The joyful job search

I've been thinking about this job search of mine - and although it's really only been 5 weeks since I graduated, and three weeks of full-time job searching, I feel very positive about it. I am going to try to keep this feeling as long as possible-- as long as it takes. (I started writing this post a week and a half ago, and feel it bottled up inside me!)

Yeah, I'm unemployed with lots of debt. But actually, this job search is the luckiest situation I've ever gotten myself into. I have literally been working to get to this point since I was in high school and decided I wanted to do something about climate change for my career. And now I'm actually allowed and permitted and qualified to go searching for that one place that is just right for me. I believe I can find a job making our biggest problems less bad, and there are many job postings, not stars, in my eyes. Being able to go after what you want is a blessing.

How can a job search be joyful?

• Reiterating my qualifications in endless permutations is actually a positive experience. In the process I become extremely convinced of my suitability for the particular position. It feels good. The job search is joyful because the marketer in me comes out and has fun selling the product.
  
• This positivity is ego-boosting because upon reflection I think that my situation is a result of choices and resolutions that I made. I am well-qualified for the jobs I actually want; I have a well-rounded skill set, and this is thanks to my own decisions. I passed the exam for a technical position (that I now have an interview for)-- because the only Master's program I considered taking was the one that was half science. I knew it would be necessary. I was thinking ahead. The job search is joyful because it is intrinsically validating.
  
• I am constantly thinking about the opportunities that other people gave to me. My dad had worked with someone at New America, so I got an interview. My mentors and colleagues at New America handed me golden opportunity after golden opportunity-- to write, research, give presentations, manage projects...The list stretches all the way back, and I could never thank everyone who helped me (and they are still going to bat for me) enough. So the job search is joyful because it makes me feel gratitude.

The most joyful part about this search will of course be the end of it. Because:

1. I'm not always able to stay so positive-- uncertainty and financial insecurity is fuel for fears at those moments when I'm alone in my car, burning CO2, or awake at night, or checking my balances, and 
2. The selection of temptations at Urban Outfitters is truly heartbreaking in the summertime.

Lo mejor está por venir.

So now

Now I am in LA. I've been here since the 31st, when I left Manhattan and arrived at LAX with my precisely 100 pounds of checked luggage (and at least another 75 pounds in my sneaky 3 carry-ons).

What have I been doing so far? Applying for jobs (1 so far this week, another slated for tomorrow), jumping and straining around in the boyfriend's studio apartment with the boyfriend to the accompaniment of P90X workout tapes (today will be day 6), taking lots (well, some) of pictures of the studio and neighborhood (and playing with Instagram, obviously). I read an excellent book about love, set in New York, that I found in a free books pile at 3am. Networking is big on the list, and I'm making good progress. But it's hard to not feel aimless when you're a recent grad without a job.

While I was in New York, I often felt like all I really wanted was to be able to live in the same place as the boyfriend, live together, have a job and normal lives with each other in them every day. I still want that, and obviously staying at home in this studio alone all day doesn't really qualify as having a normal life-- what's missing is the job for me. The fulfillment of working for a cause. But since I've come back I've been very aware of just how HUMAN it is to always feel as though something else, and it is always something, and it doesn't matter what it is, is that missing puzzle piece. This doesn't mean I'm not happy now. It just means that I think it's a little sad that we always feel something is missing. When do we ever feel happy with our lives exactly the way they are? I feel like as soon as the boyfriend and I are living in the same place, AND we both have jobs, AND we're healthy and can pay our bills, and so can the people we care about, AND we can get a puppy, AND I can travel again...then I'll be happy with my life exactly the way it is. ...until then, what? (And when that does happen, will something else become the puzzle piece? Probably.) And why shouldn't I be completely happy with a short vacation here with him?...

Always feeling "only if..." is no way to live.

So now I am going to vacuum, and work on my resume, and finish laundry, and get myself through the 'hood to the grocery store. The pizza plan for tonight is out due to oven-non-working-ness, so we need another option. I'm thinking fish tacos.