A Dose of Hope?

My mother called my uncle on Saturday to wish him happy birthday, and--boring family crap aside--he asked her to have me pass my resume on to him, so he could forward it to a friend (ex-girlfriend) of his who lives in Seattle, now. She's part of some environmental agency thingy, and he figures it couldn't hurt to shoot my resume along to her.

So, I'm updating my resume--a task that, three years not withstanding, has taken less than half an hour--and trying not to get enthused about this. Even if she liked what she saw, and said: "Well, kid, ya got moxy. And if ya can get out here, ya also got a job."

Even if she said that, how would I get out there? Where would I live once I did?

These are not questions beyond the realm of consideration. Not because my resume is so helladamn awesome that everyone wants to hire me, but because the one contingency I don't plan for is the one that always happens. Like clockwork. Not that this would be a Bad Thing, her liking me enough to offer me a job if I can get out there, but . . . to be that close to something I want, to have it so close, and to be stopped by my own financial limitations--

That'd just about kill me.

And assuming I could get out there, where would I live? I don't know anyone there, have next to no money saved up. I've been through enough real estate sites and craigslist to know what I'd need for a halfway livable--and for a chance at Seattle, I would willingly adjust my standards of what constitutes 'livable'--apartment and I haven't got even close to that. Though this might be doable if it isn't full up. If it is, I'd probably wind up in some nightmarish shithole.

So even if this beneficent never-was-my aunt took a pass on my wonderful skill-set, if I could save plane fare, and a few hundred beyond that, I could probably go out there, and get any shit job to tide me over till I found something else. Through sad, and extended experience, I know something about the workings of Best Buy. And there are customer service jobs everywhere.

I'd probably have to leave all my stuff but the essentials here if I did that, though. That includes all my books, my banjo, and my computer. I'd be lonely as shit a lot of the time. Bored, and broke, too, but the payoff. . . .

I dunno. That's a pretty shit plan, as plans go, but it may be time to do something drastic. Even if it means sleeping in a nightmarish shithole for a few months. It wouldn't be the first time. And it'd be Seattle. I'd rather be miserable and lonely there, than comfortable and apathetic here. And I'm not getting any younger. I've gotta do this bohemian, spur-of-the-moment, life-changing, spontaneity thing before I get too old for it.

But back OT, I was flirting with not even bothering to send my res, but I'm far too hopeful not to. And if I didn't at least try, I'd have no more right to complain about the state of my life and how much I hate this town, having not at least made a grab at a chance out.

Not to hang my hat on such a flimsy thing as "friend of a friend" half-assed networking bullshit, but it'd be nice to achieve escape velocity with some measure of security. I've been hovering on the event horizon for far too long.

Hope's a fucking bitch, and I think it's more likely to someday see my wrists slit than despair.

And I'll be goddamned if I didn't get into that Irvine Welsh novel, after all.



"The Seether is neither big nor small. The Seether is the center of it all."--Veruca Salt