Friday, January 15, 2010

Trying not to be discouraged

As all 2 people who follow this blog know, I had to leave my job at my beloved Borders back in September to do my student teaching. This left me in a pretty tense situation, since Jason would be leaving his (much higher paying) job at Borders in January to do his student teaching, which meant that I absolutely HAD to find a job before that happened. I don't think this would have been a problem except that....yeah, we live in Michigan. So, I sent out resumes. TONS of resumes. I got ONE phone call. Seriously, one. I have tons of work experience, I have a degree, I have background in a corporate setting and I can't even get a job as a receptionist. This makes me very sad. The one job that called me back was with a really good company, but it was also for a 6 month contract position that paid a whopping $12 an hour. :-/ That's way less than I made at Borders, and being temporary means no benefits, which is a problem with Jason losing his job and therefore our healthcare. So, of course, I took the job. It was the ONLY one that called me back for goodness sakes! I had to!

But it's in accounting. I hate accounting. I hated accounting when I worked in Accounts Payable at Borders. I hate it more now, because this is Accounts Receivable, so I'm a bill collector. Yeah, that'll make you feel like scum after about 2 minutes. The other problem is that, often, Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable attract pretty low caliber people. Not everyone, obviously, because I knew some great people in AR at Borders, but generally speaking we're talking about what Jason might term "bottom feeders". People who are really never going to be capable of doing anything more than this entry level monkey work. That's depressing. I don't have much in common with my co-workers, though, to be honest, most of them haven't been so interested in talking to me or getting to know me at all. I guess that's fine, I don't plan on being here long.

And that's where being discouraged comes in. I'm still sending out resumes. Lots of them. All I'm getting in return is a lot of rejection letters. That's depressing. I'm averaging about 1 or 2 rejection letters a day at the moment. It's hard to keep sending them out and when you keep getting rejected. I know I shouldn't let it discourage me, but....I don't want to be here, and as the weeks pass (admittedly, I've been here less than a month) and I get more rejection letters, I start to feel like this is going to have to be more permanant than I initially thought. That frustrates me, since everyone in my current department is "looking for something else" and most of them have been looking for like 5 years. I don't want to be that person! And I can't teach, at least not at the moment, and possibly never in Michigan, because all of the schools in the area are laying off tons of teachers. So...it's this. I don't like it. I'm trying to be optimistic and keep my best foot forward and stay positive about continuing to send out resumes but...I'm not hopeful. And I gave up working with my drama kids for a job that doesn't pay me enough and gives me no benefits. That eats at me a lot. It shouldn't but...it does. It'd probably be an easier pill to swallow if the job provided me with a bit more security. I dunno. It's just starting to get me down.