Blackout, Anxiety, and News

If you hadn’t noticed, my blog wasn’t online for about a week. This is because I was in the midst of job searching for a position as a personal trainer. It’s something my dad suggested, especially because I do talk about my eating disorder that I recovered from last April. I also share strong opinions about a few other topics that future employers could have judged me on, so I thought it safest to just temporarily take my blog offline. I also did it with my author Facebook page.

I remember the last time that I went job hunting it took me a month to land the current job I’ll be at for probably about 2-3 more weekends. But this time, it only took me a week to find a job!

So, yes, I’m a fitness consultant for Evans Fitness Center Express. In the meantime, I’ll also be shadowing some trainers during my shift, and then once I’ve gotten a good amount of sales experience selling memberships and establishing rapport with the clients and gym, I’ll transition over to personal training. I get a salary plus commission. The manager recommended I start out as a fitness consultant since trainers are only paid by the hour, so it would be a rough start for me.

I’m happy with my choice, at peace with it, essentially. When I started the job hunt, I was filled with a ridiculous amount of anxiety. Would I ever find a job? Am I going to be stuck working minimum wage for the rest of my life? What if my lack of experience dooms me? What if I’m just not meant to be a trainer?

It was a painful week.

I thought I’d be super giddy and happy when I got the job, but this sense of calm passed over me. No more money worries. No more wondering if I’m ever going to find a job. No more feeling uncertain about my future. No more feeling like my mid-20s are supposed to be spent being miserable because the job market isn’t like it was when my parents were my age. My dream job is now a reality.

There’s a song I have in mind. I can’t remember the name of the singer or singer’s band or whatever you want to call it, but the lyrics talk about how the singer wishes he could go back in time to the good old days, when he had nothing to worry about because his mom could make everything better and he wasn’t worrying about student loans.

At first I thought it was stupid. ‘You’re a singer on a mainstream radio,’ I thought. .’What do you know about student loans? What do you have to worry about? You’re probably making bunches of money and have no money worries. And even if you are going to college right now or whatever, I highly doubt you had to take out student loans.’

I then began to understand that it was a song directed toward millennials and millennial struggles. I didn’t feel that struggle until I began to lose hours at my job and then started freaking out about job hunting. Of course, this isn’t a uniquely millennial struggle, but it’s not easy finding even a minimum wage job like it used to be because the job market is so crowded.

Now I’m only speaking STRICTLY about minimum-wage jobs here. All others don’t apply to these bullet points (or they may, but I’m just talking about minimum wage):

• You generally have to apply online, and I have NEVER trusted online applications. I applied to over 40 places back in 2012 and only heard back from two.
• Calling about the status of your job application can be detrimental to your chances of even landing an interview. You would think this would help since it shows your interest in the job.
• The job market is so crowded with people fighting for minimum-wage jobs.
• When you’re applying online, sometimes you have to take those ridiculous personality tests that can kill your chances of even having your application looked at if you don’t pass this test.
• You might have to go through more than one interview to try to land a job that only wants to pay you $7.25 an hour. Sometimes it just doesn’t feel worth the hassle, but you’ve got to keep chugging along.
• Your hours aren’t always guaranteed, so you may have to pick up another job.
• Hoping to get an interview that you may never get. I once applied to Walmart several times and never, ever heard back from them.
• First impressions are everything. I understand why the interview process can be difficult for minimum-wage jobs, especially because they’re probably interviewing a bunch of people, but sometimes you feel like you should be paid more than minimum wage when you have to go through an interview process that feels like you’re applying for med school.
• Some minimum-wage jobs want you to submit a resume. I submitted one to work at a new McDonald’s that was hiring a bunch of people. Never heard back.
• That overqualified thing? It’s not a myth. I was applying for a job at a Japanese restaurant that I was sure I’d land because I had a friend who worked there and was well-liked by her boss. However, once her boss looked over my resume, she asked my friend why on Earth I was applying when I could get better. I’m not too good for a minimum-wage job. And, no, I couldn’t get better at the time because I didn’t–and still don’t–have a degree. I also didn’t have any special certifications in the past. The only solid experience I had was editing and tutoring, but jobs like that generally require a degree.

But hopefully all that’s over with. I hope I’m going to do well with this job, and in a few months, I’ll be a full-time personal trainer.

Seriously, though, I feel like this job was literally handed to me. I walked into the gym, handed in my resume, the manager took a look over it, and immediately recommended fitness consulting to me. All I had to do was show up a few times to check up on my resume. I didn’t receive a formal interview. I just got the job. And I’m assuming they only had one position open because the head trainer there said they were looking for SOMEONE.

That is a great feeling.

The stress can now be over with.

In other words, three poems of mine are featured in an anthology titled Purple Sparks. You can get it here. It’s a number one new release in poetry anthologies! I really hope you guys will check it out. It’s an anthology complied of poems from survivors of sexual abuse. You can check out the book’s website here.

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