Loss, hypothetical and otherwise.
Apr. 22nd, 2011 02:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gementYaycorp said no. :( I was pretty crushed last night.
I did 5.5 hours of back to back interviews with no breaks, and had been quite certain I'd knocked it out of the park, and waiting for them to say yes was just a formality. I kept telling other people, and trying to tell myself, 80% chance. The last 20% is that it's a tight economy and they're Yaycorp. They can afford to be as picky as they like, and if I don't get it then it's for something that I can't begin to imagine or control.
Not having gotten it, I started racking my brain for something I could have controlled. Was I too negative? Did I sound like I couldn't handle stress? Did I sound too positive and they thought I had to be making it up? Did I actually do horribly on all the practical puzzle questions they asked and I'm just a horrible taxonomist?
Y'know. That stuff.
Today is better. I might end up being a microserf, doing contract work in Bellevue and accepting that after 1 year I have to take a 100-day furlough, which is to say I have a year to line up a better job. I talked with a contracting firm that feeds people to MS and pays for health insurance. It would be a decent gig.
I totally would have baked Yaycorp a cake shaped like the Internet if I thought it would have helped. :(
Elizabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith) is dead. Losing actors is always this weird shadow of losing the characters, even though the Tralfamadorians would cheerfully point out that everything you actually knew about them is still safely enshrined on DVD. I love characters, so I feel these things, and we lost the Brig just a couple months ago, so this is all a bit raw.
A year ago, I just would have said, "Aw. So it goes." I historically was not a Sarah Jane fangirl. I learned through fandom that she was considered one of the classic bests, but she always blurred into the list of normal '70s Earth girls who existed to ask the Doctor, "What's that?" I latched onto the weird ones who weren't human or weren't civilized or blew things up. I didn't have the perspective to appreciate that Sladen and Baker had remarkable screen chemistry and she brought more to the role, etc., etc., etc., and that's fine.
Sarah Jane the 21st Century adult is a totally different matter, and I've watched a lot of the Sarah Jane Adventures in the last year. She's not an eternal young man, or a disposable young viewpoint character who exists to be impressed by everything and then wander off when she... or the Doctor... or the BBC... gets bored and wants something else.
The Whoniverse has big complicated ethics and norms and tensions that have all been addressed, pretty much exclusively, by immortal young men and disposable galactic tourists. Then we have Sarah Jane, who got dropped off in Aberdeen instead of London, never knew if the love of her life had even survived, and just had to get on with things, and is growing old.
As real life humans not filtered through a script, there comes a day where most of us look around and go, "How the hell did I end up in Aberdeen?" At some point I looked in the mirror and knew that my body had hit and passed its peak of conventional beauty, that the fantasy billionaire lover I hypothesized at 20 is not going to turn up, and I am never going to be an astronaut.
Say it with me. I am never going to be an astronaut.
(Yes, my over achieving friends who have strived and been brilliant and got to ride the Vomit Comet to test your own 0G robot, you can opt out of that one. Substitute "build my own time machine" or "romance Janeane Garofalo.")
I am never going to be an astronaut, and like Sarah Jane, who is merely never going to be an astronaut again, I've just got to get on with things and make my own fun. She showed that. I watched her face getting older on SJA and was painfully aware of her mortality, and I knew that she's the one we need to be watching for How To Do It. She's not settling. She's just living as hard as she can with what she's got to work with.
But getting to work at Yaycorp felt like it might be a little like getting to be an astronaut within my chosen vocation, and finding the energy to live as hard as I can is daunting today, knowing that I don't have another season of her example to look forward to.
I did 5.5 hours of back to back interviews with no breaks, and had been quite certain I'd knocked it out of the park, and waiting for them to say yes was just a formality. I kept telling other people, and trying to tell myself, 80% chance. The last 20% is that it's a tight economy and they're Yaycorp. They can afford to be as picky as they like, and if I don't get it then it's for something that I can't begin to imagine or control.
Not having gotten it, I started racking my brain for something I could have controlled. Was I too negative? Did I sound like I couldn't handle stress? Did I sound too positive and they thought I had to be making it up? Did I actually do horribly on all the practical puzzle questions they asked and I'm just a horrible taxonomist?
Y'know. That stuff.
Today is better. I might end up being a microserf, doing contract work in Bellevue and accepting that after 1 year I have to take a 100-day furlough, which is to say I have a year to line up a better job. I talked with a contracting firm that feeds people to MS and pays for health insurance. It would be a decent gig.
I totally would have baked Yaycorp a cake shaped like the Internet if I thought it would have helped. :(
Elizabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith) is dead. Losing actors is always this weird shadow of losing the characters, even though the Tralfamadorians would cheerfully point out that everything you actually knew about them is still safely enshrined on DVD. I love characters, so I feel these things, and we lost the Brig just a couple months ago, so this is all a bit raw.
A year ago, I just would have said, "Aw. So it goes." I historically was not a Sarah Jane fangirl. I learned through fandom that she was considered one of the classic bests, but she always blurred into the list of normal '70s Earth girls who existed to ask the Doctor, "What's that?" I latched onto the weird ones who weren't human or weren't civilized or blew things up. I didn't have the perspective to appreciate that Sladen and Baker had remarkable screen chemistry and she brought more to the role, etc., etc., etc., and that's fine.
Sarah Jane the 21st Century adult is a totally different matter, and I've watched a lot of the Sarah Jane Adventures in the last year. She's not an eternal young man, or a disposable young viewpoint character who exists to be impressed by everything and then wander off when she... or the Doctor... or the BBC... gets bored and wants something else.
The Whoniverse has big complicated ethics and norms and tensions that have all been addressed, pretty much exclusively, by immortal young men and disposable galactic tourists. Then we have Sarah Jane, who got dropped off in Aberdeen instead of London, never knew if the love of her life had even survived, and just had to get on with things, and is growing old.
As real life humans not filtered through a script, there comes a day where most of us look around and go, "How the hell did I end up in Aberdeen?" At some point I looked in the mirror and knew that my body had hit and passed its peak of conventional beauty, that the fantasy billionaire lover I hypothesized at 20 is not going to turn up, and I am never going to be an astronaut.
Say it with me. I am never going to be an astronaut.
(Yes, my over achieving friends who have strived and been brilliant and got to ride the Vomit Comet to test your own 0G robot, you can opt out of that one. Substitute "build my own time machine" or "romance Janeane Garofalo.")
I am never going to be an astronaut, and like Sarah Jane, who is merely never going to be an astronaut again, I've just got to get on with things and make my own fun. She showed that. I watched her face getting older on SJA and was painfully aware of her mortality, and I knew that she's the one we need to be watching for How To Do It. She's not settling. She's just living as hard as she can with what she's got to work with.
But getting to work at Yaycorp felt like it might be a little like getting to be an astronaut within my chosen vocation, and finding the energy to live as hard as I can is daunting today, knowing that I don't have another season of her example to look forward to.
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no subject
Date: 2011-04-23 03:48 pm (UTC)I suppose by most measures I've done that. Even on days when I feel frustrated that I'm not a later-day Michael Faraday, I can remind myself that I'm doing stuff that very few people get to do, and I'm getting paid pretty well for doing it.
So, what *are* you planning to do now?
no subject
Date: 2011-04-23 04:11 pm (UTC)lion tamerlibrarian hat.(Yaycorp's cred on the last one is that the library software industry is not where the bar is being raised on library software expectations. Yaycorp's ability to direct people to books they want enough to buy is. Make Yaycorp better, make the library software industry jump higher, improve ease of access for everyone.)
Hobby-wise: Get the damn first 50 pages re-edited that I've been sitting on for three years, actually submit my work to a few places, if it doesn't get accepted, cheerfully release it free-range on the web, feel Published.
Brain-wise: Get my demotivation straightened out. I've known it was my big stumbling block for ten years, I've known it's a cognitive pattern and thus hypothetically changeable, and I have no idea who I would be or what I would accomplish on the other side of that. I just know it would be EPIC, and possibly involve more astronaut-hood. It would also definitely involve getting the dishes done more often and not spending half my emotional energy thinking I oughta do some housework sometime this year and never doing any because my demotivation is in the way.
Relationship-wise: Get the sex/romantic life I want. I'm downright bitter on this one, and know it's my own damn responsibility to change it, and it feels like one of my top 3 priorities but somehow keeps sliding down the list of what I actually do any work on at all. Sarah Jane's spinsterhood actually hits me pretty hard. I'm poly and overscheduled and somehow doing it in such a way that I don't get laid, and it is a source of much pain. :(
In addition to this totally modest list of goals (ha), I'd like to learn to prioritize enough that I'm happy with myself and my activities whether or not the Big Stuff happens. I keep trying.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-23 05:40 pm (UTC)Was Valedictorian of my high school class, which was a small pond but was still some serious work. Had a wonderful high school relationship and strong friend circle in drama club. Got to be the murderer in And Then There Were None.
Survived my undergrad, which was in question.
Gotten my mental health stabilized to the point where I feel like a functional grown up who can hold down a job and be reasonably reliable.
Gotten a Master's degree in a field I sincerely love, with a perfect attendance record. Attended multiple conferences in my field and liked my colleagues.
Been in a cohabitating primary relationship with someone I dearly love for six years and counting.
Obtained a bespoke corset and bespoke suit, and worn both in public.
Made my anglophile pilgrimage to England. Was almost killed in a zebra crossing near Hyde Park after fainting at Twelfth Night at the Globe. I also left my hedgehog on the island of Ischia and went to Tosca in the Neapolitan Opera House.
Written over 200,000 words of increasing quality.
Chosen to live in Seattle where I love the climate and the people, and have a happy support network of friends and lovers.
Built and kept strong relationships with most of my immediate family, and reasonable relationships with my grandparents.
Been public about most of the things that are important to me.
Dabbled in a lot of hobbies well enough to speak the language and get some enjoyment out of them.
Enjoyed a hell of a lot of science fiction. Met a lot of awesome fans and made friends with them.
Treated as many people as possible with support and compassion, even when I completely disagreed with them and told them so.
So I'm doing all right.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-23 06:36 pm (UTC)It would be nice to identify some future event where there's a decent probability of us both attending. You're one of those "friends I haven't met yet" who I'd like to meet.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-25 08:46 pm (UTC)