Waiting...

Here I am, procrastinating yet again. I should be filling out a job application that I just printed out...but no...instead I am satiating the urge to blog.

It's rather a depressing thing to think that I am still unemployed. Yes, I did temp work this summer...but...as August gave way to September, and my little interview with Mr Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor himself, was fruitless ( thank God) ... I have a renewed sense that the time gaps in my resume are growing. Rarrgh. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the time off and basking in the freedom to do unusual things. For instance, yesterday I spent a second day volunteering at the setup of a traveling exhibit called, " From Abraham to Jesus." Lisa A. alerted a bunch of us to this opportunity and last Tuesday a carload of us traveled up to the heart of Atlanta and did some serious, heavy work helping to set up the maze of pillars and panels through which people will walk to view the art and artifacts. Muscles were sore afterward. We didn't actually do the construction itself ( it was a horribly huge task...the kind of thing that is like a Christmas Eve assembly nightmare: " Insert flange B into slot A, using Object C..." except with objects that are hundreds of pounds); we just assisted in moving materials to the appropriate places...

ANYWAY- yesterday Lisa and I went back to help again. My main job for the day was helping to set up the gift shop in the form of a bazaar. There are some interesting folks there, and I overheard a lot of Hebrew being spoken. One Israeli man asked how I had gotten there: "By bus?" I said that I had driven myself and he said he thought I didn't look old enough to drive. "I thought you were fifteen!" He almost reeled in disbelief when I told him I was twenty eight.

And my friend Sarah C ( used to be Sarah L...), flew in on Sunday night for a conference and was staying at a hotel just a couple of blocks down the street from where I was volunteering yesterday. SO! I met her for lunch AND dinner! We had such a great time catching up. Her room is on the 63rd floor in the tallest building in Atlanta; one entire wall of her room was a giant window and her view was breathtaking. I could have sat there all night just watching all the lights. We even rode the glass elevator up to the revolving restaurant at the top of the building where there was a little inside observation deck; you could walk around and look out at the whole city spread out below you. Coooooool!

Anyway- it's times like that when I am grateful for the fact that I am not working. Then I look forward to the future and it's a total blank; I get a little freaked out. But after a year of looking for a job, it gets harder and harder to psyche yourself up to keep looking. It's like the opposite of a perpetual motion machine. You have to fight a downward spiral of inertia and pessimism. You go to the same web-sites and papers and job-recruitment things and it's like having a nasty recurring dream. And you can't find the will to fill out another application because you're sure it's going to be a waste of time, ink, and energy. And so you blog.

It helps me to remember a little talk that my friend Lindsay and I had recently. She reminded me that everyone has times of waiting in their lives. Waiting for different things to happen- waiting to find your soul-mate, waiting for God to answer your prayers, waiting for a child, waiting for the right job opportunity, waiting for healing, waiting for your dreams to come true... Sometimes it seems that half our lives are spent waiting. But that's okay. Because as another friend, Alison, often says, " That's the way it's supposed to be."