May 10, 2010

got another thing comin' undone

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't sorely tempted to play World of Goo instead of typing this up, or even closing the laptop and calling it a night, but it's been a while, and frankly both gaming and sleep are overrated.

I've been job hunting again; neatly stacking experience and skills into little hireability towers before placing them in front of faceless employers on the other end of an ad and waiting to see if their inquiries topple said buildings, or if they remain, wobbly but triumphant and hopefully bearing an offer of work. So far, it's been all crumbled towers (and self-esteem, a little, alongside.) It's maddening, in it's own way, and as I watch the number in my chequing account steadily dwindle, I push up metaphorical sleeves (chalk it up to another disproportionality or just a dislike of fabric on my wrists, I guess, but my sleeves are generally rolled up) and spew resumes, not so much tilting at windmills as much as emulating them.

In the midst of this, I started thinking about all the skills I can't ever put on a resume but have served me well, or the ones I have but wish I didn't. Take, for example, the reading of body language; there's no place on my resume for the phrase "will read how you react to things by the set of your shoulders, where you put your weight, and where you're looking," but it's a thing I can do (and is sort of convenient, to be honest.) More dubious is the whole closet-related skill set; pronoun management, event detail alterations, the occasional obvious checking-out of someone who's uninteresting but convenient, and, of course, the lying. Telling the big ones, the little ones to keep the whole thing plausible, the occasional obvious one as to suppress suspicion as to how unfortunately good you've gotten, quietly fearing the day the center stops holding and the gyre swallows you alive. Worse than those are the ones I barely admit to even myself, the mental equivalent of circling wagons or of a herd of elephants enclosing the vulnerable members inside a circle when predators surface.

I think it's elephants that do that.

Regardless: present me with a rising tide of anxiety or wait until one presents itself, inevitably at some inopportune moment, and it's like someone puts me on autopilot: occupy the head in figuring out what the trigger is, and move quickly enough to satisfy the body and lizard-brain desires for flight. It's my own personal rodeo, but it's inside my head, and falling off isn't an option.

I found myself riding one today on my way to shoot a concert; disembarking from the train and idly wondering if I would make it to the venue in time, and the next thing I know, I'm on the street weaving through a crowd of jersey-wearing Canucks fans; the tunnels and escalators simply erased from memory while things got handled. It's not the first time it's happened on my way to a show in the recent past, and I'm more than a little worried that it won't be the last, which is darkly funny since, well, I'm worrying about an anxiety disorder.

On the upside, I suppose: if I'm in a dark comedy, I'm not in the soap opera. Small favors, right?

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