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Finding voicefulness......losing......finding.....practicing..

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Hopalong:
Hi MB,
Those standardized rejection letters can get to you...I wonder if a lot of it is that these days people submit resume after resume over the Internet. It becomes an automatic checklist kind of thing but isn't always the path in to a workplace.

Whenever you get the chance to write a cover letter, your writing is so good that I hope it will catch an ear. Keep on doing the Internet search, but make sure the online submissions don't eat all the time/energy for the job search. Make another block of time about in-person contacts, volunteering, attending workshops, writing personalized queries and thank-yous to individual people, stuff like that.

But this is also why your in-person volunteering and engagement is such a brilliant move. That really is networking. And you're already doing it very intelligently. I am very impressed. It's not that you can control or predict HOW things will change, it's just that you really are doing wise things that ENCOURAGE the openings to present for you.

Don't panic. Each question or encounter or communication? It's practice. It's going to be okay. Just try as best you can to do the "one day at a time" thing.

I don't know if this works for you but sometime ages ago when I was very anxious about something similar, somebody told me to think of it as "good practice" -- and that took so much pressure off the event itself. I let go of the outcome and got relocated in the present. So I could be more relaxed and engaged without focusing on my anxiety. Literally letting go the result made the effort more easeful.

One last bit of random advice? Don't begin to "believe in" your homelessness. Don't wrap yourself up snugly in that label. Don't let the word take on a toxic glow, like a special disease that dooms you. Or that it's something you "deserve". Nah. It's weather, rough weather, and it will change. That's the certainty.

You and millions of other Americans are going through a difficult time. And you are not a drug addict, you are caring for your appearance and health, walking, continuing to reflect, write, search and drive forward. You are showing up in your life. You have not abandoned it.

Don't "believe in it". Homeless is one adjective and it is temporary. And it will be a meaningful benchmark when you look back as a wise old thing just the way people who weather a terrible accident but heal and return to the world with immense gratitude for life.

You'll find a job, you'll eventually have a pleasant housemate, a simple place to live, and it will be okay.

There is no reason for you NOT to be one of those who moves up and out of this situation. You have a lot going for you, MB.

Don't "believe in" your mother, either. She's unable to be helpful. And as you gather more of your OWN experience that you look at through your OWN thoughts and opinions, you will be less rocked by what's missing with her.

One day if you write a memoir, I'll gladly buy it. In hardback.

love
Hops

Meh:
Went to my doctor's appointment. I said "I'm living in a shelter, please test me for HSV-1 and I have toe fungus, sorry I'm scrungy I didn't take a shower this morning, while you are scraping my toe, I have a quick question for you, there seems to be a lot of turn around here and I see that the receptionist & data entry jobs are open, I have applied for jobs here but haven't gotten a response, can you give me any insight or tips?-- Do you only hire college students here?"

~I know it's not professional but I have already applied for two jobs at this place and didn't get an interview. I talked to the person at the front desk she wasn't doing anything that I couldn't do better.

The doctor told me to try applying again. I will when I go back in for my blood test next week I will bring them a PACKET of application materials and I will email them and I will call them and call them and call them until they tell me to go away.

The doctor asked me why I can't get hired back at my last job and I told her the truth "I was downsized and it was a bad experience" I wasn't really expecting her to ask me that, there is no way to finesse it.

She didn't think my toe thing was even fungus so weirdly enough maybe I had hard-water calcium build up on one toe??

Living in communal places is hard in someways I'm hyper vigilant about what I might catch because one place I stayed at EVERYBODY was passing around a new cold/flu every week, it was constant coughing and runny nose and someone said their kid had whooping cough and on and on.

Meh:
Thanks Hops,

Yes, I'm getting very experienced at something. I went to an interviewing skills workshop just to please the shelter manager and during the workshop we started discussing questions employers should not ask and unusual questions? When I started giving all my examples of questions that I have been asked at interviews the workshop leader started looking at me in a weird and irritated way? She said "I have never heard of that before"...

Yes it's true, I have been asked if I have children at interviews, I have been asked if I'm single or married or if I live by myself or other people, I was asked what kind of car I would be if I was a car, I have been asked what religion I am.

I don't know the legalities of it, I just read a list of 30 questions employers are not suppose to ask and I have been asked at least 26 of them at some time or other.

My only point is that it seems I have been on more interviews then the person giving the interviewing class tips has been on. You would think that would make me pretty good at it but there is always something that rules me out, the last interview it was definitely because I was not a college student.

Some community colleges allow people to sit in on partially full classes for free. I don't know if they have that policy here, but I may do it, sit in on any ol'fricken class so I can say YES YES I'm a STUDENT!!!! Without it being a total lie. -and I could do it without commiting to anything or wasting future financial aid income. --because you can only get so much financial aid for school I think, I wouldn't want to waste it on a golf management class.


 

Meh:

--- Quote from: PhoenixRising on February 19, 2011, 07:23:21 AM ---Hey Muffin...

that self-isolating effect... has a why with it - why self-isolate?

The reasons are as different as there are people... but I think the feeling that goes with it is the same one (manifested differently).

(((((((((Muffin)))))))))

--- End quote ---

I need to learn more about it because there seems to be a behavioral linkage for the ACOA/ Alcoholism and self-isolating.
It's very 12-stepy.

My Nar mother is not very social at all. My something-father is extremely isolated. My alcoholic brother is isolated. My mother's alcoholic husband is very introverted. My nar-mother's alcoholic father was very introverted.

My Nar-mother's Alcoholic mother is very social though.

My father's mother was permanently stationed in front of a television her whole life.

There is something to it.

Meh:
Inside knowledge about food banks and shelters--

Another woman here has an ex-boyfriend who worked at the local food bank. She said he took stuff from the food bank he wasn't supposed to take.

Last shelter I was at (observed this myself)- one of the managers was helping herself and removing all of the good donations for her own personal use and re-sale. Even she would take food home before giving it to the shelter, one time I thought I was helping by receiving and putting out donated food...and she got mad at me because she wanted to take it home for herself....and I had to apologetically say I didn't mean to overstep my boundaries and that it wasn't my authority to give food donations to the residents at the shelter. YEAH RIGHT.
This same shelter would also take people's food stamp benefits (most don't do this) and purchase the type of food they wanted (fat-farm-junk) for the "shelter"-and the employees would help themselves to this food...getting free lunch etc.
--Same shelter requires cleaning chores ok that is fair--but they added onto the chore list that the women go in and clean the restroom for the private business office that is only used by managers and staff --not the residents cleaning up after themselves instead that is the residents being used as maid service. It was requested by a man who worked there. I'm sorry but I had to laugh over this with another woman in the shelter and she said "and you know he isn't making it into the toilet".  Ugghhhhh.

I'm tempted one day to write a letter to the agency that gives GRANT money so the shelter could continue to operate- they waste healthy food because they are too lazy to prepare fresh veggies donated by kind farmers, they buy crap food with food stamps, they eat the food themselves, the play computer games when they should be hooking residents up with services and resources, it is more extensive then that.
Its really not important for me any longer- I do have other priorities for me. This is not a utopian world, I just think that many don't realize the systems are screwy.

Go to a place that gives out single one-way bus ride passes --and I only can get TWO a month. That is a single round trip per month when there are often empty seats on the bus. JUST saying--these programs and services seem superficial --

Sometimes the drug-addicts in the shelters are more compassionate and morally correct then the shelter management.

Two women here also said that the last shelter she was at was almost empty even though they were telling people that they were full- the alternative to that woman's shelter is to spend the night in a two-gender shelter where a woman was killed and another woman was raped- and they release people onto the streets at very early AM in the dark. --This is something I noticed also shelters are not always full when they turn people away--it is true that they can not accomodate every person and there are rules--but sometimes I think they turn eligible people away because they just want an easy week at work- and yes they are getting a pay check with $ signs on it--not volunteers.

--So we had a shelter-dinner table conversation about the possible reasons they say the shelter is full when it's empty, we figure maybe it's because they have enough people to get funding and keep their jobs. --Because fewer people would make their jobs easier??

I bet you wouldn't think that here in America people skim off the top of social service programs like this, maybe in India yes.

I was surprised to learn about all of this but I'm finding it's not uncommon.

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