Jobs, mushrooms, books

A quick update on what's been going on around here--I've had my nose stuck in a book lately, obviously. The rainy fall weather is encouraging me to get reading again.

I just finished Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells. A thoroughly enjoyable, touching and sweet story about love and friendship among women. I won't analyze it to death, but I would highly recommend the book. It's a sort of pick-me-up after the last one.

We found our first chanterelles and hedgehog mushrooms of the season. Won't tell you where... just kidding, we found them on a hike at Glen Orchy--up in the old Scots pine forest remaining up there. There's tree farm, tree farm, tree farm, and then beautiful open native woodland with so many plants underfoot. Bilberry, ferns, bog myrtle, a million kinds of moss, heather, all jumbled together along with fallen rotting logs--a perfect forest! And the smell, so wonderful, fresh, woodsy.

And the midges! They descended on us in the millions as we stopped to admire some gorgeous yellow chanterelles peeking out of the leaf litter. We grabbed them and ran...

Home where we sauteed them up in some butter and devoured them. Ahhh, so delicious.

Job hunting sucks. It is so... draining. I spend all this time imagining myself in the jobs I'm applying for, convincing myself that this is the job I really want, and then I don't get it.

Bookseller (entry level position) at a national chain bookstore. Well, nope. I don't think a Master's degree in literature and experience working in publishing impressed them at all.

Copy typist for weekly local paper. Nope. No matter that I've been a freelance editor for five years, have several college degrees in English, and can type pretty damn fast.

Literature projects coordinator for an arts/theatre organization, coordinating writing workshops, poetry readings and author events, running multicultural literature programs for schoolkids... this job sounded SOOOO cool. I wish I had been invited for an interview, but no.

It's fairly depressing. Once again I'm in a situation where I begin to feel that I have nothing to offer the world, nothing of value to do for society, no marketable skills. I think all of us 'Humanities' majors go through this. Only this time, my inability to get a meaningful job means that I'll have to leave the country.

I've got four months left before my flight back to San Francisco. All this strategizing for the future is exhausting me.