The Job Search

So in the last two weeks I have put in over 20 applications.  16 of them were for working with people with disabilities.  Funny how we come full circle.  I spent all that time in Connecticut working with the disabled population only to have left that job and joined Occupy.  Now here I am trying to get back into it.  But you know I didn't leave that job as much as I left that area and ran to Occupy.  If I was working and living in the city doing that I don't know that I would have left it as I could have done both Occupy and that job.  And that's where I am right now - trying to do both.  I was successful with that work.  So I'm looking at it again.  It's been a couple weeks now though and I haven't heard anything yet.  So my hope is dwindling with each day.  I've also put in a few of the typical idealist.org stuff that I've been doing - after school things, project management, economic and social justice stuff.  Same old.  And you know this is not me belittling anything, but me lamenting the waiting and the decreasing marginal levels of hope attached to each application as time slowly passes.

I did catch a break though this past week when one of the women I work with for the Occupy Radio set me up with a guy that does set construction.  At this point I know nothing more other than he needed someone next Thursday evening/night.   But good pay/work, so I'm there!  I must admit that while for the first three or four minutes it didn't seem to affect me too much, all of a sudden hit me.  Wow!! I'm excited.  I so desperately just want to work.  Just want to do something productive and have some income coming in.  Anything.  I am not sure what will come of this, but I am excited to have an opportunity.  Any opportunity really.  And this would be good.  I would get to do some building, it wouldn't be something that I would have to spend time thinking about outside of work, and would afford met to make rent payments!  What more could I ask for?!  I mean other than the obvious real career job of course!  But you know what?  I don't know what that is anymore.  Maybe that's just gonna have to change....

What am I up to...

So I am spending my days working with people with "disabilities".  Trying to find them employment in a world and system that has ostracized them and that really has created no place for them.  It is truly sad to see.  People that just want to be accepted, loved.  That just want to feel "normal", to feel like they fit in and have a place.  Yet here they are in a society designed to work entirely against the assets they've brought to their table.  They are a true minority in the greatest sense of the word and world.  African Americans may be discriminated against where they go, women in the workplace, homosexuals in marriage, but imagine if you were discriminated against within the very socio-biological ways of society?  The way you talked, walked, looked.  The way you picked things up, the accessibility of places, people, how you physically did things.  Imagine if you couldn't hear your mothers voice, couldn't see the bus approaching to pick you up, couldn't walk in to a job interview and truly be heard, couldn't comfortably perform simple professional norms like shaking someone's hand? 

Society is set up for people that physically and mentally work in a certain way.  If you don't function in that way, you will never truly find a place.  I recognize it more and more within myself every day, and I'm simply dyslexic.  My brain processes things differently.  The conclusions I draw seem different, I don't organize information in the same way, and I see the outcomes daily as I become more aware of it.  But imagine if I had a completely different genetic makeup?  Imagine if my brain didn't just process or sort information differently, but actually worked entirely differently?  And that way of working was deemed by standard measures - such as IQ tests and such - to actually not be working?  It is a true travesty of our society that people that function differently on so may levels have no place in society, that they are not encouraged to be a part of global or national life as they are.  They are encouraged to conform, to try to become like "us".  Medicated, trained, whatever.  Where is their own personal voice?  Muted.  People that think differently are really the only people with the true capacity to think "outside the box", to work from an original canvas as they are not hindered by the mainstream.  They are different, and I truly wonder why we try to make them the same.  We need to hear them, listen to the ideas, try to hear the variance, the possible new directions.  What better way to change our society to be more inclusive than through dialog with and via the eyes of those that are actually ostracized? 

So this is what I do, I try to jam round pegs into square holes.  In my spare time I am still working on ideas with Africa.  I am saving some money for another trip and project supplies.  Things have been downsized a bit.  I am at this point simply trying to find a small fairly straight-forward and simple project that can be delivered in the next year during my spare time.  I am of course also still trying to find people to work with that will keep me going and help with the process.  No small issue...

Right now I am thinking that the internet incubator/cafe will be the easiest thing to deliver upon.  An office space for non-profits that would be funded by an internet cafe.  The proceeds cover the rent and computer upkeep while providing organizations with the space and infrastructure to do their work.  It wouldn't cost more than $10,000 to get everything set up and running and would require little oversight.

I've got some stuff I may do to help bring out the minority vote in Dutchess county where I am living right now as well.  Kind of a complicated road, but one that could be quite fulfilling.  I'm also looking into PhD programs again.  Doing a much more thorough analysis of the anthropology programs this time.  Narrowing down the ones that would be just right for my interests and theoretical vantage points.  This is the type of arena I belong in, but it is funny that the reason I am not there is because I am a round peg, I think very differently, and it caused me issues both in getting accepted and during my time in academia.

We'll see though, there is a lot of ways to get to the places I want to be.  It will take some time and a little bit of doing.  But if I can get something done in Africa, and survive my current job, it could all open a wealth of doors for the future.  Time is always an asset, and always a challenge....