Oh my God!
Reading classified help wanted ads...applying for jobs. What a wild experience. I haven't done it since 2008. So stress-inducing....how desperate am I? Would I do this one? Oh, no. I would NOT do that one.
I scroll through jobs, experiment with search terms and ponder new possibilities (maybe I could get a remote job!) I'm re-learning how to read between the lines and decipher the job descriptions. For example, "demo chef" isn't a chef at all, it's a person who heats up little bits of sausage in warehouse stores and offers you a sample while you stand there and block everyone else's way while they're trying to shop.
Yeah, no thanks. Not quite that desperate. Yet.
Scrolling through and picturing yourself doing the various jobs, imagining what it might be like, can be kind of an invigorating, hopeful experience, or it can be a total nightmare that causes you to think to yourself "is this really the point I've come to in my life? That I'm considering doing THAT?"
And all that in a span of five minutes. Yikes! Just a little stressful.
I'm in the "taking shots" phase right now. Finding jobs that sound super cool and interesting with good salaries and benefits that I may or may not be fully qualified for, but hey, click click click, submit a resume, answer a few questions about my demographics and I guess we'll see.
I applied for a job as a Culinary Manager for World Central Kitchen that entails packing a go bag, being ready to ship out within four hours to a disaster relief site somewhere in the world for weeks at a time dealing with "high-stress, dynamic environments affected by natural disasters or conflicts", and to oversee production kitchens in "in challenging environments with austere living conditions. For example, responders may not have access to running water, communications, or electricity and they may have to sleep outdoors and use bucket toilets."
Sound cool? This appeals to me somehow. I found myself really wanting this job. Definitely would be a change of pace!
I actually think I'd be really good at it. My experience bumming my way around Europe on the cheap and summers camping while following the Grateful Dead around the midwest has made me pretty comfortable with "austere" living conditions. The ten years I spent working Lollapalooza, cooking for 400,000 people in a 10'x10' square booth in the east gutter of Columbus Drive in Grant Park taught me how to improvise in the field, rig up malfunctioning equipment, and keep my calm when things are swirling uncontrollably around me. We dealt with floods, epic lightning storms, a derecho wind, multiple full park evacuations, refrigerator trucks failing in the 100 degree heat, electricity issues, propane equipment malfunctions, and managed to still keep cranking out the food and giving customers friendly service.
So I feel like it's stuff I can do and that I kind of get a thrill from being able to do. And the fact that it would be working for such a great organization and helping folks in need would be such a wonderful motivating factor for doing the work. I was picturing myself leading an international ragtag squad of pirate cooks like I was Duval in Apocalypse Now. Confidently striding through his zone of control as explosions rain all around, giving commands, never flinching once, clearly pumped on the adrenaline, the ability to function amongst such chaos. "I love the smell of polenta in the morning" I would say.
Or something.
Anyway, it's a fantasy, and looking at the classified help wanted ads is kind of an exercise in fantasizing, mentally trying on a bunch of new hats and seeing how they feel, and part of the whole PROCESS that I'm fully in now and fully trying to embrace as it's all part of what I need to go through to move forward and get some distance from the Edzo's era of my life.
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