The Unknown

Last night, while I was having dinner with my family, I was struck by a revelation. This particular piece of information that just came to me right out of the blue made me at first feel excited that I was FINALLY AWARE of this Very Important Piece of information that solves a mystery I have been struggling with, then I internally groaned when I realized just how much damage NOT knowing this information has done for my attempts to get a job.

See, I’ve been trying to figure out how to deal with this huge GAP on my resumẻ. Ever since I lost my last gig (ghostwriting), I have been trying to get a new gig. Or a new job – either from home or outside of home (despite my limited availability outside of home). But I have had no luck and it’s been very frustrating. I have recently had a job interview, and while the interview went well, something tugged at me. I was never asked about the gap in employment. I DID mention that I write books and articles, but I was never asked why I haven’t been doing anything in between the jobs I HAVE had.

Well, it’s not like I haven’t been doing anything. I have written books, written articles and short stories, and collaborated with another writer on a major book project. I have gotten caught up on things I missed out on when I was so OBSESSED with the writing. And I have worked on dealing with my drinking problem (still sober so far! Woot!) and getting healthy again.

But prospective employers don’t care about any of that. All they see is the GAP. That emptiness where nothing really job-related or work-related happened.

My last gig ended in 2015. And what do I have to show for it since then? Nothing. Nada. Zip.

And last night I realized, WHOA. I should have been spending ALL of that time since then VOLUNTEERING!!!!

Because, you know, volunteering DOES count on a resumẻ. And it would look good. And, hey! Volunteering somewhere just MIGHT have gotten me a new job! Recently, one of my high school friends shared on Facebook about how he volunteered at this place that eventually hired him. After two years of volunteering there, he was HIRED! He landed a JOB through volunteering!

It’s been a little over two years since my gig ended. I could be employed by now! But I didn’t realize that volunteering was something I should have been doing All This Time. It never occurred to me until now. Sure, I WANTED to volunteer, because I think it’s important to give back, but I always thought one thing: JOB. FIRST. Our situation is pretty bad right now so of course I put more of a priority on trying to earn money with books or getting a job that PAYS. But I write books that don’t sell. And I haven’t YET gotten a job that pays! (Nice plan, right???)

So, yeah, I was pretty disheartened that I didn’t realize this sooner. Once again, I made writing a priority, and I shouldn’t have. Once again, I chose the WRONG thing to rely on to solve our problems.

I just wish that someone had told me this sooner. That maybe, you know, someone would have suggested I volunteer because it would look good on the resumẻ. I know one of my sisters suggested it, but I said “Oh, no! I need a JOB!” and that’s where the conversation ended. (I am not mad at her for not telling me it would look GOOD on my resume to volunteer. Really. I don’t think it occurred to her to mention that. But, nevertheless, she planted that seed in my head.)

And this made me remember about how this is so often the case with people. They don’t TELL me things. There have been SO many times that I said or did something wrong, and after I was given a dirty look and that person stormed off (and out of my life), I never knew what my mistake was. I never realized what I had said or did wrong. I was pretty much left in the dark. They just ASSUMED that I knew, that I intentionally did this Very Bad Thing, and that I am a Horrible Evil Person who does or says these horrible, evil things so they don’t want anything to do with me anymore. Or first they stomp on me THEN they don’t want anything to do with me anymore.

I know what it’s like for people to talk shit about you behind your back. And that’s one of the reasons why I am not so trusting of people I don’t know. (Then again, people I knew did have done this too.)

This made me recall one particular unfortunate experience in which I became ostracized from a message board. I used to be a part of the community of writers at the Absolute Write. For years, I participated in chats and posted on message boards. I considered some people there to be dear friends. Eventually, I became a mod for one of the boards, and I even got to have my own board too (it was based on one of my books). But, later, that board was deleted due to inactivity. Still, I felt there was still a need for that particular topic, so I decided to create my own board elsewhere featuring that topic. There wasn’t much activity on THAT board so, yeah, I saw personally that there REALLY wasn’t much of a need for that topic on the Internet. (I am horrible at predicting trends. Sigh!) So I deleted that one because it was just a waste of time. Then eventually, I lost my modship of a board on the AW site. And soon after that, some of the mods I used to communicate with started treating me unkindly. Some of them were nasty to me. I even received a particularly unflattering email from one of them that dripped with snarkiness. For this reason, I left that site because I no longer felt welcome there. I eventually unfriended two of those people on Facebook because I no longer felt comfortable allowing them to see ALL of these private details about my life because I didn’t trust them anymore. And after all that went down, to this day, I don’t know why they all of a sudden hated me. I don’t know what I did wrong. NOBODY TOLD ME ANYTHING!

And that’s just it. Sometimes, people don’t tell me if I screw up. I guess they just assume I meant to do something bad? Or that I am a Horrible Evil Person? I don’t know. I may NEVER know! People like to assume things and people like to believe their own lies! Hell, some of them LIKE playing the victim, this person that Evil Dawn hurt, and soak up all the sentiment from everybody else.

I hate to break it to the world at large, but I wasn’t exactly raised with decent morals. I’m sorry, but it’s true. There was a lot of lying, cheating, manipulation, betrayal, stealing and, well, violence in my family. I didn’t exactly have a charmed, loving life before entering adulthood. And all of us kids had to learn EVERYTHING about being decent people the hard way. We had to make mistakes. We had to screw up. Some of us NEVER tried to be better people after leaving home, but some of us WANTED to be decent and upstanding citizens. And we tried. We fell down so many times but we got back up and tried again!

And I just don’t know ALL of the rules about the right way to communicate with people or interact with others in society. I look at what other people do and copy THAT because it seems to be the right thing to do. Or I just saw things differently – even the things that were WRONG! (I had to learn later that wrong is still wrong, no matter HOW I saw it!) So, I had to learn the right things the hard way. I am still learning, apparently. I just wish people would TELL me when I screw up. They don’t, and that just holds everything back.

It would be NICE if people tell me when I screw up. And, I have had the good fortune of having such people in my life. Thankfully, there ARE people who actually took the initiative to tell me if I did something wrong or I said something wrong. One person even read me the Riot Act and, after I apologized profusely, we eventually made up. We are still friends to this day! This also happened with another friend. Even if it takes blowing up at me over a mistake or being rude in an email, I STILL appreciate it that I am being told that I screwed up and WHAT that mistake was. (You guys know who I am talking about. I love you guys!) I am very, very grateful to them for telling me what went wrong AND for forgiving me AND still being friends with me. And, even better, that they don’t hold that mistake against me for the rest of my natural life. I realized I screwed up, apologized, made amends, and didn’t do that Bad Thing again. They know this. They understand this. And I value them all the more because of it. They are in my circle.

I especially value them because I know how very frustrating it is NOT to be told what I did wrong. Some people just cut me off or they hated on me first THEN cut me off because they didn’t want to discuss this mistake or they assumed I INTENTIONALLY meant to hurt them or do them wrong and decided to just hate me forever.

I am also grateful that I was told about what I did wrong or what I was not doing right or why what I had said was bad. You know, it’s good to know these things. Knowing these things helps me to REALIZE that, Oh, that was not cool. That was a Bad Thing. Don’t do that again! That’s how we learn and that’s how we grow. There is no manual or instruction book for this journey called Life. We’re pretty much thrown into the woods and expected to figure shit out on our own! Nobody is perfect! And we ALL make mistakes – even the people who decide they don’t want anything to do with someone who makes mistakes. So it’s a good idea to TELL people they have screwed up, why they screwed up, what they did, and how they can fix things! Let. People. Know. Just SAY something! Instead of assuming shit.

Or maybe they feel better about assuming shit. I don’t know. I guess they need more drama or excitement in their lives.

Meanwhile, I am pretty much left on my own to figure things out, when they DON’T say anything. And it may take me a Very Long Time to figure shit out. It may take me years before I get that “bolt of knowledge” and realize, Ohh. That is what I did wrong. Or I may never know. And it’ll just be this unresolved issue in my past that survives into the future and the other person or people affected will forever remember me with that mark on my name. They’ll be the ones who will be stewing over the mistake and being angry about it, though. Not me, because I won’t even know what it was.