Recently I completed a 10 week-long summer camp program where I lived on-camp with groups of up to 24 girls in a primitive camping environment.
Working 130 hours a week means that there is little to no free time in one's schedule for things like resting, bathing, and of course, looking for jobs (for the record, a week is 168 hours long). True, a considerable portion of that 130 hours was spent sleeping, but as far as I'm concerned you're still working when a child wakes you up at 3 am, or when the walkie-talking starts buzzing about "robins" and "Tarzans," code words for camp hazards (Nicknames, secret locations, code words... I feel like I spent the summer as an undercover agent).
While I did spend many of my nights off at the local Panera bread company, consuming French Onion Soup along with the free wireless as I searched for jobs, I was unable to send off the three-a-week application goal I had set a year ago. Yet, surprisingly, I was able to find an opportunity. Or rather, opportunity found me. Strangely enough it wasn't a resume or a well-written cover letter which brought about my upcoming working environment, but a Facebook post, composed when I was feeling especially downtrodden after yet another "Thank you for your interest in our company. However...," form letter.
Which is more important: Friends, family, or the future?
Since it was clear that I wasn't going to have a job waiting for me after I left camp, I was struggling with three options: should I move back to Savannah, back where I started, where there are few opportunities but lots of friends, in a city I love; should I go back home to Missouri where my family was, along with the newest member, my newborn nephew Alan; or should I stay in Washington D.C., where I had the greatest odds of finding a job, despite a year's worth of trying and failing and not making any friends?
As fortune would have it, my woe-is-me Facebook post caught the attention of a friend-of-a-friend, who was just preparing to open an art gallery in Savannah. After a short reply and a long telephone conversation, I'm proud to know that I have a place to work, in a city which boasts history, beauty, and the greatest concentration in any American city of people who give a damn about me. And while Mr. Beast is absolutely going to be a very rewarding place to contribute my skills, it is a new business and I am going to have to find a side job if I want to do things like eat and pay rent. Of one of these I have been exempt for the past 15 months, I'll leave it to you to determine which.
So, do not despair, small portion of people who are currently reading, my new course in life will not deprive you of this magnificent blog! I'm still on the hunt, and this new development has put the wind back in my sails. I am absolutely thrilled to go back to the Hostess City of the South, and I'm sure I'll be spending my time doing just as many Odd Jobs as I've ever done.
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