Fate

On Monday I was officially laid off. This news came about ten minutes after hearing that my fallback job (shoes) was also not going to pan out because they too were going through a round of layoffs. Scary? Um...a little. I'd never been laid off before.

I was told that my last day would be Friday, October 31st.

So I went home, grabbed one of our homemade oatmeal stouts and headed for the garage. Because I knew my end at the magazine was just around the corner, I had already scheduled an appointment with a headhunter. Our first interview was for the next day, so even though I had only been laid off for about an hour, I was already in job search mode. I needed to clean up my resume, write a couple cover letters and find my interview suits to get ready. Of course, when I had left my old job in June of 2007 I had absolutely no intention to ever wear my old, heavy, constricting suits again. The only reason I had kept them was because they cost so much and I didn't want to be without. True to my nature, I had only kept them based on the patented Ma Chilton "just in case" philosophy. Begrudgingly, I pulled out my old clothes from my days in Eugene. I unfolded sweater sets, evaluated my conservative heels and wondered whether my old skirts would fit. Essentially, I was not happy to be elbow-deep in boring wool suits that had the distinct odor of moth balls. I slammed a few boxes on the ground. I stomped my foot. After a few angry minutes of digging, drinking and kicking, I scooped up my haul and, with some degree of consternation, deposited them on the laundry room floor.

Returning to the garage I dove into a box of books in search of my very professional looking black leather folder. More than anything, it's a prop for interviews. Sure it keeps my files and resumes in order, but basically it just looks good. As I was extracting the folder I came across my college text books. I was thumbing through them, remembering the days when I actually believed my guidance counselors when they said brightly/ignorantly, "you can do anything you want with an English lit degree!" Bullshit, I thought, as my eyes ran over a section of Milton's Paradise Lost. You most certainly cannot do anything. You can do a lot of things but "anything" is not one of them.

As I was just about to storm off into the house for another beer, Jason pulled up. Smiling and calm, he walked up to me with a dozen long stem red roses in one hand and a Costco-sized box of Dove chocolates in the other. He hugged me, told me it would all be okay and that we would get through this. I started to cry. He then walked me inside, sat me down and we spent the night eating pizza, drinking beer, playing dominoes and just taking it easy. I am a lucky, lucky girl.

I've sent my resume out to a few businesses in town and have managed to snag an interview for tomorrow. The job would be perfect for me and I'm really hoping I'll get it. But that is all I'm going to say because I don't want to jinx it. And as I've been bragging about my chocolate and rose toting boyfriend to anyone who will listen, he said he's happy to brag that even though his girl got laid off on a Monday she had a job interview lined up before the end of the week.

Take that, world--we're going to be just fine.

Cheers,
NC

Song of the day: Move Along by the All-American Rejects