Letter Never Sent

So, yesterday, I met Jody for lunch before the interview for her sage, last-minute advice and encouragement then I went and saw Sab and had a little chit chat and coffee and fished for more encouragement. Sab’s main advice was to forgo a coat and tie and wear nice black wool slacks with a blue shirt since he doubted anyone at UT ever wore a suit to work. Since, I still needed time to get ready before the interview I ran home and ironed my clothes and got dressed. While I was getting dressed, another company called me for an interview for tomorrow. When it rains, it pours, indeed.

I arrived at the interview a little early and met one of the other interviewees, Rhonda. I introduced myself and we made a little chit chat. She was nice and competitive in a quiet assured way which made me want to work harder too. A little later an older fellow showed up, Kevin, and he introduced himself. When he introduced himself I got the impression he thought we might be the people doing the interviewing. He seemed to be a little preoccupied like he had a lot on his mind and I picked up a faint northeastern accent which made me wonder what his background was. The woman leading the interview process showed up and gave us the rundown. She was very smiley and when she smiled her eyes almost disappeared but you could tell she was still watching from way back there. A little later the final interviewee showed up, a quiet young woman named Joy. I’m not too sure about her name since she was pretty quiet most of the time.

We were asked who wanted to present first and I said I’d go since I thought that the best thing to do either way. When I got up there and pulled up my sample HTML I said something like, ” Well, you wanted us to bring you some sample of our HTML work, so I decided to redo your website.” This got laughs from most everyone there. That has to be a good thing. Then I pointed out how I had included myself in the new page just to make things easier ‘just in case’. This elicited more laughter. I discussed what I had changed about the website and why, although since I was very nervous I went through everything very quickly. Too quickly.

After I finished, the other three people presented their work. Each person had strengths and weaknesses, but I think I was doing well compared to each of them. After everyone else had gone, we had to do a short group project while the interviewers watched us. We had to come up with a practice curriculum and a way to present it online as a course. It was weird working with your apparent competition. Rhonda and I basically took charge and we came up with the main ideas while I wrote and organized things on paper. Kevin made a couple attempts to really push for his ideas in the group which seemed to me a little ham-handed and not subtle enough. We ran over our time, which was reported to have been 15 minutes even though it seemed like thirty seconds, and we were told it was time for the writing sample.

This was not that bad except you really had to keep your eye out for editorial mistakes which made me paranoid about missing something. Also, since we were slowly running out of time tensions were high. Sitting next to me, I could hear Rhonda muttering oaths under her breath in frustration with the belly button like mouse on the ancient laptop they provided each of us with. I think this section went okay, since I remembered all the HTML tags I had to format it with and I caught a few grammatical errors, but I don’t know if I missed anything or not. We’ll see. I’m supposed to find out if I warrant a second interview by next week. Keep your fingers crossed.

So, I had until…mmm..like Tuesday afternoon to finish the little ‘presentation’ I have to do for this job interview. I was having a lot of trouble just getting started. The night before last was totally fruitless and I stayed up all night downloading music rather than work on the presentation. Last night was shaping up to be the same. I was having trouble getting started and sought encouragement from a few of my friends, namely anyone on AIM or at hand for me to kvetch with. Kelly gave me a lot of good suggestions since he does this sort of thing for his job. I finally picked up some steam and then, of course, it went very well from there. I am happy to say that I’m finally done. Soon I will try to sleep until about 12pm which should give me plenty of time to get ready for the interview. I don’t really like group interviews, but I think I did enough to make an impression. Basically, they wanted to see a sample of my HTML skills to present in front of the group, so I redid their main page. I just hope the person who originally did the page doesn’t feel like I’m taking liberties or stepping on their toes. Here’s what I have thus far….this is what I will be showing in front of the group. Let me know what you think. Oh, here’s their site as it is normally. Yes, I even did that animated GIF thing.

I hope everyone is well and happy. If you’re not, hang in there and I will send some thoughts your way while the electrical signals in my brain pulse out strange dreams. When I’m having a tough spot I just remember all the similar spots in the past and think about how I rode those out too. Just knowing things will change is a big help. Anyway, good night.

Yesterday when I came into work, the guy who will be making the decision for one of the job openings I applied for here came by my desk and asked if I could come in to interview today before my shift. Of course, I said “Sure thing” and marked it in my calendar. Then when I got home after work there was an email from UT about the position I had applied for there and that they wanted me for a group interview on either Friday or the following Tuesday afternoon. I opted for Tuesday since I work Fridays and since I didn’t want anyone forgetting me over the weekend I figured Tuesday was the more prudent choice.

When I got into work today after I interviewed with the guys downstairs (interview went well…I was confident and felt good even knowing I might not even get the job, just satisfied with my performance during the interview) my current boss wanted to interview me for the other position I had applied for here. That went well, too. Better than I expected, but whether or not I get the job depends more on how I stack up against the competition. He did ask how I thought everyone would feel if a “dark horse” candidate was promoted over some of the more “likely” people, those most people expected to get it due to different reasons we can’t go into here. Being somewhat of a dark horse, I wanted to pursue this line of thought. All in all, that was a very good and invigorating experience as well. I feel good when things end in a firm handshake. Even if I do not get this position I feel like something good will be coming my way at some point in the near future even if not from my current employer. I guess one thing I’m learning is that when I put the smallest amount of energy into this job-searching thing I get almost immediate results. It’s very surprising and gratifying to me. It is one of those moments of clarity when I can see my life veering down a truly positive course and I feel like there is a lot of promise pregnant in the future.

The upcoming UT interview is a little stressful since they want me to present a sample of my HTML in front of the people who’d be hiring me as well as the other interviewees. I don’t particularly enjoy presentations in front of complete and total strangers. On the other hand, it will be good practice and the job pays significantly more than I make now which makes it worth any risk of embarrassment. Anyway, what I really want to say is…

if you are religious pray for me, if you’re spiritual send me good vibes, if you’re hiring for a good position hire me, otherwise wish me luck. My thanks in advance.

I just woke up a few minutes ago from some strange dreams. Since dreams don’t really have coherent stories I will just provide some of the snippets:

• I ran into Mike Rosen, who I haven’t seen in maybe over a year…probably two.
• Huge rains flooding the street for 2-3 inches. I slid all the way down the streets of downtown Austin on my belly even through some businesses. It reminded me a lot of some sort of urban Schlitterbahn or slip-n-slide.

In preparation for getting myself revved up to do Letter Never Sent number four…the proposed next issue of the zine for which this website is named…I’ve scanned in a copy of my high school zine, The Incredible Flaming Mechanism number 4 from way back in September 1994. That will be nearly ten years old. Suffice to say, I’m no spring chicken anymore. Time flies doesn’t it? On the one hand, in ten years I feel like I’ve been through a lot, but it really doesn’t seem that long ago. Anyway, enough…check it out here if you’d like to take a peek. At the moment, I’m listening to music, very sleepy, and my vision is getting blurry and hazy. That means it’s time for me to push the laundry to the far side and climb in bed next to it.

I had a nice chat with Susan’s friends, Kelly and Michael, from Bard last night at work. I tricked them into taking the Myers-Briggs test (INFJ and INTP respectively) and talked about pro wrestling with Kelly who is apparently a big fan of the ‘sport’ for reasons I still do not understand. He was surprised that I was so uninterested in pro-wrestling since I hail from the state which produced one of the most famous wrestling dynasties in the world, the Von Erich family. I had heard of them and their family curse and had seen Kerry Von Erich’s autographed photo on the wall of Herbert’s Taco Hut throughout my childhood, but that was the extent of it.

Kelly also offered to work on the idea I had for the Trillian Pro plugin which would allow you to blog your instant messaging chats on the fly. If you’d like to work on your own plugins you just need to know a little C++ and read the SDK (Software Development Kit) provided by the studio. I do think it is a good idea for something that many people will use. I may even dust off the amateur programming skills if no one else wants to. I can always ask the roommate/programmer in the next bedroom for advice since he is always the most patient of teachers when I don’t understand what the hell he is trying to explain. I program the way many other men attempt to work on cars, I usually know enough to make a mess than I have to find a friend to help me find my way out.

This gives me the idea to have a business where you match up clients with domestic and overseas programmer/contractors in order to fulfill low-level programming projects…like my project. Custom programming or something. I am not looking for a commercial product but I would definitely invest small amounts of my own money to have something cool and useful made. The hard part would be making acquaintances with cheap (relatively speaking), international programmers. This is what the bartering system would be good at, putting people with diverse skills together for mutual benefit. On the other hand, maybe I should just put in the work to learn more about programming. I’ve done it off and on since I was fourteen, but I never took to it the way some people do.

I finally got my resume updated and applied for the openings up at work. I’m not sure how much of a chance I have, but I need experience interviewing anyway. At work, they always tend to gangbang you in interviews with three or more people at once. Those are the worst. We’ll see what happens, but right now I’m tired. I’m going to clean up a little, brush my teeth, and climb into bed to read ‘Midnight in the Garden of Evil’. Sweet dreams all you day people. Good night.

Have you ever read a book that perfectly captured the essence of many aspects of your life experience? Scenes and characters that are so eerily similar and perfectly rendered that you know with certainty that the author has been through the very same sort of thing you have and that this work of fiction is really, actually, an autobiography in disguise? High-fidelity is this book to me. I don’t think at any other time I would have appreciated it in quite the same way. The foolishness and confusion and self-protection involved in being a man that hasn’t quite decided to grow up. There are a lot of us out there. It is an epidemic in the sort of Fight Club, lost-male-generation, man-child way. A lot of men I know are really clueless. I see the same sort of mistakes over and over. If you want to know what I’m talking about you just should read the book because it really is just about this ugly fact…repeated over and over. Thankfully, it has a happy, sloppily realistic ending. Here’s a selection I really enjoyed:

What happened to me during the funeral was something
like this: I saw, for the first time, how scared I am of dying,
and of other people dying, and how this fear has prevented
me from doing all sorts of things, like giving up smoking
(because if you take death too seriously or not seriously
enough, as I have been doing up till now, then what’s the
point?), and thinking about my life, especially my job, in a
way that contains a concept of the future (too scary, because
the future ends in death). But most of all it has prevented
me from sticking with a relationship, because if you stick
with a relationship, and your life becomes dependent on that
person’s life, and then they die, as they are bound to do,
unless there are exceptional circumstances, e.g., they are a
character from a science-fiction novel . . . well, you’re up the
creek without a paddle, aren’t you? It’s OK if I die first, I
guess, but having to die before someone else dies isn’t a
necessity that cheers me up much: how do I know when she’s
going to die? Could be run over by a bus tomorrow, as the
saying goes, which means I have to throw myself under a bus
today. When I saw Janet Lydon’s face at the crematorium
… how can you be that brave? Now what does she do? To
me, it makes more sense to hop from woman to woman until
you’re too old to do it anymore, and then you live alone and
die alone and what’s so terrible about that, when you look at
the alternatives? There were some nights with Laura when I’d kind
of nestle into her back in bed when she was asleep,
and I’d be filled with this enormous, nameless terror, except
now I have a name for it: Brian. Ha, ha. OK, not really a
name, but I could see where it came from, and why I wanted
to sleep with Rosie the pain-in-the-arse simultaneous orgasm
woman, and if that sounds feeble and self-serving at the same
time—oh, right! He sleeps with other women because he has
a fear of death!—well, I’m sorry, but that’s the way things
are.

When I nestled into Laura’s back in the night, I was
afraid because I didn’t want to lose her, and we always lose
someone, or they lose us, in the end. I’d rather not take the
risk. I’d rather not come home from work one day in ten or
twenty years’ time to be faced with a pale, frightened woman
saying that she’d been shitting blood— I’m sorry, I’m sorry,
but this is what happens to people—-and then we go to the doctor
and then the doctor says it’s inoperable and then … I
wouldn’t have the guts, you know? I’d probably just take off,
live in a different city under an assumed name, and Laura
would check in to the hospital to die and they’d say, “Isn’t
your partner coming to visit?” and she’d say, “No, when he
found out about the cancer he left me.” Great guy! “Cancer?
Sorry, that’s not for me! I don’t like it!” Best not put yourself
in that position. Best leave it all alone.

So where does this get me? The logic of it all is that I
play a percentage game. I’m thirty-six now, right? And let’s
say that most fatal diseases—cancer, heart disease, what-
ever—hit you after the age of fifty. You might be unlucky,
and snuff it early, but the fifty-plus age group get more than
their fair share of bad stuff happening to them. So to play
safe, you stop then: a relationship every couple of years for
the next fourteen years, and then get out, stop dead, give it
up. It makes sense. Will I explain this to whomever I’m see-
ing? Maybe. It’s fairer, probably. And less emotional, some-
how, than the usual mess that ends relationships. “You’re
going to die, so there’s not much point in us carrying on, is
there?” It’s perfectly acceptable if someone’s emigrating, or
returning to their own country, to stop a relationship on the
grounds that any further involvement would be too painful,
so why not death? The separation that death entails has got
to be more painful than the separation of emigration, surely?
I mean, with emigration, you can always go with her. You
can always say to yourself, “Oh, fuck it, I’ll pack it all in and
go and be a cowboy in Texas/tea-picker in India,” etc. You
can’t do that with the big D, though, can you? Unless you
take the Romeo route, and if you think about it …

Anyway, if you’re a man…at least this annoying, immature, exasperating type of man or you have to deal with one, you should read this book. It may even be helpful.