This past weekend I had the opportunity to partake in one of my all-time favorite summer-in-NYC activities: walking over the Brooklyn Bridge.
The Brooklyn Bridge is awesome! It's the perfect Goldilocks-approved distance - not too long, not too short. It's pretty. It has nice views. It takes you from Brooklyn to Manhattan. And vice versa! I love it, especially when the weather is nice, and I will go out of my way to walk over it if I have the time.
When I walked over the bridge on Sunday it was particularly hot out, and I was running particularly ahead of schedule, so when I got to one of the nice shady pylon areas, I stopped. I leaned against the railing and I watched the traffic and stared at lower Manhattan while enjoying the breeze.
All around me, people took pictures. Of Brooklyn. Of Manhattan. Of the bridge. Of the water. Of the ferries. Of each other.
I did not take any pictures.
I didn't take any pictures because I didn't feel like rifling through my purse for my phone. I was also just enjoying the fact that I was doing nothing, standing there listening to my new obsession, The Floozies, and looking at stuff.
Even when I saw this cool Tetris-y building, which I swear I had somehow never seen (though how could I have missed it all these years?), I didn't take a picture.
(I'm thinking that perhaps I hallucinated this building because I cannot for the life of me find a picture of it but I assure you, it's a white building with geometric lines drawn on it and I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP).
I'm certainly not the first to say this and I know I won't be the last, but it is utterly insane how obligated we feel to document Every. Little. Thing. As if people, landscapes, experiences, and life itself cease to exist if we don't Kodak the shit out of the moment. So even though I am totally guilty of taking pictures all the time, and even though I was standing on the bridge thinking about how I wasn't taking any pictures and is thinking about not taking pictures really any better than just taking a damn picture already, I somehow feel a little better about not taking a photo.
After all, how many times have you looked back on a picture you've taken - of a touristy site, a sunset, or something else that you thought was so beautiful or majestic - and thought, "Wow, this picture really captures what I was looking at!"
I take pretty bad pictures, so for me, this is almost never. The photos I take on my phone never do the real thing justice. I've also realized that when I stop what I'm doing to try and document it, I inevitably stop paying attention to the thing I'm watching and only pay attention to what my phone is doing. Which is stupid. And silly.
I'm not really sure what the point is here. Will I never take photos from the Brooklyn Bridge ever again? I doubt it. Will I try to document my life less often? Maybe, but I might not succeed and I won't make any promises about how hard I'm even willing to try.
But can I at least acknowledge that sometimes, enjoying some good tunes and a good breeze and some pretty sights is just as valuable an experience even without photographic proof that it ever happened?
Hell yes.
I want a DJ logo
It's finally summer in these parts, and that means a few things: that I no longer wear actual pants, I take my coffee iced, and I spend a hell of a lot of time on music festival websites. Even if I don't plan on actually going to said festivals, I still, for some reason, spend a lot of time reading about them. Even I don't fully understand why I do this but let's just accept it.
There are 2 main types of music festivals that I go to: all-genre festivals (Lollapalooza, Governor's Ball, etc) and EDM festivals (Electric Daisy Carnival, Electric Zoo, you get it). After spending so much time on different festival websites, I've noticed something interesting. Here's the lineup site for Governor's Ball:
And here's the lineup site for Moonrise, an electronic music festival that I have no intention of attending yet seriously why am I at this website like twice a week?
Do you see the difference? One has the artist names listed in the same font, and the other has actual logos!
This isn't the case 100% of the time, but what I realized was that I almost never see a non-EDM artist listed using their logo, but this happens a lot more often when it involves DJs. Why? I have no idea. And frankly I don't care. Because the point of this discussion is that I've decided that I want a logo. For me. Not for my DJ alter ego (though I wish I had one), just for the name "Arielle."
That would be awesome, right? To have your own badass logo and any time you signed an email or really put your name anywhere you could just have that logo appear instead. Why have I never thought of this before as something totally logical that I really want in life? It's probably the second best idea I ever had, right after making it a goal to marry someone with my last name.
If any of you are so graphic-designly inclined, I would like to request that when I turn 31 this October you create for me a sweet DJ logo. In return you will have my eternal gratitude. I can also throw in a hug and a lollipop. And a beer!
Until then, I suppose just a regular font will have to do. For now, peace out!
-Boring Font Arielle
A Tale of Two Job Offers
Friday, June 6, 2014
Labels:
I'm awesome,
J-O-B
At the end of January my boss told me that my job was being eliminated at the end of June.
"You'll be fine," she told me. "You have 5 months to find something new."
"You don't understand," I replied. "I was unemployed for an entire year just a little over a year ago. 5 months is nothing."
And then, after being told I was taking the news very graciously, I couldn't hold back anymore. For the first time in my life, I cried at work. Hard. I went home early, stopping briefly in my coworker's office to give her my puffy-eyed, sniffly 30-second version of the news and explain why I wouldn't be joining everyone for lunch.
Unemployment sucks, as I have chronicled here and sort of also here. Just when I thought I had settled into a nice cozy spot for awhile, the big U was looming, again (I also got laid off at the end of 2011, for those that are not intimately keeping track of the details of my life).
I gave myself 24 hours to wallow, and then got to work. I updated my resume. I asked friends and friends-of-friends and friends-of-friends-of-friends to let me know if they heard about anything. I contacted headhunters. I bought a new suit. I wrote cover letters.
Oh, did I write cover letters.
When I used to work in banks, cover letters weren't necessary. They aren't necessary at most for-profit companies, as is the quasi-general rule I've learned through my many bouts of job hunting. But I'm in the non-profit land now, and every non-profit wants a "thoughtful cover letter." Some also want writing samples, references up front, test scores and probably a DNA swab, but the cover letter was non-negotiable. So I wrote them.
I wrote cover letters at every free moment. Evenings, weekends, sometimes early mornings. I said no to weekend plans so I could write cover letters. For months, that's all I did, with the occasional interview thrown in, if I was lucky.
And then, a few weeks ago, I had two job offers.
Having not one but TWO organizations that wanted to hire me was the craziest and most unanticipated thing to ever happen to me. I got to actually compare and contrast the jobs and CHOOSE which one I wanted and I GOT TO SAY NO. For the first time, it wasn't the company rejecting me. It was the other way around. It was beautiful. I would like to say that I cried at some point because that makes it sound more emotional, but I'm not typically a crier and so I didn't. But believe me, I was all punching my fist triumphantly in the air like Judd Nelson at the end of The Breakfast Club.
At this point, I feel like I'm supposed to say something like, "I felt so blessed to have two offers." But I don't feel blessed. In order to feel blessed you have to believe in an entity that can bless you which is a discussion for another day, but mostly, to feel blessed you have to feel like something was sort of unworthily bestowed upon you. And I do not feel unworthy, because I worked my ass off. I wrote countless versions of my resume and worked briefly with a career coach and networked in ways that are way outside my comfort zone and feverishly researched companies and took all sorts of crazy notes in my interview notebook and when I wasn't doing all those things, I was writing cover letters.
On July 1st, I start an amazing new job that I'm insanely excited about. Not because I was blessed, but because I worked for it. And even though there was never a competition, I feel like I've won.
"You'll be fine," she told me. "You have 5 months to find something new."
"You don't understand," I replied. "I was unemployed for an entire year just a little over a year ago. 5 months is nothing."
And then, after being told I was taking the news very graciously, I couldn't hold back anymore. For the first time in my life, I cried at work. Hard. I went home early, stopping briefly in my coworker's office to give her my puffy-eyed, sniffly 30-second version of the news and explain why I wouldn't be joining everyone for lunch.
Unemployment sucks, as I have chronicled here and sort of also here. Just when I thought I had settled into a nice cozy spot for awhile, the big U was looming, again (I also got laid off at the end of 2011, for those that are not intimately keeping track of the details of my life).
I gave myself 24 hours to wallow, and then got to work. I updated my resume. I asked friends and friends-of-friends and friends-of-friends-of-friends to let me know if they heard about anything. I contacted headhunters. I bought a new suit. I wrote cover letters.
Oh, did I write cover letters.
When I used to work in banks, cover letters weren't necessary. They aren't necessary at most for-profit companies, as is the quasi-general rule I've learned through my many bouts of job hunting. But I'm in the non-profit land now, and every non-profit wants a "thoughtful cover letter." Some also want writing samples, references up front, test scores and probably a DNA swab, but the cover letter was non-negotiable. So I wrote them.
I wrote cover letters at every free moment. Evenings, weekends, sometimes early mornings. I said no to weekend plans so I could write cover letters. For months, that's all I did, with the occasional interview thrown in, if I was lucky.
And then, a few weeks ago, I had two job offers.
Having not one but TWO organizations that wanted to hire me was the craziest and most unanticipated thing to ever happen to me. I got to actually compare and contrast the jobs and CHOOSE which one I wanted and I GOT TO SAY NO. For the first time, it wasn't the company rejecting me. It was the other way around. It was beautiful. I would like to say that I cried at some point because that makes it sound more emotional, but I'm not typically a crier and so I didn't. But believe me, I was all punching my fist triumphantly in the air like Judd Nelson at the end of The Breakfast Club.
At this point, I feel like I'm supposed to say something like, "I felt so blessed to have two offers." But I don't feel blessed. In order to feel blessed you have to believe in an entity that can bless you which is a discussion for another day, but mostly, to feel blessed you have to feel like something was sort of unworthily bestowed upon you. And I do not feel unworthy, because I worked my ass off. I wrote countless versions of my resume and worked briefly with a career coach and networked in ways that are way outside my comfort zone and feverishly researched companies and took all sorts of crazy notes in my interview notebook and when I wasn't doing all those things, I was writing cover letters.
On July 1st, I start an amazing new job that I'm insanely excited about. Not because I was blessed, but because I worked for it. And even though there was never a competition, I feel like I've won.