Brief Update

Few things have changed in my life, therefore little impetus for me to update here, or on any other site that I frequent.

I've now made myself more marketable on the job sites because I'm bilingual.  I get a few more calls for jobs since that addition to my resume.  Like when I apply to 50+ applications per week I get two call backs instead of one.

Since the job market is still flatlining despite the stimuli bills, I'm resuming classes at at local community college in a counseling certificate.

And November is sort of just around the corner so I will be participating in the mayhem of NaNoWriMo 2010.

I've got a few plot ideas up my sleeve:

NaNo participant discovers that when she thinks about writing her novel and enters into deep imagination she is transported into it; she does not lose time present day.  But will she choose the imaginary world where she can control everything to the extent its like a fairytale, or will she simply write her novel and continue with daily life?

Re-write KH: KH travels to a rural town, flees actually.  She’s trying to expunge her memory and just start over again. But supernatural remnants of her past crop up and make it even more difficult for her to create a new life in a town that is hostile to newcomers and is trying its best to expel her.

Re-write NaNo 09. 

Yo Entiendo

Me encuentado (sp?) las citaciones de Mateo sobre dos semanas pasadas y me los gustan (es correcto?).

I don't speak spanish very well at all, I guess that's why I'm taking a class for it this summer. I can read it though, so if you want to leave comments in spanish, be my guest! = o) It helps me a lot when I have a spanish speaking customer at the store, because I can kind of direct them to the crafts, floral, fabrics &c.; or I can tell them how to exchange an item. I can understand if it's written or spoken to me; I repeat it because I get some incredulous looks from people. I think it is very easy to understand a language from just reading it or listening to it, but if you don't speak it often, there's little chance of maintaining the quality of your speech.

I did find the verses from Matthew about 2 weeks ago while I was looking at some other verses related to some family drama that occurred in May and has continued to upset my Gramma. I really like the verse, it tells me that celibacy isn't extraordinarily abnormal, but is normal if it's not out of fear or disgust of sexuality, family, or relationships.

Hay nadia mas. = o)

An update

I just had a post disappear. That's something new for me here on Blogspot, although I've had it occur at Xanga.

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Psychology was on my mind a lot yesterday. I keep interviewing with psychology oriented field recruiters: LCSWs. PhD, MFTs, etc. I can't help but feel that they are psyching me out, and all the while I'm trying to psych them out. Make sense? That's more along the lines of funny and awkward, whereas, each encounter always wants to know if I've ever had to handle a crisis situation, and the only one that I was proactive with was Rachel/Hershey.

Thinking about Rachel invariably brings back the months after I left the Local Church. Rachel's situation was entangled with mine, with me being the main contact point and friend for Rachel, and later she became my pathway into more negativity than I had cause to lead myself into. For as messed up as the two of us were together, we helped each other as well. I can only see Rachel as the only "crisis" I've ever had to handle, because I certainly did not handle myself. Some of you here on Xanga, certainly did so for me. I'm probably your "crisis"? Albeit, it was over the internet and those who remember were at least a couple 1,000 miles away.

Therefore I've been too introspective the last few days, in such a way that yesterday when I had spanish class I had trouble switching gears, and everything was a giggle fest. A girl/woman I like talking to in the class, Debra, told me my face had flushed as well. The spanish reflexives were giving me trouble, and I was thinking all the while how I would write my brief personal history and self description for the job application to the internship I interviewed for on Tuesday.

The internship is with a group called Outreach Concern, Inc., which puts interns like myself into an elementary or high school setting where I would see kids during an 8:30 am to 2:30 pm school day and counsel them. Then I would have a support team of other interns was well as an on-site supervisor and a weekly meeting with a clinician to make sure I'm not doing anything drastically wrong. I have agreed to do one day per week (Fridays) at a hopefully Catholic school in Long Beach near Cal State Dominguez Hills. The field recruiter asked if I had any problems working at a Catholic school (my medals of St Benedict & the Blessed Virgin were hidden beneath my blouse for the sake of Equal Opportunity Employment) and I said no. He said that the Sister (he said Nun, but we know that's the wrong term!) was "very proper and set in her ways. I smiled and said that would not be a problem at all. Personally I wonder what order she is, and if I've met her at the Vocation retreat in late January, or if I've sent her community a vocation letter yet. LOL Outreach is non-profit, and the reason they are available at Catholic schools is because they were recently taken under the wing of Cardinal Mahoney's Catholic Charities. (Why do I keep interviewing with people under the Mahoney's pet projects??) Nonetheless, I am looking forward to working with Outreach.

I'm going to post the personal history blurb I've written in Protected, and maybe some of you can give me pointers/proofread? I've tried to think of how to say that I've never be in material need, but I have struggled with my own issues and conflicts, to perhaps show that I can relate to the kids I'll be counseling. I also have to have a self-description which I'll put in the same Protected post.

JoAnn's is going nowhere. At Old Navy, I was trained to do everything, and at JoAnn's that translates to job responsibilities that are at the managerial level (ie, returns, exchanges, crediting credit cards, etc). Yet, I'm relinquished to the level of the baby, and cannot do returns. Excuse my momentary frustration, at being realy cheap hire for them. I'm a college graduate and I don't get paid more than 8 bucks an hour, gotta be kidding me! They haven't had me work since Sunday. I'm available for immediate hire, and they hired me, but they won't put me to work. I thought people get hired because the company needs someone to be working for them soon, to fill a void. Yet, I don't have a single day scheduled?!? Tell me, please, am I off-base here?

In the meantime, I am still looking for other jobs and also need to find time to get fingerprinted, again, for Outreach. The Attorney General's office, like any other bureaucratic system is too tangled for me to just request a transfer form to send the fingerprint scan results from Didi Hirsch over to Outreach Concern. Grr. It is just much easier to avoid the bureaucracy and just get fingerprinted all over again. LiveScan is kinda cool, though.

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Box.net has been updated, so you can see all the things I've written, although they are just undergraduate research papers. Some are on assigned topics, others were chosen by me.

Got a job at Jo~Ann's craft store as a cashier. not thrilled. Will update when Xanga behaves properly and lets me log in.

Corrected: Box.net logo now has my papers and stuff available to the public. Sorry about the confusion earlier.

jobless & God

Forget intellectual post.

In school I was able to build up a routine of prayer between my class lecture hours, the extracirricular activities, and study periods. Graduation took away that schedule, and I spend all day, ALL day mind you, looking for jobs. If I'm not online actively looking or driving out to an interview, I'm nagged by my parents for why I'm not looking for a job. Well, let's see: I've been looking since April. It is now the middle of June. If I were to have a job, wouldn't I be having one by now, especially since its the only way for me to pay for graduate school? Mommy & daddy aint gonna pay for me. This university and these two degrees have done nothing but close doors in my face!

I've tried to set up a schedule of prayer and Bible reading for myself. I would like to do it everyday, but because I need to get up early, in order to get the prayers and job hunt done in the same 24 hour period, it's only every other day (MWF). I get up at 5:20am, pray the Rosary, read some psalms, & pray the Angelic Chaplet. Then in the evening I re-read the psalms and note/scribble in a notebook. Sometimes it's prayer, other times its frustrated questions.

I had what I would call a "Samuel Moment" Tuesday evening (~3 AM). It's frustrating to have that sense to just walk out on your life, and ask God "but WHERE do I go?!?"

Requested a Spiritual Director

I have put in the request for a spiritual director both here at home, and done at my alma mater in Los Angeles. Why both? Because I'm making no progress here at home with my spiritual life, and if I do get re-accepted to my alma mater for graduate school, I will need a director near campus. There is a good chance that my spiritual director here at home will be a sister from the Daughters of Mary & Joseph. I knew Sister briefly, back when I still was close enough to a teenager to help with the teen activities; she would come over for dinner with the teens and help me and the adults. Her community is getting older, and smaller as the older sisters pass away. It's sad, really.

Still job hunting, but I have an interview tomorrow at 9am, down in Los Angeles. in the meantime I am still applying for jobs, which means being online. I went online on Saturday to post my resume and apply for jobs; I got kicked off the server twice. Yesterday mom was online, for about 2 hours, and she got barely anything done. Sometimes it can take more than a few minutes for a page to load. Today, though things are faster.

One good thing about college, and saving nearly everything from notebooks to recommended resources, is that when you can no longer find them online, I can find them under the bed or crammed into the book shelf. I found the packet of volunteer sites, which was no longer listed at the university's psychology department webpage. The bad thing is that I'm running out of room in my bookshelf, and my text books are so heavy that the shelves sag. That's not good is it?

Have I read your comments? Yes! I decided to stop drifting as Sr. Rita told me not to do back in January/February over the phone. Since then I have been drifting, as you've clearly seen from my most recent posts. I don't like drifting, but I also don't like making choices until I'm absolutely certain that I'm doing the right thing. . . . makes discernment a difficult process, this needing to be sure beyond all doubt. So, as the first paragraph says, I have asked for a spiritual director, and I will likely have Sister's phone number by the end of this week. In fact, I might not have to wait for R. to send it to me, when I have a booklet of I don't know how many religious orders, and I know that I've seen the DMJ in it.

In the mean time, I am job hunting, as I have already said above. But I am also sewing. I've finished one table topper, and about to finish another. The one that is done is in black and bright colors so that the red, yellow, blue and green stand out. I manipulated the color placement on the fifty-forty block so that it looks like tulips, or flowers. I'll probably sell it online as mom doesn't like dark colors at all. . . .

Anyway, back to the job hunt.