Silver Linings, Or Why At Times I Think This Job Search Maybe Isn't So Bad & I Lose The Feeling of Overwhelming Impotence

• My aversion to cover letters is gone. The aversion started as a thorny little seedling. But as my job search progressed it grew and started to loom over me, a large, dark gray specter with a scaly coat of violet-y iridescence. As I gained the confidence to meet its direct gaze I dropped my intention to battle it, and then to negotiate with it, and I saw that it began to shrink, and shrink, until it was small enough to put it my back pocket until I could dispose of it in the nearest black hole. Actually, that's not true. I probably won't be able to cease cover letter writing for an estimated 15 to 20 years. So, until then I've accepted the aversion into my life. I've allowed it to sit right beside me in harmonious diplomacy. Now, we be tight.

• I am very well rested these days.
  

• I finally enjoy preparing a meal: breakfast. The days of quickly slamming a Slim-Fast and mainlining coffee are over. For now. It is with anticipation that I throw off the covers in the morning and throw on workout clothes to greet a brand new day in the kitchen. I almost sound like a converted morning person. Ha ha. All I need to consult is the whim of my mood. Shall it be a spinach omelette today? A mushroom frittata? Chilaquiles? Potatoes, or toast, or get all crazy with the Cheese Whiz* and prepare both? Green peppers? Red? Oh glorious breakfast! How I look forward to greeting you in the morning!

• Sanity walks** at any hour of the day.

• A thriving, intimate, and satisfying relationship with Facebook.

• Have you ever learned how to speed read? To latch onto key words to catch the gist of the text? I can do that now with job descriptions. And I've gotten so good that I actually get a little rumble in my gut if it's an appropriate job to apply to. I've unwittingly downloaded job speak lingo onto my mental hard drive, which has allowed me to compose cover letters that read like nothing I would have ever written just five months ago. Got any cover letters for me to write? $10 a pop.

• Unfettered reading. This has led to a quiet obsession with Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a headlong immersion into all matters foreign-affairs related, additions to my own personal self-help library, and warmly embraced detective thrillers about killers and sadists...which...lead me back to the self-help library.
  

• The ability to sip a mocha at a local cafe, at any hour of the day, stationed if possible in a sun spot like a cat, pondering the inane and the not so inane, and allowing myself to be open to tiny epiphanic moments about the past, present, and future.

• A stark understanding that the underpinning of true independence, and the contentedness that it brings, is financial security. But really, truly, absorbing this epiphanic thought and allowing it to make it's way from my frontal lobe so that it seeps into my DNA for some re-wiring. As the famous poet Carl Sandburg once said:

  "Money is power, freedom, a cushion, the root of all evil, the sum of blessings."

*From the Urban Dictionary: "a phrase that describes the extremely crazy or eager antics of a person. Or how into the topic or action a person is."

**Sanity walks: walks taken to deliberately remove excess stress and tension from one's person, and stimulate breathing so as to flow much-needed oxygen to the brain (resulting at times in zen-like reveries) and reverting said person to a state of mental stability.

Gabi