Oh gaaaawd, am I going to finish my October things before NaNoWriMo starts? This freaking sinus infection has had me down and out for a week and a half now, completely throwing off my plans to paint and have lunch with my grandparents, and the resulting drowsiness (both medication-induced and just plain LAZY) has really slowed my progress on outlining my manuscript and even just posting on here.

Well, I take that last one back, kind of. Here’s the issue I’m having with posting, and it’s not entirely because I’m lazy:

My inspiration for the format of the manuscript is in  the lost art of the epistolary novel, like Choderlos de Laclos’ Les Liaisons Dangeruses, which is comprised almost entirely of letters among several parties. I’m going to try and translate that into a manuscript where the exposition comes  in the form of my main characters’ public blog posts and personal emails among themselves, and the action really going down in a traditional narrative format.

Hey, it MIGHT work.

My proposed format means that I will have to write blog posts, but not for my blog. So anytime I get an idea or a theme for a post in my head lately, it seems to shuffle its way from MY point of view to one of the characters I’m outlining. Then I don’t want to write it on here because:

a) that’s kind of cheating, to have any narrative done beforehand, and

b) my personal voice is being hijacked.

So for November, please don’t expect any sort of insightful, brilliant posts on here. I don’t think I’ll have them for my own blog while I’m basically creating three others from scratch. You’ll have to settle for a series of “this-is-what-I-did-today” blurbs, I’m afraid.

Just to catch up on a few things…

Since July I’ve been in the application process for a new job here at The Hospital. A friend of mine in the marketing department clued me in to the fact that they were thinking of creating a position to coordinate The Hospital’s growing social media outreach projects, so I fired off an email to the director of the department before the job was even posted. I interviewed a few months ago and was asked back for a second interview, which finally took place in September because the creation of a new job role got tangled up in HR for weeks on end.

My first interview was with a panel of four people, and they really liked me. They liked my resume, liked my writing samples, liked my personality, and la la la. Of course I was really excited about the opportunity to get a foot in the door in the marketing department – without a degree in the field, that’s a tricky thing to do, but my experience in internal and external communications within my current department has helped me build a portfolio of sorts that’s at least halfway impressive to anyone within this organization. To an outside group, who knows – which is why finding this type of job at The Hospital was a plum chance for me.

But, after much hard work (and even a homework assignment!) preparing for the second interview, I found out (on moving day, natch) that despite nailing the second interview, I came in second place to someone from an outside agency who had more experience in the industry. The manager who called me was very apologetic and reiterated all the things about how they thought I was great and would be an asset to their department and if anything ever came open they would absolutely call me because they were all so impressed, just not the right fit for this job because of lack of experience, and so on and so forth.

But you know how it is. Hear that after a rejection and no matter how sincere the bearer of the bad news is, everything feels like lip service. And I was in the Hardee’s drive-thru line when I got the call, which didn’t help.

And of course this all took place on moving day, which you all know was SUCH a wonderful day to deal with – well, anything.

I drove to E’s house.

“I didn’t get it, baby.” He opened his arms and I snuggled into his chest and got all teary. “I’m giving myself ten minutes to mope,” I sniffed. “Then I have to deal with the rest of this crap and I can’t cry any more.” He said many comforting things and rubbed my shoulders and kissed my hair like the wonderful boyfriend he is. When my ten minutes were up, I forced myself to get back to the business of moving.

Maybe it was for the best that I got the news on a day that was already crappy. I had to suck it up and move on. Literally.

I understand their reasons, of course. I wouldn’t have wanted to go into a job for which I was ill-prepared and lacked the experience necessary to totally kick ass. I can’t ride on personality alone, and if I’m not qualified, then I’m not qualified. I can deal with that.

It’s a field I really want to be in. My boss knows that, and after I told her why I didn’t get the job, she said she was going to make an effort to help me get more experience within our department so I could build up my resume a bit more. She also offered to sign off on tuition reimbursement if I’d like to take a class or three in order to boost my academic credentials.

(Boss, I LOVE YOU. The only reason I want to go work for anyone else is because I know that if you won the lottery tomorrow, you would probably not take me to Bermuda with you and I’d be stuck here working for people not half as awesome as you are.)

That brings me to grad school.

I tried it once before and my first class in the Master’s in Project Management really made it quite clear that I did NOT want to work in Project Management after all. I do okay at it right now, but this is not where I want to be. This is not the kind of work that inspires me or even makes me a tiny bit happy. So I’ve been digging into info on graduate programs in the St. Louis area (online learning, not my thing) and found one school that has several Master’s programs in communications that all have the same core courses. So I could take one or two classes and then head into a program in Media Communications, Media Literacy, or Communications Management.

I was rolling this over in my brain when I got a call from the director of the Marketing Department last week. She called to apologize for not having been in touch since the interview (she was not the one who made that first call to me) and to reiterate how impressed she was with me and really wanted to have me in their department when something suitable became available.

I was truly touched. After a few weeks of mellowing out post-rejection, the same words didn’t feel like lip service anymore. They sounded more honest, more true – true enough to make me feel like even little inexperienced me could have a shot at moving into the field I really want to be in.

I seized the moment and asked her about the graduate programs I was considering. Would one of these be worthwhile, what do you think of the school, what do you think of a possible emphasis in this or that? She was so encouraging and seemed pretty pumped that I was seeking this out on my own.

Little Miss Initiative, that’s me. But seriously, who wants to get thisclose and get shot down again? The resume isn’t going to improve itself, you know.

“And I hope you don’t mind,” she continued, “but I took the liberty of sending your resume and application information over to the VP of [department]. I was speaking to her the other day and they’re thinking about creating a similar position to support their new [redacted] campaign, so I told her about you.”

YOU. HOPE. I. DON’T. MIND?!

Guuuuhhh.

It may become something, it may not. At the moment, the job in the other department doesn’t really exist yet, it’s just an idea they’re tossing around. But my name is in there. Yowza.

And graduate school starts in January.

Only 15 days until November!

That means I only have 15 days to get stuff done before National Novel Writing Month begins again, and I fling myself back into the race for 50,000 words in 30 days. I will be putting my word count tracker widget up again this year, so you can cheer me on!

I have got to clear my plate before it begins, or else I will have way too many excuses to procrastinate.  Last year I had to leave the house to write most nights because there were so many projects there that caught my attention and distracted me. I spent way too much money stuffing my face as I wrote night after night at the Gelateria that month.

So, in the interests of a healthy bank account, in the next 15 days, I will:

• Finish painting. I have the living room and bedroom left to do.
• Outline my NaNoWriMo story. I have given myself permission to use Post-Its.
• Write at least 4 more blog posts. I’ve been slacking.
• Finish my grad school application and send it in. (Did I forget to mention that? Grad school? More on that in the next post, I think.)
• Visit my grandparents.
• Weatherproof my windows.

And in the next 12 hours, YOU should enter my bath product giveaway at Like. Love. Want. before time is up at midnight tonight!

Got your attention?

I’ve neglected my poor little review blog lately, which is bad because it’s just a baby blog and a weak start doesn’t help drive traffic, but it’s probably a good thing because I’ve been so negative and cranky lately. But with the help of some handmade bath bombs and other yummy body products from a local shop called Maven, I’ve calmed down enough to write a shop review AND offer a giveaway!

Click on over to my re-named and redesigned “Like. Love. WANT.” for a peek into Maven and a chance to win some amazing bath and body goodies!

If they cheered my grumpy ass up, you know they’re worth it.

…and you’ve got to click over to see what Sookie Stackhouse has to do with it.

(I just had to write this and I feel a wee bit better now that I did. And this crankiness is after 11 days of calming down.)

Dear <name redacted> Movers,

You advertise on Craigslist in St. Louis to provide “clean, reliable, and insured” loading and unloading services for $25 per hour, per “strong, experienced” man.

I call bullshit.

I provided the truck, as requested. You provided two sluggish movers – one of whom was probably just 16 – with a dirty van and a trailer that looked like it was used for hauling lawn equipment. Although I had a confirmation for my appointment at 9 am, you insisted that I was not scheduled till 10. and your movers didn’t show up till 10:30 anyway.

This posed a problem.

I reserved the truck for a certain timeframe. When your guys are 90 minutes late, slow-walking, smoke-break-taking, cell phone-talking, dumb-idea-having bums, everything is slowed down. We were only able to make one trip instead of two, which meant that half of my stuff was left at my old house for me to shuttle back and forth BY MYSELF IN A PONTIAC in order to get moved out on time.

So I pretty much hated you before you got there. But seriously? You could have redeemed yourselves by being competent. Or at least nice.

I had everything packed neatly in boxes. I had wrapped the cabinets so doors would stay shut. I had things labeled with where in the new place they were meant to go. I walked your dumb butts through my house and showed you which items were priorities (heavy stuff I can’t move alone) and which we could just smoosh in the extra space. Since, after all, we were down to one trip and I had to prioritize.

And you immediately began to take the low priority items outside WHY? Were you TRYING to piss me off?

Let me educate you on a few points.

• It does not take two people to take apart a bed frame. Or assemble one. Or remove or replace a mirror on a dresser. This means that one of you can be doing something else. Something productive. And if I see you standing still, I will GIVE you something to do.
• Your 5 smoke breaks in four hours are not paid time and I dare you to argue with me on that point when I write the check.
• Asking a girl if you can put her light beige sofa in a nasty-ass trailer is never a good idea. Put it in the nice, clean truck that I rented for this express purpose. And cover it.
• And for the love of Baby Jesus, do not think that rubbing at a spot on the light beige sofa with YOUR DIRTY HANDS will make it any better. Quite the opposite, I assure you.
• Do not even ask if you can just strap my mattress, UNCOVERED, to the roof of your van “because it’s easier” when it looks like it’s going to rain. I will not let you, and it WILL rain. This. Is why. I got. The truck.
• Put shit where you are told to put it in the new place, or I will make you move it again. Don’t look at me like I’m the psycho bitch from hell. I hired you because I can’t move that giant desk by myself. Oh wait, obviously you can’t move it with TWO people because you did crack the support on it, didn’t you?

But I won’t file a claim on my couch cleaning or my damaged desk. I won’t call your boss to complain about your inadequacies. Because I never want to hear from you again.

Disgustedly,

Rebekah

P.S. Did you get that email thread that I found and re-sent to you? The one where I asked for the movers at 9:00 and you confirmed it? Yeah. I keep that stuff. You should try it.

P.S. #2: If you see this letter on the internet and think I am being libelous, think again – I am being GRACIOUS by not associating the name of your sorry excuse for a company with this craptastic moving experience.