The Unchaperoned White Girl is no longer funemployed!

That's right! I'm officially rejoining the workforce on Monday!

I'm venturing back into the fabulous world of insurance (although for a much less sexist company I hope) and staying on the broker side. I've heard brokers have more fun anyway...


How I ended up with this job is really strange. I did a phone interview with an HR firm for a job I was totally unqualified for as it turns out (needed like 7 years of supervisory experience). The woman said that I wasn't qualified (which I agree with), but she said she said I was bright, articulate, and fun to talk to and would I mind if she sent my resume to a few people she knows. I obviously did not mind. She set up a meeting for myself and the owner for two days later.

Part of their interview process is taking a DiSC assessment. I hate those online personality tests. The answers are never good, and you end up looking like a crazy person. Change of pace - I got a copy of the results! What were my results? As my friend Mike said, "I feel like it would have been easier to write 'We've determined you're a sociopath, but it's cool we're kinda down with that in business practice'."

I scored high in the Influence dimension. That doesn't sound too bad, right? That can be a good thing. Then they show you the words you match with in each of the four categories. A few choice ones I got: domineering, demanding, restless, stubborn, defiant, obstinate, and tactless. To quote the great Cordelia Chase "Tact is just not saying true stuff." They then asked me how I felt about all these words. I feel like that piece of the interview is just seeing how you react to that!

The DiSC is interpreted too - you don't just get those fun word lists! You get things like "Often, you can be quite charming and convince people to do what you want by the strength of pure likability. At other times, however, you may employ obvious intimidation to get your point across." Or "Your colleagues probably admire and like you. However, you may still have the potential to strike fear into others." And "You may believe that your well-established ability to convince and direct people helps keep you moving forward. In addition, you may not want anyone to view you as weak, so you may strive to keep your intimidation skills sharp."

Short version of this test? It's a Sorting Hat, and I'm in Slytherin.



I hope to take everything that I learned from my last position and from the last six months of unemployment and apply it to my new job. I've learned a lot about myself and what I think about and need in other people. Gotta keep those intimidation skills sharp!

6 Months Funemployment Anniversary!

Today officially marks six months of funemployment.

I'm starting to write this at 1210pm, and I think I was actually already home on that day. It was a Friday, and I was lucky that my husband was off work so I didn't have to sit at home alone (although he did stay playing his video game with his brother and didn't talk to me until a bit later. Hm). Firing someone on a Friday isn't actually a very good strategy. When you fire someone on a Friday, it's hard to access social services until the weekend is over.

Day 1 of Funemployment

I have this theory that the plan was to actually fire me on Thursday, but I screwed it up. We had a meeting on the Thursday that was scheduled to be half an hour. It ran almost two hours. I took my lunch at 1pm normally, and the meeting had started at 12. I should have known better, but whatever. By the time the meeting was over, it didn't make sense to me to take a lunch. I would have been on lunch from 2-3 and then leaving at 4. I decided that I worked through lunch and that I would leave at 3pm. The woman who sat next to me told me that the VP stopped by my desk after I left and looked mad that I left early. Going over everything in my head, I think they wanted to tell me they were eliminating my position Thursday afternoon, but I left before they could do it. I like to think that I messed up their plan for me to leave at the end of the day (when maybe people wouldn't really notice) and instead make a grand exit on Friday afternoon.

So what have I learned being out of the workforce for the last six months?

1. Not working is awesome. Like...seriously amazing. I get up when I want, go to bed when I want, and don't have to answer to anyone.
2. It's kinda terrifying. The longer I have been funemployed, the longer I wonder if anyone is ever going to hire me again. Like...are employers going to look at this gap and think "Quetzalcoatl, she couldn't even do retail or something?!"

Me today. I think I'm much happier

3. I'm way better at yoga than I thought! Going to daytime classes where I was sometimes the only person there (and the most I ever had with me were 5 other people) really gave me time to work on things I hadn't tried before. If you're looking for somewhere to practice, I adore YogaLove!
4. No more staying in toxic environments. I didn't realize quite how stressed and anxious I was until all of a sudden I wasn't! I can't be a frog in boiling water again.

I love Teen Vogue

I am currently totally in love with Teen Vogue.

They have seriously been the best periodical since the election (I didn't read them before, so I can't talk about them then). They have struck a balance between deeply caring about political issues and still living your life.

I definitely care about what is going on. I care about the Muslim ban. I care about defunding Planned Parenthood. I care about gerrymandering. I care about LGBT rights. I care about feminism and making sure it is intersectional.

But it can get exhausting.

Teen Vogue has kept publishing articles about "normal" things while keeping up with the issues. So my Facebook feed will have an article about Senators comparing Planned Parenthood to concentration camps next and then they share an article about nipple piercings.

We all need to keep caring. We can't act like what is going on in to country is normal. But we also need to make sure we don't get protest fatigue. What we need is Teen Vogue showing us that we can fight and still live.

International Women's Strike Day

I went to see Roxane Gay's lecture last night (yay Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures!). If you don't know her, go read Bad Feminist now. I purchased a copy of Difficult Women but haven't read it yet, so I can't recommend it. One of the audience questions was whether not she agreed with the Strike day. She had a good answer. She said that it's yes and no - there are so many women who can't afford to strike, and they are probably the ones who need this most. Her other point was that she would never want to WORD CHOICE the efforts.

What's a funemployed unchaperoned white girl to do on a strike day? It's not like I was going to take a day off work or something! Then I realized I was definitely thinking about it wrong. I'm currently not doing paid work, but I am doing a lot around the condo (my choice)! I'm doing laundry and dishes and cleaning in general.

This is definitely the mindset people get into about stay at home mothers and housewives (ugh...can there be a better word for that? I don't like homemaker either). Some people think that if you are not working outside the home that you are not working. And I was thinking that about myself! Things being done around the home are work. I'm not going to get on a high horse and bust out one of those memes where I pretend to calculate the different jobs I do and how much it would be paid, but these are necessary things in your adult life that you can pay someone to do. Not having children makes people think of it differently as well. To some people, I'm probably just sitting around, doing nothing, spending my husband's money.

So tomorrow, for International Women's Strike Day, I will participate. It's about not doing paid or unpaid work. Mine probably isn't quite as effective as it could be since my husband isn't back from his work trip yet. So I won't be washing my own dishes or doing my own laundry. But it's the solidarity that counts.

I hope that with all the marches and protests as sit-ins that we finally get together as a group. Women working together. Although we are comprised of a lot of different groups, we all need to work together to make this world a better place for us and those who come after us.

So, as the great musical Newsies taught us (if you haven't seen this, please go watch it now): And the world will know we been keepin' score. Either they gives us our rights or we gives them a war. We've been down too long, and we paid our dues. And the things we do today will be tomorrow's news.

Escorting with PPWP

I have been an on and off volunteer with Planned Parenthood since college. Let's not talk about how long ago that was. During and after the election, I realized how important it was that I start being on again.

I did my escort training on Saturday. I had avoided it for years because I wasn't sure if I could handle it. Can I deal with people screaming without screaming back? When I see people with whom I have a fundamental disagreement with on so many levels, will I be able to keep my damn mouth shut?

The training affected me differently than I imagined. Instead of being angry at the thought of protesters, I found myself tearing up at the idea of people deciding that a woman's personal medical decision was any of their damn business. That people think an appropriate response to literally anything is to harass people en route to a medical professional. The moral failing that leads to a school sending buses of students to protest for credit in my neighborhood. I wasn't angry - I was outraged and motivated.

Who knows if I will be able to hack it when the situation arises. I may see people and totally lose it. I don't even know if I would scream or cry. What I do know is now, more than ever, I believe in giving time in addition to money. I am going to give escorting my best shot. There is an option to observe before you commit. At the very least, I can do that.

I'm not going to stop with Planned Parenthood. I am going to find more groups that need volunteers and join them. Resistence isn't futile - it's the only way to thrive.

Ranting on Job Applications

Some days I feel like all I do is apply to jobs. I get in a rhythm on Indeed or LinkedIn or whatever site I manage to find myself on, and I don't want to stop til I get to the last page. Inevitably a few pages in, I realize I didn't bring my Fire in with me to play Pandora. Which turns into an internal conflict over if I should break my rhythm to go get it. I usually say "after this application" and then forget. Oh, and I do mean "say." I am straight up talking to (and answering) myself now. So I end up sitting on a computer with silence all around me giving me oh so much time to think about how frustrating this process is!

Why is it that so many jobs seem to be a minimum wage paying job that requires you to work every single weekend and have 10 years of experience? Like...if the words "entry level" appear in your ad, let's not pretend you need tons of experience for it. I have literally seen ads that say you need 5 years experience in a professional setting. Where exactly are people supposed to be getting this?!

I continue to hate cover letters. Until it becomes acceptable to write "please hire me because I need money and you need a people" I will hate them. They're so artificial and weird. I never know what to say. All the samples I look at it are awkward too. No one appears to be good at it.


Let's say this works out - you have the 25 years' experience for a call center job, and they liked your cover letter where you talked about your hard work, dedication, and how you absolutely love every single person you have ever worked with. Do you know how many scam jobs there are?

A lot. Especially when you start talking about Marketing. For some reason, Marketing tends to mean cold calling or literally knocking on doors to sell people stuff they don't want. Luckily the internet exists, so I haven't been falling for any of those jobs. I got a call from a place that saw my resume. When I tried to call them back, they had a generic voicemail. Then their website was gone. Right. Normal. In addition to trying to find a job, you have to find one that's real.

I know that getting used to constant rejection is an excellent life skill.  I'm sure there is something I should be learning from cover letters to (I'm thinking that it might be that sometimes people will make you jump through hoops to make sure you read instructions). Being able to tell the difference between things that are legit and scams definitely comes in handy. These are things which will serve me well once I find a job. I need to be zen about it.

Until that time, I'll be over here...screaming internally.

My Airport Mansplainer

I had the pure delight of getting into a discussion with a mansplainer at the Seattle Airport last week!

Let's get the definition out of the way first. There are people who don't believe it happens or that women are making it about gender when it's not. They are wrong. There is a different between explaining and mansplaining. Telling someone how to do something when they are unaware is explaining (someone explaining how a deductible works when I first started in insurance was helpful). To me, mansplaining is a man telling you how to do something/how something works because they believe that they know better than you. Honestly, it's hard to put into words. If it's never happened to you, consider yourself lucky that people think you're smart enough to know about things.

Back to my airport friend!

The conversation started totally normal - he asked me what I was reading, we talked about Walking Dead, and he wasn't even hitting on me or anything. It was a nice conversation! When the bartender came back over, he bought me a drink. Once the drink arrived, that's when it went downhill...

For some reason, he decided we needed to talk about Donald Trump and what is he doing. I said that I didn't agree with anything Trump has done since he's been in office. This guy decided I didn't know what I was talking about.

He spent about ten minutes telling me that it wasn't that I don't agree with Trump's policies! It's that I hate Donald Trump! Jimmy Carter did the same things Trump is doing, and he bets I like him! If Obama were signing these policies I would be in favor! I really just need to separate what Trump is doing from the man himself! These policies are great (and btw he hates Syrians)! No examples or anything, obviously.

Even though I literally sat there and told the guy that it was the policies I disagreed with (I didn't even mention how much I hate Trump because this was going no where good), he continued to tell me that I didn't really think that.

What made that guy think it was okay? To look at another adult and say "You don't know what you think." He barely even tried to tell me why the policies were good (the short version of what he said is Muslims are bad). His entire tactic was to tell me that I'm letting how I feel about Trump get in the way of how great these policies are. On what planet is that okay? Does that ever work?

That beer was good, but it wasn't that good.