually just limited to what we have in the fridge. But when was the last time we thought about filling it with screws and hurling it across the livingroom? As a rational, self-aware human being, we probably don't have any remote need to get the results from such an experiment. But do we always have that insatiable curiosity and willingness to... try? It makes me wonder what possibilities we're missing out on because so much of how we see the world is through assumptions.

The second part of why this sticks out to me is how the kids react to the whole process. Often it's a mix of total concentration and boundless joy. All from something simple. Sometimes it really sucks that we have to grow up, and we crave more complex forms on entertainment. We need thousand-dollar computers to run games made by teams of programmers and designers just to kill an afternoon. But give a child a set of measuring cups, and they'll be content for an entire afternoon. They'll stack them, bang them, throw them. And they won't just be content to do so, they'll be thrilled. I admire that appreciation and fascination with the small things. I think the older we get, the more we take for granted.



I had an incredible professor at the School of Visual Arts called Richard Wilde. He was even the chair of the design program. In the last class of his foundation and experimentation course, one of the final points he stressed to us was to try and see and perceive the world as if through the eyes of a child. It's only been over the last month that I've been able to really appreciate that outlook. Because to kids, I think, the world is full of nothing but possibilities, with little indication of what should happen. Instead, the world is this crazy amazing place where everything is crazy and anything is possible.

Kids, man. They got things figured out. More than they know.

---

This week I took my friend and her kid to a dealership so that they could pick up their car from being serviced. It was a Toyota dealership, no less, and on the showroom floor they had a 2014 FR-S. While waiting, I got in and sat for a few minutes. I ran my fingers over the stitching in the steering wheel, fiddled with the cup holders, and tested out the action on the shifter. A bit heavier than I'd like, but still very satisfying. The car felt low and light and tight. It felt like a good fit.

Gah. I'm so close, yet so far, you know? I'm done school and now I just need a job. It might take me a year before I can afford a car, but when I get those keys... I'll be able to check off a major goal that's been a solid 6-7 years in the making. I can't wait. But I have to. I just hope it won't be much longer, is all.
-Cril

Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come.
Corporation tee-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday.
Man, you been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long.
I am the egg man, they are the egg men.
I am the walrus, goo goo g'joob.

Jim Carrey - I Am the Walrus