Chapter Thirteen: Unemployment
What do you do when you find yourself without a job? When your days are filled with applications, and resumes, and cover letters and still nothing seems to be happening? I was at a loss. My parents still did not know that I was unemployed, I was living on a nocturnal schedule, and I still had this uncontrollable urge to work in television news, with no credentials. (Oddly enough, no one was that impressed with an internship I did at Joe Blow News ten thousand years ago.)
I was putting in so many applications, and was getting no where. I was discouraged to say the least. My days were filled with sleeping and watching TV. My nights were filled with applications and reworking my resume, researching news, and surfing the internet for answers. It didn't take long for me to start applying for assistant editing positions. After my affair with the business world, I knew I needed something creative. I still had the desire to do the news thing, but I could feel myself getting the itch back. My problem was that I didn't want to do features. I didn't know much of the editing world beyond that. More importantly, I was scared a becoming invested in this career path again, only to be let down once again. I did what any person in my situation would do: I started walking dogs. My roommate was a part-time dog walker and easily hooked me up with a job. It was fun, albeit challenging in some of the more miserable days of the NY winter.
It didn't take long before I fell into a slump of depression. I was lost. I had no idea where to go from here. Even with the addition of the assistant editing applications, no doors seemed to be opening for me. Unemployment is discouraging. When you have too much time to think, sleep too much, and when you barely see the light of day, it happens. I felt useless and unwanted. Worse, for the first time in a long time, I didn't feel like I had a clear goal. I was floating around, not knowing where I wanted to go, what I wanted to be doing. At my lowest point, I found myself asking my friends if it would be completely crazy to cut gay porn. But I went on more interviews, for everything from a videotape inspector to a tech support person at a news station. I was tired of being told I was underqualified. I was tired of being told I was overqualified. (How is that even possible?)
I was close to crawling back to my Traffic job but Christmas break was fast approaching and I couldn't wait. I needed the break, and to get myself out of this rut. I couldn't wait to finally be able to leave the city for the first time since I had arrived, to be able to drive again, see land and trees again, to see my family. The family I had been lying to for two months now. I decided I had to come clean while I was home. To tell them that maybe they were right, maybe quitting a job without something else lined up was a bad idea.
Break was great, and I felt myself returning back to normal. I decided to tell my mom about my job. (I still couldn't bare to tell my father. His lectures were something I didn't want, nor need. He's not the most warm and understanding person on the planet. Surely he could knock my confidence down a few more notches without even realizing it.) Unbelievably, my mom understood. She hated that I had lied, but she seemed to understand my desperation. She even agreed not to tell my dad, an agreement I hated to ask of her, but she knew, like I knew, that his disappointment in me he would not keep to himself. Maybe I needed to be woken up, but I couldn't bare the thought of letting him down.
It was a couple days after Christmas when I received the phone call. It was a call from ABC and I had a interview in two days. It was for an internship, but I didn't care. As I've said numerous times before, I just had to get in the door. I had applied for so many jobs, I didn't even remember exactly what department it was for. In fact, I had no idea what the job description was. Telling my mom that I had gotten that interview was a great feeling. And it couldn't have come at a better time.
The L train wasn't working properly on the day of my interview. I had to take a shuttle to another subway line, and by the time I got into Manhattan, with one transfer and a hefty walk in front of me, I knew I was going to be late. I could blow this interview in many ways, but it wasn't going to be by being late. So I got off at the next stop and on the street level, called them to tell them I got held up by the train and was on my way. They were super understanding and with relief, I hailed a cab. In both of our phone conversations, I was surprised at how nice they were and how well we got along. I thought I had a chance. This wasn't human resources.
By the time I had gotten there, I was so flustered by my commute, I didn't remember to be nervous. I got to the floor of the surprisingly modest building, and something stopped me dead in my tracks. In all my running away from the world of filmmaking, it had found me. Surprisingly, I wasn't as disappointed as I thought I'd be. The door read "ABC Film and Video". This wasn't
the ABC. This wasn't the job in news that I thought I finally had found. Their ad had been tricky. I had been fairly certain I was applying to
the ABC and instead I had found a film and video company. The irony wasn't lost on me.
While I was waiting to be interviewed I flipped through their modest pamplet. It was a private company that did short films mainly. It was just getting its start and so far, seemed to be doing well.
The interview went great, probably because I actually knew what I was talking about. After looking at my resume, they concluded that I would be an editing intern if hired. I nodded my head in excitement before I realized I didn't think that this was what I wanted.
I got the job. And after my first day, they made me head intern of post-production. I would have eight interns below me, and as I quickly realized, we would be the post department. No one else at the company had as much experience with Final Cut Pro as I, and therefore, I found myself giving workshops and organizing all of their media. They were still very small, working on modest computers. I was delegating jobs and was editing again. The company was working on a documentary, actor reels, and other random things. It was exciting to be in charge. People were coming to me, asking for advice and guidance. People were asking to see my movies, and loved them. I felt like a hero, as cheesy as I'm sure that sounds. I hadn't felt this good since I was a
sophomore. I had brought their fledging post-production department into its own. Before I knew it, my mood had done a one-eighty and my confidence in editing had been reignited.
I felt like I belonged there. I wasn't getting paid. I was still walking dogs and was even helping my friend with an independent documentary that paid. ABC Film and Video may have been an unpaid internship, but I loved every second. I wasn't doing it for the money. That was important for me to realize. I was loving it. I was loving editing again. At this point, I knew it was much bigger than a coincidence that I had gotten this job. I had come full circle.
Just when I though things couldn't get better, my phone rang.
Labels: dog walking, Final Cut Pro, finding post, full circle, NY, unemployment, unpaid internship
Chapter Twelve: Welcome To The World of Business Casual
The whole move is a blur now. We had signed a lease when we had come to NY earlier in the month.
On that trip we had stayed in what can only be described as the most glorified dorm room ever. I'll explain. Three guys that we had gone to school with had found a humble abode in Brooklyn. Their apartment was originally a gigantic, concrete room. LIke an oversized garage. No kitchen. No bathroom. No rooms. They had taken some sort of wood and built dividers for rooms, even giving the space a second story. The walls were filled, but not cluttered, with books, records, and humorous posters. Their living area consisted of about 7 chairs with ashtrays built in the arms, an entertainment center, and a blow-up doll, (if I'm not mistaken.) The room that they used as a kitchen, (although they had no running water to the apartment, or as much as a stove), had a giant pipe running through it, large enough that a person could not wrap their arms around it completely. This ran from one wall to the other about chest high. The bathroom/kicthen area, (notice the slash here), was down the hall for the entire hall the share. The kitchen was in the bathroom. The bathroom was in the kitchen. The shower was in the kitchen. The kitchen sink was were you would brush your teeth. And the whole thing was just gross and a bit unsettling. I had stayed worse places in the city, (a night spent on the floor of a studio apartment, huddled next to a radiator for heat, trying not to notice the roaches, and using the contents of our suitcases for warmth, comes to mind), but this experience sticks out for me, because it was here, walking down the dirty hallways, taking showers in flip-flops, and hearing stories about the neighbor who got held up by an eight-year-old, that it sunk in. I was moving to New York. I was going to be living this life that had been written about in thousands of books. Thousands of movies made about this place. It was scary and exciting all at the same time. This time we weren't here dreaming about the one day we'll live here. No. We were going to sign a lease. We were going to promise ourselves, and the better part of our income, to this city for at least the next year.
It was official. We were moving. Like I said, it was all a blur and happened entirely too fast. One day I was watching my uncle drive my car away, tears dripping down my face, the next, I was emptying out all of my possesions into boxes and trash bags, and sweeping things that were once swept under the couch into a gigantic pile. Our house was pretty messy, to say the least. I won't go into details here but wow, I'm sure our landlord was glad to see us go.
We were driving up, three girls, two dogs, a mother, sister, uncle, and Uhaul. All of our worldly possessions, three best friends, and 400 miles. There, we would start new lives. Start looking for jobs, good restaurants, hip bars.
Our apartment was biggest than the average NY apartment. We were in Williamsburg, Brooklyn beside a huge park, (perfect for the doggies). We painted the walls, organized all of our stuff, started to call it home.
A lot of the summer we all sat around in denial. We were on summer break right? School would be starting back up in the Fall. This was just a vacation. Less job searching went on that should have.
It happened one day, inevitably, money ran low and our parents started to get pissed. We needed jobs.
Craigslist, Mandy.com, Time Warner Careers, Monster. I was looking for a job in tv. I was looking for a job in news. My first interview was at Fox News. That first call for an interview is one of the most exciting things in the world. Finding a job is hard. Finding a job in NYC is damn near impossible. We were all looking and slowly, we all became pretty discouraged. When I got the call, there was something that reignited my confidence. I wasn't totally worthless and maybe someone would want to hire me! Woo!
My shoes were uncomfortable and it was raining. I wore flip flops and then outside of the office, changed into more suitable shoes. There was no covered area to change my shoes so I stood balanced on one foot, holding my umbrella under my chin, trying to change my shoes. It was pitiful. People were walking by, in their perfect suits, with their perfect umbrella that didn't turn inside-out at every chance, with their high-paying jobs, balancing fine in their heels like Carrie Bradshaw. I was a mess. I was so nervous when I went in, I blew it. I stumbled over words and was so intimidated I couldn't stop shaking. I buried my personality under a shameful pile of nerves. I didn't exactly know the names of any positions and winced as they told me it was "chy-ron" not "cry-on". In my head, I just had to get on the inside somehow. Then I would know the terms. There's a union for chyron operators? Really? This was turning into a mess. It was clear I didn't know much, but I tried to play it off. Unsuccessfully. I was trying to explain why I would be perfect for the job even though I wasn't a journalism major. I had the drive to succeed. That was better than any degree. Right?
I wouldn't have hired myself.
More interviews, more rejection. I kept losing jobs to people who actually went to school for news or journalism. I was discouraged and started expanding my searches to anything in television. I found an ad for a job at a national television station. I got the interview.
What was the traffic department anyway? I didn't care. All I knew was that this was a station that was on televison, had little news segments, and hell, wasn't anything to do with movies or editing. It was exactly what I was looking for. I got a new outfit, business casual attire, new shoes, and went in with confidence. At this point I had nothing to lose. For all I knew, I would be wearing an orange vest directing traffic affliated with this station. (Thinking that surely most of this traffic would be somehow involved in the news-getting-processes. Damn. I really needed to learn the terms.)
I walk in, and am amazed at just how many times this station's name appeared throughout the building. Walls, doors, television screens, tee shirts, pens. It was everywhere. The second thing the woman who was interviewing me said was, "I like your shoes." After an appropriate silence and period in which I internally congratulated myself, she added. "My mom has those same ones." Oh I recongnize snark when I see it. I smiled and forced a laugh. Somehow, someway, I got the job. Even after admitting I had no idea what a traffic department did. Only later did the reason I got hired become clear. I had a pulse. This is not a job people seek.
Let me explain what a traffic department does.
This job is a monotonous one. You sit in your business casual attire in a cubicle, next to a water cooler, staring at a computer screen all day. The traffic department is in charge of making sure the highest costing commercial spots go to air. For a two-minute break, there are usually roughly 100 spots that can go in. All ranging from 15 seconds to 2 minutes. It's like a puzzle, doing the math figuring out which spots will bring this company the most money. Eight :15 spots at $2000 dollars a piece, or two :15 second spots at $2000, one :30 spot at $5000, and one 1:00 spot for $8000. Or the 2:00 spot for $10,000. It all gets very complicated and putting the wrong spots in can cost the company thousands. It seems easy enough, but there are spots that have to air, and then there is also a rule about which spots go next to each other. A diaper commercial must air thirty minutes away from a competing diaper commercial. Are you asleep yet?
There was a joke that I had heard on multiple occasions about the lack of sanity in the traffic department. People that did this long enough were depressed, bitter, and often hated their lives. There's not really a punchline. I did this for three months. I walked the line of casual and business casual a little too closely. I nearly costed the company lots of money on multiple occasions and only once got to even walk onto the floor in which they did the news.
Discouraged and slightly bruised I went to my boss. She was eating a lean cusine with her perfectly manicured nails and playing on her Blackberry. She looked up as I nervously tapped on her door. Shakey, I walked into her office as she nodded her head. After having what I can only describe as a panic attack, I told her I was quitting. I tried to explain that this job, environment, life, just wasn't for me. I told her, in what I assumed was a lie, that I was going to go back to editing. (I was nervous about telling her my plans to go into news, knowing her ability to crush ones dreams in the drop of a hat. "Did you go to school for that?") I also told her I had a project lined up. Also a lie. I couldn't bear to tell her that I was quitting with nothing lined up, just because I hated the job so much. That it had drained me so much. I was so creatively stunted. When I would get off work, I'd want to paint or write or do something that was creative. I was going crazy in those four fabric walls listening to Oprah everyday at four o'clock from about fifty different television screens, resounding and echoing throughout the office. I was depressed and drained.
After my two weeks, I cleaned out my desk, and left. (Taking as many pens and pads and whatever other office supplies I could get my hands on, with me. I heard that's common.)
The funny thing about all this is that it was in October. I had told my parents about wanting to quit and they had expressively told me I'd be an idiot to quit without something lined up and strictly forbade it. So I didn't tell them. I only slipped up a couple of times, Once my dad called me in the middle of the work day asking what I was doing and I told him I was at the dog park with Hopper. He asked why I wasn't at work and I froze. I told him that we had a half of day today for a conference. Good one. I lied to them. Everyday when my mom would ask me how my day at work was I'd tell her great and try to quickly change the subject so I wouldn't have to lie further. I was still looking for a job, and got a couple of calls, but nothing that paid money that I so desperately needed. I obviously couldn't ask my parents for money, so I pulled out my credit card to get by and kept searching.
Labels: business casual, interview, job search, NY, parents, quitting a job
