March 1st- Week 1, Day 1

I had a date with the bottom of a river today.  When I moved back to my parents’ house in December to get my bearings and look for a “grown-up job” after a year and a half in India, I told them that if I was still here by March, they could find me at the bottom of the river.  These were not the words of a suicidal depressive, but the glib dramatics of a self-assured thirtysomething with little understanding of the words “job crisis”.  I am, generally, a person of my word, but I have no desire to end my life, or even catch the sniffles by taking a dip in the Shenandoah when there’s still snow on the ground.  But I am taking the implications of this day seriously.  Time has not stood still, and a lot has happened in the last three months.  Haiti.  Chile.  The Winter Olympics.  And my brother, the recovering alcoholic with a police record, got a job.

My interview clothes (I am now the proud owner of what, for the first time in my 34 years, might be defined as a “blouse”) are pressed and hanging in my closet.  I have a black leather padfolio crammed with extra copies of my resume and references, and crib notes for questions like “What are your greatest weaknesses?” and “Why are you the best person for the job?”   I’ve got a dozen applications out there making their way through the sludge-filled channels of HR, and every day I fight the urge to call my prospective employers and wail “Please Please Puhleeeeze, I’ll do ANYTHING!”  I may not be at the bottom of the river today, but man am I trying to like hell to push its lazy ass into the sea.  Morning meditation and yoga notwithstanding, going with the flow is most definitely on my list of “greatest weaknesses”.  Clearly, I could I be doing more, and what I have been doing thus far has been unspeakably wrong.  

I spent most of today, forcing myself to breathe deeply from the diaphragm, and avoiding the overwhelming urge to cruise last minute airfares to Nicaragua on the internet.  I have decided to give my current campaign (finding an age and experience-appropriate job in the northeastern United States) two more weeks before I radically change course, coasts, or countries.  Two weeks to at least land a promising interview.  One thing is clear.  I cannot continue as I have for the last, oh God, ninety days, and expect a different outcome (I’m not Einstein, but I have his poster).  As I drifted into the den of my parents’ gracious colonial, surpressing hysteria and numbly flashing forward to my inevitable years as an impecunious spinster cruising the Save-A-Lot for dates, my eye caught on the maroon spine of a slender paperback book.  The words   “Win”, “Friends” and “Influence” drew my gaze like Speidy to reality T.V..  Sliding the book off the shelf, I recognized it as my dad’s much beloved copy of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.

 My dad used to be a toilet paper salesman in Memphis, and now he’s an accomplished lawyer who was able to put four children through college without the need for student loans (or scholarships, praise Jesus).  He is devoted to HTWF&IP’s wisdom, and effusive in his respect for Carnegie.  Since I’m far beyond where Oprah could ever save me, and grasping at straws (even straws from 1936, before they’d even invented the bendy kind), I decide to make How To Win Friends and Influence People the secret weapon in my two-week campaign to knock those depressing unemployment statistics down by one tenacious single white female.   I will begin each day by reading a hefty chunk of this volume (the revised edition, circa 1981), then attempt to apply these nuggets of wisdom to my current life circumstances.  This will present its own challenges, since my current life circumstances revolve around the twenty-three wooded acres of my ancestral home and a rigorous napping schedule.  Nonetheless, I will persevere.  Or rather, I will keep persevering just a little bit longer, so I don’t have to bury my dreams like the corpse of a geriatric family pet in the back yard quite yet.  Shall we, Mr. Carnegie?