One Year Later

In May 2013, I moved to Colorado Springs for a three-month internship. Seven months later, that internship ended and I had no choice but to move back home to New York to ride out my unemployment.

In January 2014 -- only a month after I moved home -- I moved back to Colorado springs for a four-month job. Five months later, that job ended. Then I was unemployed for a month and a half, and then I got another temporary job. And five and a half months into that job, here we are.

A year ago this week, I moved into my apartment. My roommate was initially hesitant about letting me live with her because I was only here for a temporary job. I assured her that the goal was to find something permanent, that I may be moving back "temporarily" but that it was 100% my intent to stay.

And a year later, I'm still here. Temporarily.

Over a year and a half after first moving out here, and with no imminent plans to move anywhere else -- permanent by most standards -- I'm still here temporarily.

...Yeah, when I pictured my life post-graduation, this wasn't quite part of the plan.

I'm struggling to even find something to say about it, because my feelings are extremely cyclical. I go from "hey, everyone has their own path and this is mine! It's an adventure! I can roll with it!" to lots of bitterness and frustration and expletives that I'll keep off of the internet. And right now I'm definitely on the down end of the cycle. I just have to tell myself this'll be a good story to tell when I'm no longer a temp (which will hopefully be by the time I'm 30, but y'know, no guarantees).

But I guess what all this has taught me is to just loosen up and have a sense of humor about life. I used to take everything so seriously; I hated not knowing where I was going to go to college, I hated not knowing where I was going to be after graduation, etc. Of course, I'd still obviously prefer to know what my life is going to look like several months down the road. But my current job still has no definitive end date (could it be February? May? Some point in between? Later in the year? The world may never know!), and I've gotten to the point where my attitude is "well, whatever, I'll just keep coming to work until someone tells me not to."

Everything's worked out in the past, and it'll continue to work out in the future. And if I've survived unemployment twice, I can survive it again. (...I mean, I don't want to have to. But like, I could.) So if nothing else, I guess I need to be thankful for this long, winding, bumpy journey of mine because it's showed me what I can handle.  And that's a good thing to learn while I'm 23 rather than 43.

Ha, it's unfortunate that we had to hit the one year mark while I'm feeling so grumbly. But maybe that's fitting. My relationship with Colorado Springs has been pretty love-hate up until now, so why should today be any different? But I'll keep fighting to stay here as long as there's hope for me to.

At least I get to look at some pretty sunsets in the meantime!

How To Survive Unemployment (Without Hating Your Life)

Hope everyone had a happy Halloween! Can you believe it's November already?! I've also now been at my job for over two months, which is equally as shocking.

I don't know if you're aware of this, but the job market sucks. I don't care who says what about how many jobs are being created. It sucks. After college I was one of the lucky ones that slid immediately into a post-grad internship, but I'm on my second temporary job since that internship ended because I haven't gotten anything permanent. And sprinkled in there were two stints equaling almost three months of unemployment.

Really, I shouldn't be complaining about three months. In the grand scheme of things, that's barely a blip on the radar, and I know there are a ton of people that have it worse than I do. I do, however, think I somehow managed to handle it pretty well. And hopefully the wisdom I gained can help other people be less miserable!

1. Don't apply for a million jobs. It sounds counterintuitive, but for real. DON'T DO IT. I'm always boggled when I hear people say things like, "oh I must've applied for a hundred jobs per week!" Like, are you joking? How long did you spend on each application, 10 seconds? How many of those jobs would you actually want? Just because you're unemployed doesn't mean you should just take any job. Be more deliberate with your applications, and go for jobs you'd be genuinely excited to get. (This also greatly helps during interviews, since you won't have to BS your answers!) Work your connections, update your LinkedIn page, spruce up your resume... but don't spent eight hours a day sending out applications en masse. It's not worth it. Save your sanity.

2. Take advantage of your free time. The timing of my unemployments actually worked out great, as I ended up having a month off around the holidays last year and two months off during the summer -- so, literally, I stayed on my old college break schedule. This made it really easy for me to think of my time off as just that: time off. I spent a ton of time doing things I enjoy. I got back into working out, I read, I blogged, I went on the occasional adventure, and I got more sleep & was more well rested than I'd been in a year. When you're in an office all day, you can't make the three-hour round trip to meet one of your favorite athletes on a workday with 24-hours notice. The world is your oyster. There's no reason to sit around and mope.

3. Have a support system. It's super easy to just crawl into a hole and hibernate when you have nowhere to be every day, but you definitely need to make that extra effort to be social. Your friends will like you whether or not you have a job, and it's super important to get out of your own head once in awhile. Also critically important? Someone who will threaten homicide on your behalf when you send them an "I hate everything and life sucks" text. Find that person. Love them. Keep them forever.

4. Know that someone WILL hire you. You are qualified. You have skills. You are a valuable employee. Someone, somewhere, at some point, will realize that. The jobs you don't get simply weren't meant to be, and you will end up in the right place. Every rejection gets you closer to that one job offer -- you only need one! -- so when they inevitably happen, give yourself some time to sulk but let it roll off your back. It's their loss! (Seriously, adopting this attitude helped me SO MUCH.)

Since my job is a temporary position, I'll probably be needing a refresher on this list somewhere between February and May. Ah, the glamorous life of a twenty-something in the 21st century. Hang in there, friends!

On Perspective And Being Grateful

Totally irrelevant picture. But doesn't it remind you of those one-point perspective projects from middle school art class? I'm just playing with words. ;)

It was finally starting to happen. A little over a month since my job ended, and unemployment was finally starting to wear on me. Even as the ball might've at long last been starting to inch forward in a direction that was to my liking, I was getting bored and impatient and sick with uncertainty about my future.

So when I had the chance to visit the U.S. Olympic Committee headquarters for the first time since my last day of work, I was equal parts excited and wary. I'm a guest now. I don't belong there anymore. I had to take a ticket in the parking garage instead of simply swiping in with my parking pass, because I no longer have my parking pass. On the walk to the building, out of sheer habit I went to check that my ID badge was clipped to my waistband, only to remember that I wasn't wearing my ID badge, because it expired along with my job. And in the lobby, I had to check in with security and get a guest pass and wait for someone to come down and escort me in.

For those of you that have never been there, the lobby of USOC HQ is a pretty cool place for an Olympic geek like myself. There are four TVs that play nothing but Team USA Olympic highlights and montages, and display cases full of memorabilia. So I was sitting on a bench facing the TVs and a display case containing all the Olympic torches since 2006. It was somewhere between admiring the torches (some of which I've held in my own hands) and trying not to get misty-eyed at the Sochi Paralympic montage on one of the TVs that I realized -- holy crap, when did this become my life?

After I was collected from the lobby, I was brought upstairs and got to visit with some old coworkers that I haven't seen in awhile and catch up with them. I wasn't there for very long, but I was welcomed with grins and hugs and encouragement. And again, I was left with this sense of amazement.

Sure, I might have to wear a guest badge and get my parking ticket validated at the security desk. But all that did was help me realize how freaking cool it is that I ever didn't have to do those things. The USOC used to be just a dream of mine, in some vague, foggy place in the future. But now it's something that's very firmly in my life. I was there every day for five months, with all sorts of breaking news coming across my desk before it reached the general public. I was friends with the security guards and once even joked around with the CEO when we were in an elevator together (true story). And even though I'm not there anymore, it's now a place where I have friends, people who support me and want me to succeed and will help me stay in Colorado Springs because they don't want me to leave.

So instead of reminding me of everything I don't currently have, my visit was a great dose of perspective. It reminded me of everything I do have, put some pep back in my step and got me excited about all the possibilities the future holds.

I always try to avoid sounding too preachy (because god knows I am no more qualified about anything than anyone else is), but I want to encourage everyone to be grateful. It's SO SO SO easy to miss the forest for the trees (hello, been there, done that, will probably do that again), but I'm really liking this whole appreciation thing. It's so much happier to be positive and thankful... and good things definitely happen when you put good vibes out to the universe. :)

Blog From The Balcony: Bon Jovi And A Noisy Neighbor

It's a Friday afternoon, and I'm sitting out on my balcony. It's probably around 80 degrees and breezy, and I came out here with a vision of writing and listening to Bon Jovi and having myself a lovely day.

But then my upstairs neighbor decided to come out on his balcony and practice his guitar.

See, several days ago my roommate came home and told me she ran into said upstairs neighbor, who told her that he'd just gotten an electric guitar and apologized if we heard him practicing all the time. And, yes, I heard him playing that electric guitar ALL DAY yesterday and was going a little bit out of my mind. I like to think I'm a pretty patient, tolerant person, but sheesh, take a break, man!

I hadn't realized an acoustic guitar was also in the mix until, after about a half an hour of silence today, I decided to get iTunes going. After less than a song had gone by, "Thank You For Loving Me" was suddenly being overlapped by some random strumming from above my head. With a sigh, I hit pause.

Several minutes later, the strumming stopped. After several more minutes of silence, I figured he'd given up his practicing, so I happily went back to iTunes. But seconds -- literally, seconds -- after I hit play, he was back at it. It was like a bad sitcom.

So I paused again, and decided to just let his guitar be the soundtrack to my writing instead of Bon Jovi. And y'know? He's not really all that bad. I was pretty content with my decision. But now he's talking on the phone (on speakerphone) really freaking loudly about girls and getting high, and I know I should be annoyed but I'm actually really amused.

What's the point of this story, you ask? Hell, I don't really know.

Completely unrelated dog selfies for the win!

But it's nice to not be annoyed. Being annoyed sucks. And maybe it's just because the weather's nice and I'm still feeling inexplicably positive about my life despite all the uncertainty, but I'm kind of realizing that annoyance is a choice. I could choose to be angry that I can't listen to Bon Jovi right now, or I could choose to laugh silently to myself about this dude talking to his friend about various tips he's read about how to pick up girls. (Did you know girls all fall into certain "tribes" and only look for guys that fit into the same "tribe"? I know, my mind is BLOWN. Obviously we can all be pigeonholed like that! I'm learning so much about my gender, guys!!!11!!1!)

And I think the same sort of attitude can be applied to life. Right now, the Bon Jovi playlist of my life is on pause, and I'm currently stuck listening to my neighbor of questionable intelligence talking going to bars and getting high and such. But if past is prologue, eventually he'll shut up (metaphorically speaking, of course) and I can get back to rocking and rolling. (How's THAT for some introspection for ya?)

Oh, bless, he's off the phone!

...Nope, wait, the guitar is back. So close.

Definitely Not The Last Straw

I've had this post in my drafts for almost seven months and, what do you know, suddenly it's relevant to my life again! So it's time for Christmas in July. Which is ironic, really, since I'm Jewish. But let's roll with it.

Waaaay back in December (it feels like a different lifetime!), I went to the USA Volleyball Christmas party. It was pretty fantastic, but I mean, after the Halloween party, does this surprise anyone?

Team Jamaica, still friends even after our bobsledding careers were over. ;)

A good chunk of the staff went out together afterwards, and by "went out" I mean "stayed at the same place but at the bar instead of the private room we had the party in." Because really, when the temperature is in the negatives, why go outside? Exactly.

That week we were graced by the presence of Bill Hamiter, the head coach of the women's national sitting volleyball team, who's based in Oklahoma. Since he was in town, he joined us for our holiday festivities. He's incredibly nice and was the life of the party when we were at the bar. He has a veritable arsenal of party tricks that he was showing off and teaching everyone, starting with this straw thing. Wish I had a better name for it, but no, it's just the straw thing.

Basically, you put a straw in your mouth so it's sticking straight out. Only using your mouth -- no hands allowed! -- you turn it sideways and shuffle it along to the other end. Then you turn it so it's sticking straight out again, turn it sideways again, and shuffle it back to where you started. You're essentially trying to rotate the straw 360 degrees.

I promise, it doesn't look or sound difficult until you have the straw in your mouth. 'Cause we all sat/stood around, straws sticking out at odd angles and littering the floor, whining about how we were stuck and couldn't turn it. Eventually most of us were able to turn it at least, but then very few were able to move it from there. That's where I ultimately got stuck; the straw sticking sideways out of my mouth. It was hilariously frustrating and I lamented about how I couldn't do it.

But then someone piped up. "Oh, no, I read your blog. I know how you are. You're going to sit in your room and practice, but never say anything about it. And then in ten years, when you're working at a different NGB and making five times as much money as the rest of us, you're going to have it down and be like, 'Take that, Bill Hamiter!'"

Well... I have not been practicing the straw thing. Whoops?

But there's a reason I wrote this all down immediately after I got home that night. This exchange happened a week or two before my internship ended and I was plunged into my first stint of unemployment. It was cool to know that someone reads my blog, first of all, and it was also really neat to hear that someone thinks that my eventual success is inevitable (though I definitely won't be rubbing anything in Bill Hamiter's face!). It's kind of hard to envision that life right now, while I'm not working anywhere and my big accomplishment for the day is getting out of pajamas and into real clothes. But knowing that other people have faith in me is a pretty nice boost and keeps me feeling positive! (Guys, it's been a week and I'm still riding my optimistic wave! This is UNPRECEDENTED stuff right here!)

For the time being, though...

Welp. Hopefully it doesn't take ten years.