So I started a blog a while back and in typical fashion, neglected it. I was supposed to use it to document my progress while writing some scripts but since I haven’t done that in some time, here we are again.

I moved to Austin about 3 months ago. I have just now obtained gainful employment. I decided it was better to chronicle a year in a new city in which I worked rather than one in which I didn’t work, because a diary of a job hunt really amounts to little more than “oh hey, nothing good happened today, still don’t have a job, guess I’ll drink cheap beer and watch Buffy until I fall asleep.” I realize this isn’t the universal job hunt experience; some people watch Lost, Mad Men, or Saved by the Bell. The point is that job hunting is one of the most depressing activities, and a wholly uninteresting one. No one wants to read how for the 6th day in a row you got up at 8 and filled out applications until about 7 then went home and drank. People will ask you how the job hunt goes, as if it were a traditional hunt, one in which the outcome is decided by you. But it’s not. What you’re doing is going out there and asking people to choose you. You’re not doing anything except selling yourself, and you’ve got to compete with others but you can’t really do anything to stop them, you just have to “give it your all and hope for the best,” which is traditionally one of the most nerve-wracking and stressful things you can do with your life: sit there and hope. People ask you how the job hunt’s going, and until it’s over, it’s going poorly.

But it wasn’t all for naught. I got officially hired by an event staffing agency. Throughout the next few months (football season, basically) I’ll be working banquets and luncheons, mostly for UT alumni during the days leading up to and including game days, mostly home ones. This is a bit of a shame, as I was hoping to go to a football game this year, sit on some bleachers and eat some hot dogs. I like sporting events. I like hot dogs. I like watching drunk fat guys yell at the people wearing the color of shirt that he likes. True, I can get this at a bar on the same night, but it’s not nearly the same. That drunk guy yelling at the TV screen in the bar knows they can’t hear him, and is really just venting frustration, coupled with a sort of sub-conscious theatrical demonstration to the others. “Hey, look at me, I’m such a big fan I’m yelling at a pane of glass.” There’s always the possibility he thinks they can hear him, but these cases are rare. But that guy in the stands, he’s giving it his fucking all. He hopes they can hear him. He knows it’s possible, and he’s not wrong, depending on where you are in the stands. But that visual thing, laws of perspective (3-D TVs notwithstanding) and all that, make it so you’re there, because, well, shit, you are. I dunno.

Anyway, I won’t get to do that. I’ll be rockin’ the workforce those days. However, odds are I’m not going to be working more than 20 or 30 hours a week, which by my count and their payrate puts me just above monthly rent, cigarette, and food costs, leaving maybe an odd movie ticket here or there, or perhaps a hat re-shaping., or maybe a steak. As a result, the job hunt isn’t really over. I’m still gonna keep my eyes and ears open for other opportunities. I’ve even got an interview at a Jimmy John’s on Friday, before I even do a shift for these other guys. Ideally I’ll get a full-time job somewhere to replace this one. I also might just get a second job. The bottom line is that I am going to have very little money. So this blog will be me trying to cope with life below the poverty line, using my modest cooking skills and my modester budget to try to make something actually palatable.

Also, I’ve got no friends here. Well, that’s not true. I’ve got some, they are just few, and one of them (my roommate, in fact) is leaving in a week. I know like 5-10 people in the city of Austin, and I am very much a social being. Now that I’m not going to be spending all of my time job hunting, and I’ll actually have some money in my pocket, I’ll have something resembling a social life. I intend to document this too, my struggle to make friends, something I’ve never really tried to do.

That’s all, of course, dependent on me actually updating, and tending to this, which is unlikely, but hey, you can hope. I’ll be documenting the next year or so here. In a year, hopefully, I’ll go back to college, but in the meantime, it’ll be working to live and all that, while I try to retain my sanity. Should be easier here, at least come winter. But it’s not hope that’ll get me through it, nor was it hope that got me through the past couple of months. That hope I mentioned before, where you hope they hire you so you really sell yourself, or you hope the coach can hear you so you yell really loud, yeah I don’t have that. What I have is spite. In SPADES. True, if I gave up hope I wouldn’t have gotten a job, but not because hope lifted my spirits but because giving up hope would entail giving up, and fuck that shit.

So, dear reader, I am brought to my point. Spite keeps you going no matter where your emotions are. If you’re happy, hope’ll do fine, but you can be bitter and spiteful in any state. You can be sad and bitter, happy and bitter, or angry and bitter. It’s not the happiness or anger or sadness that motivates you, it’s the goddamn spite. So reader, I implore you, don’t give up spite. It’s your only hope.