the lights are out

i like to think i don't get scared easily.

okay, that's probably the first lie i've told in a very long time. i'll be the first to admit that i'm afraid of everything. spiders, bugs, commitment, the gathering darkness...

also a lie. except for maybe spiders and commitment.

what i'm scared of currently is the fact that outside of my door, all the lights are out. and fuck, it's scary. it's pitch black. i can't see anything. i don't want to leave my place in fear of what could happen in the five second walk down the hall to the stairs. or what would be even worse is if the stairs also had no lights on, and then i would be royally fucked. i barely want to climb those stairs with the lights on, nonetheless off (see: brother slipping and ending up with a bleeding finger).

but still. it's quite strange. and creepy. and scary. so i'm just going to hang out here for awhile until they maybe turn the lights back on.

what's new on the job hunt, you ask?

well, i had an interview last week for a place that sells school uniforms. she seemed to really like me and felt that i would fit in well with the store. the interview lasted quite some time. she even commented on my outfit (new interview clothes for the win!). she told me that she would make a decision on friday but i never heard from her. i suppose it's for good measure. she said that it would be extremely part-time hours for may, june, and july. maybe one or two days a week. and then august would be full time, all the time, as much as i wanted to work. i figured it would sort of be like that; nobody wants to buy school uniforms in may and everybody leaves things till the last minute in august and september. 

but i never heard from her.

i thought i had nailed it. i expected her to call because she was so impressed with me. i felt pretty good walking out of that interview. but nope, nothing. and i didn't want the job badly enough to call her. but i mean, she DID say she was going to call ME. and i suppose that counts for something.

one of the best things about being unemployed (or rather, employed but have yet to start? apparently i'm supposed to start the event place in june... we'll see about that) is all the time you get to yourself to do the things you want to do. like, for instance, i'm pretty aware that winter hibernation (and my roommate's mac and cheese) made me gain some weight. nothing too significant (friends are saying i look better) but i'm starting to notice and that bothers me. hey, don't get me wrong. i love myself and my body. i just always have the determination to make it how i want it to be.

i started a workout regime this week as for the last few months, i've been extremely lazy. it just involves going for long walks of 40+ minutes 3-4 times a week and a series of at-home exercises including push ups, stretches, sit ups, other ab workouts, yoga and tai chi poses, and a bunch of other things i can do around the apartment, like invisible chair competitions with myself (and charles the mouse when he comes out to play). i've also been doing a lot of in-my-room dancing routines i've taught myself off youtube to get ready for pride in june. i did this and this back in my undergrad for rez events and they were so much fun. i can't wait to get back up on stage again.

i've also started to do the other healthy things i never had much time for or was too lazy to do like floss (the dentist is coming up soon), buy/cook some healthy meals, try to cut back on my drinking (both for my body and for my wallet right now) and sit outside in the sun to get a tan. i've been reading the ground truth because all that 9/11 stuff interests me greatly. next up will be climate wars, a book i've always wanted to read since my undergrad, and that should be by next week or so.

and y'know, the usual of hanging out with friends, playing video games (i'm working through ocarina of time.. god damn water temple), and watching countless hours of tv and movies when i'm that bored.

ganon is so scary.

i guess the unemployed life is not so bad. if only making money wasn't a major issue.

life stories for minimum wage

i have applied for 32 jobs in the past month. i have one interview on monday for steamwhistle.

about four years ago, i was dating this dude who, at the time, was much older than me -- like, 6 or 7 years older. when you're 20 dating a 26/27 year old, you tend to get some strange ideas about life. or maybe it was just the dude himself. he had a job working for a call centre. the pay was steady. he had his own car. he could afford things. but he still lived at home and he didn't quite see a need for 'advancement' or 'promotion' in his work or personal life just yet. there were many reasons as to why we never lasted, but i'm not about to get into those now.

during that summer, we had a tendency to go to many parties. i also felt weird bringing my much older boyfriend to parties and pub outings with my friends as we were all early 20s and many of my friends could never see eye to eye with the dude on any level. i also had this problem on several occasions. but yes, not to get into that. i figured he would have the same problem when he brought me to parties with his friends. and yet, this would never be the case.

at one party in particular, we showed up sort of late and the majority of everyone was already wasted. there was a bonfire in the backyard. nobody looked like they were drinking heavily. inside, people were talking music and i remember being a part of the conversation. the inside folk didn't seem too much more 'mature' or 'adult' than me at 20 years old and it made me feel better about myself. when i adventured outside, i conversed with 4 or 5 girls about nothing specific until one of them asked me a question i had only heard in tv shows/movies: "so, amber, what do you do?" 

i wish there would have been some kind of visual interpretation of my mind going a mile a minute (or rather, this as being more appropriate) as i tried to figure out how to respond to the question. here i was, talking to a bunch of people older than me with these grown up jobs and careers in industries that i definitely did not want to be a part of later in life. i felt as if i told them i was finishing up school to get my bachelor's degree in tourism and environment, i would be totally out of place and shunned for my attempts at higher education. i already knew that most of these people at the party had never went on to post-secondary education.

i'm positive that by the time i answered this question, like 3 solid minutes of silence (i.e., thinking, collectively attributed to my state of drunk at the time) had gone by before i told them that i worked in a library. i could sense sighs of relief from these girls as a couple of them asked me follow up questions of what i do/which library and so on, which i of course had no problem answering.

ever since that fateful night, i've never been asked that dreaded question again. yes, i now hold in my hands a bachelor's degree and in 3 weeks, i'll have a post-graduate certificate. next september, i'll likely be heading back to school for another post-graduate certificate -- because i just can't land a job. many of the parties i've been to in the last year were filled with people just like me: students, undergraduate or graduate, or recent graduates trying to find a job/career.

the job market still sucks. i've applied to everything and everyone for practically anything where i meet some or all of the requirements. and i can't even get a callback for an interview, minus the one for steamwhistle next week.

so maybe the "what do you do?" question is on it's way out -- an obsolete question to ask people in a post-recession era whether you've had a job or career in the past. perhaps a better question to ask would be "how's the job search going?" or "how's the job market treating you?" or "are you in school?"

at lease these questions are a bit more open ended and specific so this way, when you try to tell people that you're a recent graduate who's unemployed and can't find a job in this job market/recession, they won't look at you like you're a crazy son of a bitch.

but hey -- does that not describe like 95% of all recent graduates right now?

money money money

free money is a glorious thing.

with all the talk about the recent tuition grants put forth by the government and terrible advertising such as this particular video, i was upset and frustrated to find out that i'm ineligible for the grant. but, who's eligible for the grant? 

well, if you are dependent on your parents, your parents make less than $160,000, you are in good academic standing, and you're from ontario. who's ineligible? everyone listed here and over 500,000 post-secondary students across ontario. grad students, part-time students, international students, law, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, optometry, and education students are all shit out of of luck on this tuition grant.

yeah. i graduated high school in 2006. it's now 2012. i would hope that i wouldn't be dependent on my parents by now. but, here's where OSAP fucked me over -- i didn't work in high school, in fact, i didn't have my first job until 2007. i had applied for OSAP in my first year of my undergrad and my parents 'made too much money'. and even though i was living on residence and had zero moneys for anything, they gave me just under $2,000 that year. my parents at the time were supporting 2 children for post-secondary education and were definitely not making 'too much' money to support their children and live a comfortable life.

i didn't bother applying for 2007/2008. i had made almost enough working during the summer (back when minimum wage was $8.25) to afford the costs of my tuition but no where close to my residence fees. i worked during this year and saved up some money. in the summer of 2008, i couldn't land a well-paying job and only occasionally worked weekends at a camp on call for 2 months. so i had applied to OSAP for 2008/2009. this time, they gave me just over $2,000. again, not nearly enough to cover tuition or residence fees. i didn't have that much money in the bank, but i was now working just under 20 hours a week during the school year. my parents didn't make that much money, in fact, they made even less that year, and they still had to support 2 children in post-secondary education.

i had a part-time job during the summer of 2009 and a full-time job for just over a month. my bank account was starting to grow. in 2009/2010, OSAP decided to be sort of nice to me since i had stayed in school and used them twice before. i was living at home for first semester and working up to 20 hours again. my second semester was studying abroad and OSAP gave me just over $5,000. that was enough to cover tuition; but not the $10,000 extra and spending money to study abroad. i also received a bursary for going away -- but i think it was $200. maybe it was $500. i don't really remember. it's a good thing i had saved up quite a bit of money to reward myself with going away even during the recession.

upon return from my adventures of studying in new zealand, i picked up a job that guaranteed me full-time/overtime hours in the peak of summer. i was making a shit ton of money and living at home. i had 3.5 credits remaining in order to graduate in 2010/2011. 3.5 credits was still considered a full course load and i could have applied for OSAP, but i refused. they would have given me more money this time for sure as i was now independent of my parents, but still living at home for the year. i told OSAP to fuck off for the year and enjoyed my shit ton of money saved from the summer/whatever was left from paying a smaller tuition for not that many credits and sailed in spending money from my 20 hours a week part-time job.

2011/2012, i began my postgrad living in toronto, completely independent of my parents and making something ridiculous like less than $2,000 over the course of the summer. OSAP was my only option; and they gave me less than $12,000 to help with tuition, books, rent, and food. it was a great thing that i saved up practically all the money i made from the previous year working and kept my expenses to a minimum. i paid my full first semester tuition in june without any help from OSAP yet as my funding had yet to be released until september. OSAP helped with the second semester tuition and has been covering my rent most months.

i guess the most exciting thing about applying for OSAP are the surprises you never know about, such as the textbook and technology grant of $150. yep, sent to me almost by the time first semester had ended, it kept me drunk and fed for a few days. or for instance, the email i just received from seneca, telling me that i was selected as the recipient for the ontario student access guarantee bursary. how and why i'm still sort of confused about.. but an extra $800 will help me with next month's rent for sure. i don't remember filling in any application for something like this. i really hope it's not a mistake.

and hey, is that a GST cheque i see in my bank account already?

2012, you're starting to redeem yourself already.