Friday, August 28, 2009

At least I'm not this guy.

http://melodymaker.posterous.com/the-reason-some-girls-stay-single-very-funny

For a very heavy week, this makes up for it.

-D

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

August 24-29, specifically the 26.



"In the depths of winter, I found in me an invincible summer.
...and summer in the real world involves a job with benefits." :)
-Albert Camus (*Thank You Sam)



It's been about two months, approximately, since leaving UCLA. 1 month since I've come back from home. Yo quiero cortar. One month it took me to decide that next week I move to Los Angeles for good. It was time, I had been lying around on the couch looking specifically for full time jobs in my area of speciality. Entry level, part-time, nothing.

It was only once I moved that about three weeks ago things started to come up. They were all part-time that a high school education could have provided me. So what the heck, I need the money I took all that I can, went to job interview after job interview for restaurants. Why this place, because I walked by one once and saw a beautiful hostess laughing, and another friend who brings home food a
nd takes home tips. I was friendly enough, and dressed as if I had a date with a buisnessman. The interviews (plural) went well.

This week I started with a very friendly atmosphere that offered 10/hr plus tips and benefits. Part-time of course, because I also had an internship that paid nothing. Plus I still had work at the Boba place in a little Asian district near my house.

I found another restaurant that I can work at right after my internship and it seemed perfect. They hired me today... Yo quiero cortar.

Depression sucks because essentially you just have to deal with it. That's it. Deal with it. What does that mean? I laid flat on
a pillow crying because I wasn't perfect and I make mistakes. I don't want to seem like someone who makes mistakes, I don't want the world to see me like that.

Yesterday, I ran into a job interview late and sweating with half an hour to get to training for a new job next door. The hiring manager took all those thirty minutes so I had to go. As much as I have called her, she hasn't called me since.

Today, I thought was my day off for training, I didn't look at the schedule, I simply assumed. (I'm accountable, yo quiero cortar). They called asking where I was, it was my third day on the job, so they rescheduled for tomorrow.

I also got hired at the restaurant near my internship. Yo quiero cortar, I had to reschedule with them twice when they told me today after my interview that I was to start. Again, my fault, I told them I can start ASAP. I told them the situation, that I had to work tomorrow. They said they'd call back. Never happened.

Why have I come to such conclusion? Every interview I have had with them they have called me two hours after to schedule another interview or to follow-up. I'm smart I can read actions. They simply needed someone who wasn't bogged down. After all this would be my fourth job, but they didn't know that, they only knew I had an internship and another restaurant job. No boba. Essentially no call, means no interest.

My dad says I
should call tomorrow, like I should still care about it. It's so much easier to forget and walk away, then to linger onto hope. Hope, in these cases, is a dead end. You may ask why I have to do this to myself. Try to work 4 jobs. Simply its is my pride. I cannot say enough about how my parents love me, but I don't want to burden them with more money troubles. My dad is already scheduled to lose his job in October. I shouldn't tell you that though, it is a shame to reveal secrets. Yo quiero cortar.

So to pay rent and food and bills, I must resort to this. My pride is hurt that my awards and accolades that garner the bottom of my resume are mere embarrasments to reveal.

Okay, graduated Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, at a presigious University, and I'm working minimum wage at a specialty drink store serving other students and working as a hostess near campus. Wow, imagen when school starts and the undergrads familiar with me see me seat them to their table. Screw all my achievements. Today I got hired and fired and already missed my first day of work. I can go on and on of such incompetence.

Voy a cortar but I wrote this instead.









Tuesday, August 25, 2009

A Statement of Failure

After my first day as a hostess near UCLA, I came out of work and found myself chit chatting with the valet manager. His cousin had lived in Riverside where I grew up, however I lived in the more elevated town of Moreno Valley, California. Yeah. He said with a pang of regret, she is a doctor now. I nodded with a reply of approval.
You know my family, we are all so different. She is a doctor and here I am parking cars.

I got to know my new restaurant manager today. So you go to UCLA?
Well I graduated, saying it with a smile, a loving dear lovely love of a smile.
So what are you doing working here?

At my internship, I do it for free, for the love of learning the craft of PR. I paid for school and now I get paid with experience. It's that wonderful.

-D

Monday, August 24, 2009

Why this Movie is a slap to 2009!

Even watching the previews it seems predictable!
Check out this article by Newsweek columnist Sarah Ball.

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/popvox/archive/2009/08/21/why-post-grad-disappoints-an-entire-generation.aspx

I disagree with the Elle Woods thing though, it also alienates another group of people.

Don't know what I'm talking about?

Check your Skin color.

-D

A Promise I must Keep

I want to write. I need to Write. I have to write, or else.

The Very First Day For the Rest of My Life

I can't even tell what has gotten into me. A little bit of transition, maybe a little too fast switch position between adult to child, angel to sinner. I am feeling utterly irrepressibly hindered at the moment, because from this moment on it seems that responsibility trumps youthful vigor and I have transposed into a path that unless I crawl extra hard to veer, will inevitably lead me to unhappiness.

It all started not this morning, but this night, and I recall it backwards, because my mind has warped backwards into a mist of minted garnished smoke that inhaled causes a calm chaos. It was good, for a second, and now my head is still reeling.

He had taught me once on top of a dark laundry room the meaning of lust. From then I associated lust with love, and because God told me Lust in Sin, and Sin is death, then love is death, and I could not, would not. I am the anti-Carey Bradshaw.

She is a writer of something I dream of expressing. She lives as I want to live, and she embodies the goal set at my arms reach but too afraid to go any further.

I walked up the stairs today, one floor into a regular room of surfer dudes, who ignored our mere presence. I stood there with a sidekick and watched him close the door. Out came minted death, money exchanged for green in Saran Wrap.

It would be my first and last venture with sin, for like Peter Pan I had to grow up. The wrap will lay always hidden if I am able to escape the path I have chosen for myself- a path of escapism and journalism. A life of slavery and bondage for another type of minted paper. I am now responsible to society, not myself, nor anyone else.

Today I started responsibility whereas the end of my path will lead to a cliff of regrets.

This is how I feel now as I began my new life of literal labor that the receipt of my degree has guaranteed.

-D

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

"God Can be Hilarious"

A girl can run to her bed put a pillow over her face and scream and cry as loud as she wants too. It's an empty apartment, so hyperventilation and proverbial wimpers are allowed at a time like this.

11:00 am eating my tamale and drinking my coffee. Kevin from BB Boba calls says I got the job. Not elated, eat a piece of corned maseka, just felt contented. Called Dad about all the great opportunities that might come my way, ahh who cares about the InStyle mag internship, it was just bitch work, I need real projects....bah blah black sheep. Hung up to call "Angela" about the InStyle Magazine internship, ate another piece of tamale. Hello. Spit out tamale. Hi I'm inquiring about my status about the position. She answers and now I don't want to talk about it.

Right after this, literally, an E-mail from Big New York PR firm Ruder Finn has a sentence starting with- Unfortunately. They even italicized it. According to Ms. Shaplowsky they had 255 applicants for 5 positions. Then Ms. Shaplowsky tried to be polite and console my broken heart. My dreams of New York she said (my interpretation) is only 5 out of 255, and I was not the lucky winner.

I wish she said it that way. It would have uncovered the fake sympathy in the email.

The good news, I went to talk to the Korean Boba store owner whose actual name was Arnold (again me with names). After passing by a bus stop where a situation scared me, I roughly believed: OMG I'm in the ghetto. Looks like I start training tomorrow, and parking is a block a way. How much I'll make, best guess is minimum wage.

It's OK, there are people dieing of hunger in third world countries, abandoned puppies, people with no legs, no homes, no loving families. Oppression of minorities and third world globalization. Air pollution, divorce. All these thoughts to help me STOP WHINING ABOUT MY SITUATION. The Devil wears Prada is a perfect movie for quotage: That's all.

-D

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

....

I have a problem.
I want to kill myself
Another problem.
Can't do it.
Pussy.

-D

Sunday, August 16, 2009

I'm Afraid

SO I guess the experiment worked, I'm keeping my lease, and preparing to move at this moment!

I didn't get a job...YET..but this week might change for me, I'll be hearing about New York and have two interviews lined up. As well all my apps from last week.

Some Homer style 'DoH' moments during my InStyle internship interview:

Interviewer: So you will be getting people's lunches...
Me: Will I have to drive because you know gas is expensive.
I: No, you can just run across the street to subway.

Lesson:
Too arrogant.

Next I wrote a follow-up letter using the whole time a different name then the interviewer's. A second later I apologized for calling her someone's else's name.

Lesson: Though I read the letter three times, I didn't read her e-mail address to get her "real" name." A slap on the hand by a nun to me.

I doubt I landed that one.

I'm really hard on myself as you can see, and I'm angry, scared, and hurt, and all these mixed emotions....because I'm leaving...I'M LEAVING HOME

Shout out to In-N-Out
-D

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Woodstock 4.0


Why Woodstock can never happen now?

Maybe we’ve become too individualistic. You ask what is a women in her early twenties know anything about Woodstock, and that you are true, but I will tell you the world that I live in.

Now this is a gross exaggeration, but we are individuals attached to machines. Sleepdealer by Alex Rivera reminded me of this truism. The premise of the movie was workers from Mexico were each attached to a virtual computer where every movement of their body responded to a working robot building buildings in the United States.

In a sense how true is it that we virtually cannot live without our machines in order to be productive. Cell phones, applications, Laptops, and Facebooks, those need to be checked frequently like a newborn infant. At this point roommates are speaking to each other through Facebook chat than face to face (guilty!).

Woodstock was essentially communal. Technology existed back in 69’ but it wasn’t infused with the individual. Yeah they took mind-altering drugs that left a point of twirling magical colored escapism but in the end they had the music, they had each other. The experience was real.

There is a difference between witnessing something yourself and witnessing it recording on your IPhone. Turn your head just a little aside, look past the device and something totally different happens.

Woodstock 69’ was all this collectively, in what it was, in the atmosphere; it existed as nature, not IN nature. Not through huge speakers and paneled televisions; not through corporate sponsorships and overpriced water that should essentially be free. Woodstock 99,’showed just how far we’ve come and the community responded with anger.

Now where does technology come in? We have found a way to capture the music that played so freely on the fields of Bethel, New York and placed it on a playlist. Essentially that’s all we need nowadays. We can sit on a huge grassy knoll by ourselves with our headphones on and feel the music like the hippies of old but yet we keep it to ourselves not because we want too but because music companies force us too.

In the end, in all our individualism we lost each other, we lost our freedom, we lost Woodstock forever, and I have to wonder.. who is to blame?

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

DAY 2: Monday



Hiked to the BACK of the Hollywood Sign with Jason Camit. Decided in order to be tough on the job, you have to be tough physically, mentally, and learn that anti-climactic endings are always around the corner. Still, it was worth it in every way, just look for the encouraging signs up on the trail that tell you "GREAT JOB" and "YOUR ALMOST THERE." ( a metaphorical message from my parents back home in Riverside)

Once home I got too organizing my room and getting settled for my new office space. "Denise Works to Live INC."

Tired and exhausted my email told me for 1: The Prostate Cancer foundation doesn't need my services and 2: An interview with InStyle Magazine for Wednesday. (Cheering inside right now).

So far so good,
-D

Monday, August 10, 2009

DAY 1: Sunday

Rooms a mess, nothing is organized.

Applied to two online jobs
Walked around Westwood asking for paper applications, received 8. Kind of hurts your pride a bit when you graduate Cum Laud and having to end up working at American Apparel with a hairy chested manager shaved in a particular pattern through his v-neck shirt. I wanted a "real job" you know but this will have to do. My father who is getting laid off in October is even downgrading to newspaper boy after having a very hefty office job as a project controller. This just shows me the true meaning of having to do what you gotta do. Inspiration, I guess.

Next plan is to fill out all these apps, and disburse them througout Monday and Tuesday. and GET ORGANIZED.

Hopefully I don't sleep in...ahhhh which just might happen.

Best,
-D

A whole new experiment- all thoughts and action

Here's the deal!

I am the greatest dilemma freak in the whole universe. Here's a new one. Since graduating I wanted to be this strong neurotic independent person who goes out with her girlfriends for cocktails, lining and dining with a string of relationships that end up as nostalgic gossip columns but...I went home to my parents house, watched the whole Godfather series (which is AWESOME, I like #2 the best, but debatable), lazed around, bummed, caught up with the crew for starbucks chats and eventful events such as having a yard sale for supplementary income ($60 mmmhmm).

SO THE Dilemma, finally.

I have gone without work for a month. Applied to over 40 places, nada. Not my fault, its that whore Miss Recession. At the moment paying $575 for an apartment in LA to fulfill my "dream."

Before moving to this fab apartment, I had a couple of weeks left in my old now empty shabu shabu where I basically woke up, went to work, and came back to a black empty hole. Heres where all you psychological people will get some sort of erotic stimulus in diagnostic therapy.

Because of the lonliness, I would get drunk and cut myself. I knew there was definitely something wrong, so I went to see some professionals and they suggested I go home for family and support.

Went home for about a month, drug happy psychiatrists prescribed my Pristiq, Lamictal, Klonopin Each visit and Co-pay was $20 under my parents plan, plus cost of medication is sucking my bank account into a dark and empty place.

SO NOW, OK, FOR THE ACTUAL EXPERIMENT.
I will be in LA for a week, actually stay in the apartment I have been paying $575/mo for and look for a job. In one or two weeks if that doesn't happen I will have to give up my lease and move home for good.

Does that Sound good? Yeeks, sounds scary, real scary.

Best,
-D

About Me

My photo
Graduated Cum Laud from UCLA in 09. Kinda went crazy...but love it. Aspiring Producer/Writer and lover of all things beautiful. BTW some social anxiety and depression never helps.