Ecstasy, the opposite of

This is a particularly bleak time for me right now. First, I am back to being single, which some people tell me is a good thing, but they’re not the ones being haunted by the ghost of dates past, are they? It’s physically demanding to get out of bed and throw myself into the shower. Lately, it’s getting easier, especially when I think about the children waiting for me at the art school. There’s nothing like nine screeching kids calling for your attention to take your mind off personal troubles.

Experts agree that being heartbroken is more manageable when busy. I don’t even have that going for me. I am jobless. I am not undermining the teaching profession I have now under my belt-- far from it. Without this part time duty, I will have zilch coming in my bank account this month, not to mention a lot more time to be depressed. The thing is, I don’t see this teaching stint as real work. I don’t even feel like working when I’m with my students. Being a teacher is like suddenly belonging to a huge family, where I get ten siblings and twenty nieces and nephews.

I’ve been job hunting lately. I realized that looking for a job is like cleaning the toilet. You know you have to do it one of these days, and before you can complain about it, you’re squatted in front of the toilet bowl scrubbing away. In the case of job hunting, you’re in the middle of the business district under the noonday sun, in your best career woman outfit, looking for a building or in the waiting room of an obscure company.

I don’t know about other people but I don’t like discussing my job interviews. It’s like a jinx; if I tell someone the name of the company, I will get rejected, which will be forever remembered by the people who knew about my application. Job hunting is traumatic, humiliating and exhausting. It makes me doubt myself. It makes my phone an enemy. Sometimes I leave it for long periods of time and come back to check if I’ve got new messages or missed calls. So far, nada. Aside from my first interview, none of the companies I’ve applied to have gotten back to me. I look at my resume now and put myself in the shoes those companies’ HR people. How do I come across? Lost, that’s how. Like I don’t know where I’m going or what I really want to do. Well, I want to be an artist now. That’s specialization. That’s the kind of focus I didn’t have as a fresh graduate, which was how I ended up in my first company.

What if I really fail at getting a respectable, full time job in the field and even industry I aspire to belong? It’s torture enough when friends ask me what I am doing now and I can only say, “I’m teaching art.” Granted, they seem impressed by that, until I say it’s only part time. They’ll want to know what I’m doing full time. I’m being a failure full time, that’s what I’m doing.

Maybe I’ll go study again if nobody hires me. I’ll tell my parents that I need further training and my knowledge is lacking. People always mistake me for a high school student anyway. By the time I graduate from another four-year course, who’s gonna be able to tell I’m 27?

Boy that thought was depressing. But I seriously don’t understand it. Am I missing something here, did I do something in between the age 22 and 23 that fucked up my chances of landing my dream job forever?

Ecclesiastes is convinced that "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all. Man's fate does not depend on righteous or wicked conduct but is an inscrutable mystery that remains hidden in God."

Huh. That explains why CSB graduates who barely worked their asses off during college are CEOs of their family business and party animals at their leisure time, while I with my educational background am without a job as well as social life. If that is the case, I am desperately hoping that rigorous and intense prayer helps my case with God.