A Memorial Day Tribute – From Victoree

The American wailing wall

A few conflicting stories exist about the origins of what we in the USA now celebrate as “Memorial Day”, the 30th of May. In my meandering search I have noticed that the overlapping part of the “Venn diagram” among the stories is that the 30th of May was once called,  “Decoration Day” a commemoration of the (un)Civil War. It was a time to lay flowers on the graves of the fallen of both the Union and the Confederacy.

Perhaps the idea of a commemoration of the most destructive war this nation has ever seen arose concurrently in both the former combatants territories and slowly pushed up into the national ego as part of the national mourning process. As more tomorrows became history it seemed so “right” to mourn all the losses from all the wars America has ever fought at this time, so the day was renamed, “Memorial Day”. Now, we can freely mourn all our losses: my great grandmother’s war, the Civil War; my grandmother’s war, WWI; my mother’s war, WWII; my war, Vietnam; my daughter’s war, Afghanistan. Somehow, the morrigan sorrow manages to scrape her bony finger across the face of every generation.

A gift from the crow

I consign it to legend; something lost in our country’s misty, schizophrenic memory. Every election year the “Land of The Free and the Home of the Brave” rolls over in her sleep and the nightmares about the Civil War come back. She has generally forgotten what the commemoration was originally about, but hangs on to the “celebration” part. So, over the years, Memorial Day has become simply the party that kicks off the summer.

So, while cleaning the grill, skewering the kabobs and marinating the steaks,please consider that Memorial Day is about remembering. It might be a good day to mourn any/all kinds of loss including personal ones. I do not suggest anyone lay flowers at a former job’s doorstep even though that would be crazy-cool and maybe some much needed closure would happen. Maybe buying a personal bouquet would help speed the healing of an emotional wound.

Tribute In Light

Personally, I bought a very small, but significant gift for myself with the last paycheck of each job I lost. On Memorial Day, I look at the gifts and remember. Remarkably, one by one, year by year, I find the original outrage and pain suffered in those jobs has given way to peace and forgiveness.

May Memorial Day fill you with peace.

-Victoree

Preparing For the Interview: The Sweet Smell of Excess?

My mother’s perfume

I love perfume. So did my mom. It must be genetic.

As a child, my merchant seaman father would come home with gifts of fragrance from around the world and I used to love rummaging through mom’s dressing table testing for treasures of scent. There in that alchemist’s collection of  mysterious bottles  lived the captured souls of romance  with names like “My Sin”, “Tabu” and my favorite, “Shalimar“. To this day whenever I can find it, I enjoy daubing on a little of the classic Avon fragrances. Perfume is the most affordable of luxuries and the essence of womanliness.

Most times, job loss  means shedding things to save money, so there is a sad, gradual loss or downgrade of items like hairdresser appointments, salon shampoo, new clothes, new shoes,  makeup, and finally perfume. If I am rendering the research correctly, the human sense of smell is the most powerfully evocative of  all the senses. One whiff of warm granny apples with cinnamon and suddenly there is a desire to run up the front steps of the “old house” two at a time. Caught downwind from “Old Spice“, tears well up as it conjures warm memories because that was “his” scent.

On an emotional level, I get it. One never knows what dreams or nightmares will be called forth in an interviewer by an applicant’s wearing a certain scent. Know, however, that scent is part of  image strategy. Beware. The choice of scent must be contemporary, tasteful, complementary to business wear/hairstyles and light. Wearing some scents that were popular a generation ago actually say, “frumpy and old-timer-ish”;carries peppermints in the bottom of her hand bag. Scent could give your age away in that case.

Dangerous drink, intoxicating perfume?

Then again, interviews  held in tiny, ventless inner  rooms dictate that neither recruiter nor applicant wear highly scented cosmetic products to avoid triggering allergies or the gag reflex. I have stopped thinking that the often given advice against wearing my incense woods-heavy signature  fragrance in interviews as another shameful loss of freedom in the USA and started thinking of it as a courtesy; like graciously not sharing  information too intimate for that venue. It might just be best to keep this emotionally loaded potion bottled up on the dresser until the ink on the new-hire papers is dry.

Gleanings on wearing scent in an interview or at work

http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/beauty/recipe-for-conflict-perfume-v-bo-20120501-1xwv8.html

http://www.volt.com/Blog/Should_you_wear_perfume_or_cologne_to_an_interview_.aspx

http://www.examiner.com/article/is-wearing-perfume-or-cologne-on-a-job-interview-a-bad-decision

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Notes From A Bad Teacher About Education Careers

Education Calculator on Notebook (Photo credit: nniknak)

Some people seriously consider going into education as their “encore career“.

Let me whisper something in your ear: fuggedabowdit.

Ask me what prompts that venomous phrase. I want to do my part in strengthening education by preventing one more idealistic, romantic  person with the wrong personality configuration from becoming one of the 50% of educators who leave the profession in the first five years of practice (and head off some chocolate OD’s and soggy-pillow-at-3am moments).

Yes, truly monstrous people continue to slip through the cracks and end up in education  judging from some of the  lurid stories in the news these days about abusive teachers. However, this is not that kind of discussion. This is intended  to influence people who ought not teach lower school grades to put the cap back on the pen before the application gets filed to any system anywhere. This is about the “rightness of fit” issue in the job search. I am lifting the example of early education because it is what I know, but the lessons can be widely applied to jobs anywhere:

when you don’t belong somewhere, you don’t belong. Move on.

In earlier posts this year there is a discussion about discovering the most appropriate place of employment. I collected the discussion in the section of the blog, “Victoree’s Shape-Shifting Job Gypsy Card Game”. Click on the tab  to review.

While re-doing my MBTI assessment with a professional counselor it finally dawned on me why I had so little success as an early educator. Education systems, like many other companies, slide up and down the scale of being candid about  fully disclosing why an employee “didn’t work out”. It seems companies rather go to great lengths to couch  bad comments on the “final report card” in vague terms, probably to deflect a possible wrongful termination/discrimination lawsuit.

The truth surfaced for me in cross referencing the results and finding several of the same traits  surfacing across several assessments, including the MBTI, skills, and strengthfinder2.0.  I came to the conclusion that I am basically unsuited for the lower school classroom. No shame.

The release of that shame felt like finally being able to wear a pair of jeans one size smaller. Releasing the shame might even make my dream of shopping in that lower-sized section come true! (You know stress makes you fat, don’t you?) I made a cowardly decision to look for “job security” and “normalcy” early in the job search and ended up in a place where I did not belong.

Wherever the ”ah ha” breaks through,early or late in the job search, give yourself a gift and let the revelation “work you”.

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Meditation at Equinox: A Job Seeker’s Rite of Spring

Image via Wikipedia St. Patrick's Day Parade, Dublin Ireland

Rite of Spring California farmer applies fertilizer to his farm

Spring approaches! Having made the daylight time adjustment (hopefully) we are sidetracked with wonder at the outburst of color and life everywhere. Personally, I begin dreaming in the Aisles of Michael’s Craft Store and  dive into a little “default activity”: crafting spring-themed wreathes and arrangements to cheer myself up after the seemingly endless grayness of the past season. Sometime during the week of St. Patrick’s Day, I clean out my closets and put my warm  winter interviewing suit away for the season (it’s one of those personal  rituals that helps me keep track of the passage of time without the artificial fixtures–like counting down the days to vacation– usually given by employment. Creating these personal time keepers is one of the other things that happen after 1/2 year of non-employment).

It is time to quicken winter’s snow-encumbered pace; to clear away the winter-kill of past failed projects; to lay out  new gardens and plant fresh seed of an effective search. Last season’ lessons  informs this season’s efforts. Some ancient cultures called this “horse back season” too, because it begins the time when plans for conquest and acquisition laid in winter’s cold can now be acted upon. A few centuries ago, a land owner would ride throughout the property to review the condition of the real estate holdings while collecting rents in person. Battles were scheduled to be fought. So it is with the job hunt.

Equinox is a point in the cycle of the year where the hours of  daylight and darkness balance. From that point, the light advances, becoming longer and stronger into the decadent  high productivity days of summer. If there was any time to “work your plan” this is it. Taking a lesson from the early rising bees, we know in our aching bones that all the hard work will pay off somehow at harvest time.

Beloved Eire

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Just Being Me: “Default Activity”

a featured illustration from Shay's Word Garden on Blogspot

Some people actually cannot imagine themselves alive on earth having nowhere to go every day that promises a monetary reward at the end of a week. It was from graduation to first job. No space between. It is simply mind-boggling for some folk to consider there could possibly be other places to be during the day and none of them involve parking on the living room sofa watching daytime TV.  ”Being me” happens in the spaces not filled up by “the job”. Satisfying the need for a more meaningful life while having a low-paid, boring job causes this space.”Disassociation” from a former job will open more of this space too.

When I'm not working, I'm at...

Let’s play a game.Pretend suddenly you flew off to your favorite place to be; the place that could be called your “second address”…a place where if anybody goes there, they would find you. Are you there? Answer me honestly from where you are hiding. MARCO!

Who said, “POLO!”?

Found you. I know where you are. After the initial drama of joblessness, what might begin to happen is a rediscovery of joyful activity engaged in before there was any thought about paid employment. I call that “default activity”. For some, this kind of activity is laced up tightly into weekends and often called, “hobbies”. For others, it is what one naturally turns to when the day is over. It is what people do to “decompress” or “unwind”. Another word for it is “pastime activity”. Some people take chunks of time to do special projects like teaching kids to read in another country. Still others are gaming, treasure hunting, cooking, painting, sitting in front of the fridge inhaling more than the fragrance or on the dock of the bay “watching the tide roll away”. Default activity. It comforts; it relaxes; it probably started in childhood and it is organic to the personality. After the six-month anniversary of joblessness, default activity might be just the ticket to realign the soul with  authentic purpose. Who knows where a default activity might lead? A business, ministry and yes, a new career, may suggest itself that way.

My Wonderful Life Between Jobs: How To Keep Going

I am the queen.

Of course one day the crashing reality must be faced. One must give a straight answer to the question: what have you been doing for two years since you last drew a paycheck? At first that intrusive, incredibly boorish question used to throw me down. That question is so lacking in class.  I remember when I first heard it I used to lie there and let the anger-embarrassment-sorrow pound me into the dirt and hope the whole experience would just be over quick. After that I could hobble away; pretend it was a dream until the next time. This was my life until something remarkable happened in my thinking. Something happened in my soul that changed me forever.What was I doing between jobs? I was living, of course. I was being me. What I do does not define me (see our talk last week. Scroll one posting back). With or without employment I am still me and that is important because I am an incredibly talented, worthwhile human being. Our humanity determines that  we all have intrinsic worth.

A person’s real worth is not her net worth whether she is a queen or a courtesan. It was only when I came to believe this  that I began to see myself as also a worthy employee or, why not, a worthy entrepreneur. This is the mindset that has to be in place within a job seeker before she can conduct an authentic search for work:whether I am employed or not I am a worthwhile person. I don’t even have bus fare right now, but I am still someone who is valuable and highly valued.This has to exude from within. Not a puff of light powder fresh from a motivational seminar, this is what will keep the job seeker continuing to be on top of the earth when all indicators point only to the futility, the uselessness and to the conclusion that a better position is to be among the dead.

I am the courtesan

Some call this the brave heart. Some call this  the lioness’ heart. Whatever anyone names it, this is the survivor’s heart.

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The Day That “What You Do” Is Just That

"shape shifter" art by: "Thunderhands"

One of the things a job seeker who has been out  of work for a half-year or more learns to do is to “disassociate”. By “disassociate” I mean uncouple a former job title from the definition of the self. Please allow me to elaborate.

Many people will introduce themselves like this: “Hi, my name is Sean; I’m a mechanic down at ABC Garage”. Notice that a job title is used as a modifier in the statement of personal identity (like a little commercial for the company especially if the brand name of the company is well-known) as if  the company name is a part of personal identity. For a long time after the loss of a job, a former employee might say, “Hi, I’m Sean who used to work for ABC Garage” before launching into a tirade about being out of work and cursing the government official currently being blamed for it. After not having lived in an employer-employee relationship for over six months, that introduction may begin to sound like this: “Hi, I’m Sean Dannon, Angelica’s husband. I noticed you were alone at the punch bowl so I decided to come over and say hello”.

What is the difference you might ask? Disassociation. The more remote the last  workday becomes in memory, the weaker the emotional ties to that employment become. Making new possible work relationships feels less like betraying  the old workplace. The company name is dropped as a modifier of  personal identity. Notice how people whose job search has been longer begin to identify themselves by their own names plus the relationships that have meaning instead of the former job title tag.

The process of disassociation in the beginning feels something akin to a child’s separation anxiety on the first day of school. It can be so acute, it feels like choking;  imminent death; annihilation; non-existence. Once on the other side of this first stage of the  shape-shift, behold, “all things are become new”. The sun shines and there is something to get out of bed for.  The mere fact that day has come and being out of bed is what happens after a period of sleep feels “right” and “normal”. There is a day to plan. There is a looking forward to Life presenting her challenges, joys and surprises. The search for new work takes on a different meaning. Looking for work ever so slowly become less “the new job”  but just one of the tasks necessary to accomplish a certain goal. It becomes something on a “to do list”. This is sane, businesslike dispassionate disassociation.

About the same time or soon after the frenzied stretched-to-the-limit attention, “looking for a job is my new job” phase is over, “finding a job” falls into a new position in the order of things.  No longer queen, it becomes merely one part of the mix in life. Certain seekers begin to cast glances around and find out that “having a job” or being an “employee” is not the only way to do “making a living”.

Half a year out from the initial event of job loss, “what I do for a living” and “my person-hood” are two very non-associated things. This is actually a new reality. “I am me, not what I do”.

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Occupy Your Career

Image via Wikipedia

The gypsy lady has not hitched up the wagon because it is not time to move on but to take control. Power ceded to “the job market“, “the economic circumstances, “the cosmos”,”society’s expectations” and anything else must be reclaimed this year. As I mentioned last week, this is a “dragon” year, a year for bold moves.

First of all, who or what determines success in the job search and in life? Consider the nature of dreams. How does clarity come to answer the question about “what do I want to do with my life?” How are foggy dreams floating in space drawn down and wrapped in bones and flesh? KUJICHAGULIA.   Kujichagulia means, “self determination” in Swahili. The second day of the celebration of Kwanzaa is dedicated to the concept of respecting the self, exercising one’s own voice, and taking personal ownership of the products of one’s own mind. This includes the responsibility of owning, creating and managing the reality one brings into existence through accumulated thoughts and acts.

The District of Columbia may dislodge the occupation in McPherson Square, a public park. The forces of that occupation live in tents. Tents are temporary. However, each individual job seeker must fully occupy with intention and consciousness the individual “thought park” where a new positive reality must not just set up a temporary encampment but dig foundations and erect structures of a new thought reality. Deciding, “I shall not be moved”; occupying your career is the first step toward success.

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Happy Thanksgiving

Image via Wikipedia

Victoree is making roast chicken and drinking sparkling grape drink this week…you celebrate with your loved ones around a joyous table overloaded with blessings. This week is a good week to pay attention to the relationships that sustain us even in our search for work.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Victoree

The Scary Life Of Artistic Talent

Image via Wikipedia

And how would they dance without the fiddler?

Remember when I told you a little while ago that I would never work for free, but I would always volunteer?

Consider this scary trend: career field choices being made depending upon how much money that field pays. In these bad economic times certain people actually think artists should consider themselves lucky that anybody will pay them to do anything at all. Perhaps the thinking goes, artists are not “necessary” like doctors or teachers(?). Artists ought to feel bad–even angry at heaven– about having such a “non-essential type talent”. They should be glad to do it for free.  Therefore painters, writers, composers, musicians, librettists, song writers and graphic artists should be content to beg for a living and feel some kind of stoic honor to boot.

In my short lifetime, I have also observed something else: anything considered of little value in this culture is given to children to play with. Artistic children are “cute” and “precocious”, but artistic adults are “childish” and not to be taken seriously (they ought to put down the crayons and get a “real” job). Art in the USA is immediately relegated to “hobby” status except if it is the kind that helps convince an audience to buy a product. How many parents have convinced their artist children to “get a practical profession”. Do not write poetry. Poetry does not sell. Too many poets die in poverty. Do something “in demand”. Something people are willing to put out big bucks for.

I found this video and it changed my way of thinking about what I do forever. You see, I am a wordsmith. My Divine Mandate is inspiring, informing or educating using written and spoken English language.  I no longer feel guilty or obligated to apologize for the talent-gift set I got when I arrived on earth a little over half of a century ago.  I no longer feel I have to hide my real aspirations or get a “practical” career. As a professional (I have a Bachelors in Journalism and began career life as an ad copy writer)  I accept my responsibility to know and to ask for fair compensation for my work without a hint of shame.

A dance is nothing without the hard work of the musicians in the band. Their talent and hard-won skill is not to be devalued. If you dance at the celidah, pay the piper; When you give a dance, pay the band!

Watch this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE

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