Quick Update

Whoops - forgot to blog for awhile! Just a few quick updates before I go to class.

We're getting settled in to the new place. It really feels like home. We've had some friends and family members over, and everyone has ooooed and ahhhhhed over it and made us feel great about our choice. All that's left to do is paint the second bedroom, which can't be done until Charlie finishes our furniture piece.

After a month of not getting any job interviews, I finally have one for November 16th. I'll let you know how it goes, but no details until then - don't want to jinx it.

I've started receiving unemployment benefits, which help but are nowhere near what I need to survive for the long term. I'm diversifying my job-hunting strategy to include more informational interviews with organizations that don't necessarily have vacancies posted. I have one of these interviews scheduled for tomorrow morning, which I'm really excited about.

For a teeny bit of extra income, a friend suggested that I register with market research firms, which often offer paid focus group opportunities. Get paid to give my opinion on trivial consumer goods? Count me in! I got a sweet gig recently that pays $150 for setting up a blog on which I posted three entries - one describing myself, one giving my opinions of seven different brands, and one describing how I used/use/will use technology in the past, present, and future. I also got chosen to do a follow-up interview with this company, for which they will be paying me another $200. I could get used to this...

I'm almost finished with school, thank god. Just three more weeks to go and my courses will be over. January through June I'll be working independently on my final project, and then I'll officially have a Masters degree.

More later!

Home Sweet Home

We've completely moved into the new place now. We closed on Friday and went straight to pick up the rental car to start moving our stuff in and begin the painting party. By painting party, I mean that we convinced our friends Shaun and Julia to spend approximately 20 hours helping us paint our walls. Additionally, we commissioned our friend Charles to make a custom piece of furniture - a combined bar-bookshelf - for us. He worked in our second bedroom all day, measuring and sawing and making a beautiful piece exactly how we wanted it. We started prepping the walls for paint at about noon and finished for the day at midnight.

The next morning, the movers came at 8:00 AM and loaded up their truck with the rest of our stuff. Shaun and Julia met us at the new place to finish the painting. We wrapped up by dinnertime and went out for Thai food while the paint dried. We then ceremoniously peeled off the painter's tape to unveil the gorgeous colors with crisp edges. We broke open the champagne our realtor gave us and sat back to admire our work.

Some observations thus far:

• The previous owner of our place did a crappy job painting, so her colors are still encroaching on our baseboards.
• Speaking of baseboards, they need a lot of work. The previous owner never touched them, except with her paintbrush.
  
• The upstairs neighbors have at least one small child.
• The across the hall neighbors have a dog - quite a large one from the sounds of it.
• We are fantastic at picking paint colors - our place feels incredibly warm and comfy now.
• A two bedroom apartment, relatively speaking, is enormous.
• Our furniture looks much smaller and shabbier than it did two days ago.

I'm currently sitting by the living rooms windows, sipping my coffee, listening to NPR, and feeling wonderfully at home. I can't wait until we get unpacked and establish our flow. I love this place so much.

Pictures coming soon! And a date for a housewarming party, too!

Skool

I stumbled upon this website while searching for examples of nonprofit ad campaigns to bring to class on Wednesday: http://osocio.org.

I'm definitely learning more from this site than from my Marketing for Nonprofits class. Some of these campaigns are freakin' brilliant.

Navigating the Hours without a Job

It sucks to be laid off, but here are some things I’ve been doing that decidedly lessen the suckiness of being without a job and help me wade through each day like a halfway normal human being.

First and foremost, I applied for unemployment insurance the first day I was officially unemployed.

I make myself get up before 10 AM. It just feels better in the long run – even for night owls like me.

I get dressed every single day by noon, even if there doesn’t seem to be any reason to get out of my pajamas. I can’t tell you how embarrassing it is when Brad returns after work to find me in exactly the same clothing and in the same position as when he left me that morning. There’s something about putting on jeans that makes the day seem more real.

I go outside for at least 20 minutes every day. When it’s too cold to stay outside that long (if I don’t have a job yet), I’m still going to get out of the house as much as possible – and find places to go that don’t necessitate spending money. Coffee shops are nice and all, but you have to at least buy a cup of coffee to enjoy their benefit.

A secondary goal of mine is to not buy coffee at all while I’m unemployed. I’ve got beans, a grinder, and a French press right here at home and no income to justify paying someone to brew my coffee for me.

I’ve also increased the amount of time I spend with other people. It’s incredibly depressing to be alone day after day. You almost can’t help but feel like a failure for not having found a job yet. Friends and family can distract you from all that negativity and just make you feel loved. Plus, virtually everyone nowadays knows someone else who’s out of work. Those stories of people in similar situations help me feel more normal.

Another thing I’ve done is adopt a “work” schedule that’s similar to Brad’s (though my “workdays” are not nearly as long as his). When he comes home from a long day’s work, he wants to play or relax. If I’ve also been working hard on something all day, I deserve to join him. If, however, I’ve spent the day in my pajamas watching movies and snacking while he was at work, I really shouldn’t be playing or relaxing with him once he’s off. I've also adopted his weekends, which vary from week to week and are almost never Saturday and Sunday.

I use TV, facebook, and to some extent food, as rewards for specific accomplishments - school work, work for Chicago Friends School, job applications, etc.

I do not drink alone. Alcohol does not cure misery. Drinking with friends, however, is perfectly acceptable.

I do all of the housework now. I make the bed every day, do the laundry, wash the dishes, straighten up the place, and am contemplating cooking entire meals to have ready for Brad when he gets home. Those immediately visible accomplishments make me feel like I did something worthwhile. And, at least in my own mind, I feel like it makes Brad happier that I’m home all day. By the way, this advice applies to all genders – I’m not being anti-feminist here.

Now, about that pesky job search... I apply for at least three jobs per week. It’s incredibly annoying, and I hate writing cover letters, but you can’t possibly get a job without applying for one.

I’ve established a routine for checking job listings and tracking my progress with those I apply for. I have an RSS feed for idealist.org listings, and I also check npo.net every single day. I copy and save the jobs I want to apply for in a Word document so I don’t have to go back and search for them once I'm ready to apply. I keep track of my applications in an Excel file with the name of each position, the contact person, the date I submitted the application, and the status of the application.

Here are my stats so far:
Applications: 18
Interviews: 3
Rejections: 7
Still Open: 11


So that’s how I’m surviving my joblessness. Honestly, I was kind of looking forward to having more free time on my hands, but with all the job applications, school work, housework, volunteer board work, and seeing friends, I'm almost busier than when I was working. I think that's a good thing.

Feel free to add your own tips in the comment section!

Chicago Friends School

My new full-time, albeit unpaid, job is being the chair of the fundraising committee for the Chicago Friends School. Until last week when my friend Abbey joined, I was also the only member of said committee. Given that we need to raise about $50,000 before next Fall, I think it's safe to say that I am taking this job very seriously.

Check out our website. If you like what you see and would like to contribute, you can go here and donate through facebook. Donating through facebook means other people will see that you support the school and might want to do the same. You don't have to have a facebook account to do this, by the way.

Chicago desperately needs safe schools that promote peace, simplicity, integrity, community, and equality - just what Chicago Friends School wants to do. Thanks for any support you can give us! And please pass the word around to others who might be interested.

Keys

As I rode the elevator up to the 19th floor of my building tonight, I got my keys out preparing to enter my apartment. I realized that every single key will be gone from my keychain in less than a month.

Keys to the building, the apartment, the mail, the storage space...
Keys to Grace Place and the AFSC office where I work...

Some will be replaced with shiny new ones, others may not. It's a sign of the times, my friends.

Fargo trivia

If you try to click on the link I posted for our new place (in the blog entry below titled "1522 W Fargo"), you will no longer be able to see the photos. It's disappeared from all the listing sites, even the MLS. Wahoo!

Another fun bit of trivia about our new place is that the seller is a senior editor for TimeOut Chicago, a very cool magazine. She has excellent books on her shelves, and she's a travel buff, too. If she didn't hate us for squeezing almost $20,000 extra dollars out of her, I'd say we could be friends.

Cacti and other aggressive flora

Check out the pictures from our Arizona trip here!

Guaranteed Rape Prevention Tips

Those emails that always circulate about steps women can take to protect themselves from rapists are all well and good. I follow a lot of those tips myself. But check out these, which, if followed, are 100% guaranteed to work.

Thanks to these ladies for compiling the lists: Kat O'Leary and FeminAlly.

From Kat O'Leary:

• If a woman is drunk, don’t rape her.
• If a woman is walking alone at night, don’t rape her.
• If a woman is drugged and unconscious, don’t rape her.
• If a woman is wearing a short skirt, don’t rape her.
• If a woman is jogging in a park at 5 am, don’t rape her.
• If a woman looks like your ex-girlfriend you’re still hung up on, don’t rape her.
• If a woman is asleep in her bed, don’t rape her.
• If a woman is asleep in your bed, don’t rape her.
• If a woman is doing her laundry, don’t rape her.
• If a woman is in a coma, don’t rape her.
• If a woman changes her mind in the middle of or about a particular activity, don’t rape her.
• If a woman has repeatedly refused a certain activity, don’t rape her.
• If a woman is not yet a woman, but a child, don’t rape her.
• If your girlfriend or wife is not in the mood, don’t rape her.
• If your step-daughter is watching TV, don’t rape her.
• If you break into a house and find a woman there, don’t rape her.
• If your friend thinks it’s okay to rape someone, tell him it’s not, and that he’s not your friend.
• If your “friend” tells you he raped someone, report him to the police.
• If your frat-brother or another guy at the party tells you there’s an unconscious woman upstairs and it’s your turn, don’t rape her, call the police and tell the guy he’s a rapist.
• Tell your sons, god-sons, nephews, grandsons, sons of friends it’s not okay to rape someone.
• Don’t tell your women friends how to be safe and avoid rape.
• Don’t imply that she could have avoided it if she’d only done/not done x.
• Don’t imply that it’s in any way her fault.
• Don’t let silence imply agreement when someone tells you he “got some” with the drunk girl.

From FeminAlly:

• Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.
• When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!
• If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!
• NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.
• If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM!
• Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.
• USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.
• Always be honest with people! Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.
• Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!
• Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone “on accident” you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.
• And, ALWAYS REMEMBER: if you didn’t ask permission and then respect the answer the first time, you are committing a crime- no matter how “into it” others appear to be.

Inane debate

The "is it racist?" debate swirling around the teabagger protests is annoying the shit out of me.

CNN and others like them get talking heads arguing about whether the teabaggers are racist, whether they are actually dissatisfied with Obama's policies, or whether they're dissatisfied with the policies because they're racist. To be sure, there are teabaggers in each of these camps.

But the thing I think is missing from the discussion is that racism is being used mainly as a tactic. We don't have to pick whether we think the teabaggers are just plain racist or if they have valid reasons for their disagreement with Obama. It's not a black-white situation (if you will).

The racist signs and slogans we've all seen are part of the rhetoric. Opponents of Obama are trying to build the movement against him however they can. Racism gets at people's basest emotions, and sometimes it works without folks ever even realizing that their own deep-seated racism is what drew them into the teabaggers' domain. When people see images comparing Obama to animals in the zoo or "witch doctors" in traditional African garb, subconscious fears are triggered, and the potential for persuasion is increased. It's Psychology 101 and the basic idea behind most marketing campaigns.

It really doesn't matter whether the protests are fueled by racism, as CNN keeps trying to determine. What matters is that clear themes of racism are present in the arguments against Obama, and racism is wrong. Period.

Movement building - however ludicrous or noble the cause - is all about convincing the most people possible to agree with you and take action. That people are organizing against Obama is fine. Plenty of people organized against Bush and it was great (I was certainly one of them). It's the tactics that matter, and ultimately, if this anti-Obama movement doesn't strike a chord with the majority of people in this country, it won't succeed. That's the case with all movements - and I should know, I've been involved in several that are unsuccessful as of yet.

Let's just all keep racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, and all the other -isms out of our movements, okay?