The Ridiculous City I live in…

Is located just outside of Sacramento and is the home of the UC Aggies. I live in Davis, CA. A city with a large educated population surrounded by farming communities, it’s a little bit of blue in a sea of red, its greatest flaw though is the the complete lack of culture. There are a few art galleries in town, it doesn’t seem that anyone visits them though and the art in them is often, in my humble opinion, not worth  sharing with friends or family.  The hottest spot in town appears to be the place I’m working a Borders Superstore. That is correct, when people are looking for something to do when they are planning a night out on the town, somehow they decide that no night will be complete without stopping by a bookstore?! Inconceivable!?

Anyway to get to the point I’m trying to make in this post. California is being rained on, you might have seen it in the news. At times the rain is accompanied by 30-50 mph gusts of wind. So yesterday part of the city lost power. Apparently some of them will be without power for a couple of days. Somehow, Borders got listed as the nearest shelter for people without power?! The store all day yesterday was full of people, not buying anything. All they wanted to do was trash the store and make my miserable job more so. I barely get paid enough to care about how the store looks, I certainly don’t get paid enough to listen to the pussies who live in this town “sob” stories. Especially considering the fact that they don’t have a sob story. This isn’t New Orleans folks, you lost your power that’s it. The greatest moment for me had to be when we asked people to stop sitting and laying on the floor because it was becoming a safety issue. A women felt it was in her rights to talk to our manager so that she could complain to corporate. Why? She was being harassed by the employees of Borders. She and her 6 children were just sitting there on the floor blocking a major avenue of the store, and they were politely asked to stand up?! The Humanity! She then informed us that “There are children without power, WITHOUT power! Davis is facing a real crisis”. I had to bite my tongue and walk away at this point. Else I would have told her to shut up, that a power outage was not a crisis, it was the norm for the majority of humans in the world today and that she had no right to bitch or moan about anything… Second best moment was the two teenage girls begging to use our outlets to recharge their Ipods, they were almost in tears when we said “no”…

Note to self righteous prigs in Davis, CA – You don’t get to be pretentious unless you have a damn good reason for being so, living in Davis does not, I repeat, does not justify your attitude. You are a nobody living in a no name place. Get over yourself.

P.S. I hate you!

Thoughts on Productivity

I’ve read David Allen’s book, I regularly visit Merlin Mann’s site 43 folders, as well as a long list of other sites. I use the hipster pda and a PIM. I am no stranger to the ideas and concepts that various productivity gurus advocate in their book, on their website, and in interviews. Understanding how I process and control information isn’t something I have a problem with. All of that is easy enough and I think I’ve been able to increase my productivity through applying these concepts in my life.

All of the above is not the problem for me.

It’s time and drive.

These are the issues that defeat me every time I attempt to re-organize my life. I’ve tried taking big steps. I’ve tried taking baby steps. The end is the same. Despite all my organization, info capturing techniques, etc, etc. It all falls apart because I can’t manage my load. Or when I am somehow organizing it I’m so burned out from doing so that I have no desire to work on the projects that do interest me. The things I want to do get pushed aside by the actually planning of them.

I want to do things. My list of projects is only getting bigger and I feel the ideas that I’m putting down are getting better. But that’s as far as it goes. Looking at the list now is daunting. I’m afraid to even begin tackling it. What is it that is preventing me from making actual progress? Why can’t I shape the time I have available to me? Why is it that my free time is filled with me loafing about always?

What is stopping me? What am I afraid of?

Job Hunt… never ends…

*Le Sigh*

I spent the morning tweaking my Resume and creating a generic cover letter (or 2, or 3, or… you get the idea). Why am I doing this? I can’t work as a book seller at Borders forever, well not without killing myself and several others . After cleaning my paperwork up, I started looking for internships and jobs through UCD’s Internship and Career center website. The site is a byzantine network that I had troubles navigating through, eventually though I got to the search section. After an hour of searching 2 things were painfully obvious to me. One: My degree will not help me find a job in any way, shape, or form. Two: There aren’t a lot of jobs out there of what I want to do. Number two is the real issue. I don’t know what I really want to do with my life, I only have the most amorphous sense of what I want to accomplish in this life. I found a listing for an editorial internship at Prima, I sent them a resume and cover letter. I also shot one off to Ziff Davis Media Inc. I worry I will never hear back from either one. I tried calling Ziff today and their phone system doesn’t give you an operator …ever. I know they’ll be asking for interns again, but it won’t be till the beginning of next year, can I wait that long?

I’m not holding my breath. Guess I should stop wasting time and study for the GRE and LSAT. Though, if I do take them and do well and get into Grad or Law school, will I be any better off than I am now? I still won’t know what I’m suppose to want to do here, I’ll only be delaying the inevitable.

Enough with the depressing soul searching.

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