Rejection.

AMERICA.



Oh hello.
Have you ever wondered what the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer is like after their Peace Corps Service is over?

No? You haven't?

Me either.

For those of you that do not know, a Peace Corps Volunteer, following the close of their service, graduates to Returned Peace Corps Volunteer status. Better known in the Peace Corps World as an RPCV. So make sure you call me “Laura the RPCV” next time you run into me. You may also call me, if you feel so inclined, Laura the Unemployed RPCV or Laura the best RPCV Babysitter ever in the world (← I really like that one.)

I've heard several of my friends/acquaintances pronounce the words “With Peace Corps Volunteer on your resume you'll get a job, no problem.” Or words similar to that statement. And believe it or not! This is a gigantic misconception.

Guess what!? It is a problem. It's NOT easy to get a job. And I'm talking: it's not easy to get a job that is even a pinch meaningful. A job that won't make you wish you never did Peace Corps in the first place because cleaning up the Starbucks restroom is not the kind of job you saw yourself taking on after representing The United States of America for two years by picking bugs out of your breakfast and interrupting your excruciatingly hot evening run to poop in the rice paddies on a fairly frequent basis. Oh, you don't think those are transferable skills? Pooping in holes is not a transferable skill? Pooping next to the grazing cows? Pooping all night long? Pooping your pants on an 8 hour bus ride? Being pooped on by a one year old? Am I talking about poop too much?


Huh.


I'm sorry. I guess I don't really know what's normal anymore.

Beau Loves Toilets & Toilet Humor.


Being an RPCV, in my experience, has been a lot like the time immediately following college graduation. It was a very difficult and maddening time for me. No job. Living with parents. Feeling useless and hopeless. Directionless.

Luckily, almost immediately after I returned to the US, I had a job, a temporary job but an awesome job, nonetheless. I have worked for my dear friend Jeffrey Nistler for 10 years now (I count my 2 years away because I can) and he has always been there for me and allowed me to tag along on jobs that don't really require more than himself because he is just the best. Having my job at Nistler Farms right away allowed me to transition back into my life in America pretty smoothly. It was almost like I had never been gone only somehow I magically acquired a handheld computer that could fit into my pocket and for some odd reason millions of condominiums took root over night and grew to the size of Jack's bean stock throughout all of Minneapolis. So that was weird.

At Nistler Farms.


And then there was the never-ending question “So Laura, what are your plans now? What's the next step?”

“NONE OF YOUR BEES WAX! I HAVE NO PLAN! I AM PLANLESS. I AM A BROKEN WOMAN CHILD!” Is what I wanted to say.


But I held those feelings deep down inside of me, beneath the folds of my small intestines and pretended that I was actually going to really finally finish applying to grad school to get my Master's of Social Work. Because that's what people wanted to hear. People want to hear that I've got my shit together and that I am so well adjusted and I did such a great job being a Peace Corps Volunteer and I am a fully functioning adult now living with my parents in my childhood bedroom not actually feeling excited about the idea of going back to school just yet...or ever?
And I was too afraid to start applying for more permanent jobs because I feared rejection. AND FOR GOOD REASON! The job search is full of rejection. It's even worse than dating. You will send your resume along with a well thought out and beautifully written cover letter into the ether and not much later it gets sucked into that black hole that I've always secretly feared after taking an astronomy class my freshmen year of college that I amazingly didn't fail. But black holes, man. I don't want to get caught near one of those suckers.

I am all about run-on sentences right now. Run-on, my friend. Run-on.

BEAU. Stopping to sniff the flowers.


And this is why I only applied to 1 (read: one) job within the first 2 (read: two) months of being home. And that one job I applied to, I didn't hear back from until a month later when they informed me that the position was filled. I never even bothered calling to see what my status was. I took no initiative because I knew rejection was just around the corner. I avoided confrontation because rejection was inevitable.

And then, sort of out of nowhere, I applied to Target. I thought maybe it was time to “reward” myself. Get paid to do a job. To get paid maybe more than what my work and effort was worth, even. I applied to become an Executive Team Leader (this is a glorified title for an assistant manager, FYI) at a Target store. This position is very well paid. I was shocked. And I heard from Target immediately. As in, I sent in my application and resume on a Thursday afternoon and heard back that evening to schedule my first of what would be 5 (read: FIVE) interviews. I took this as an excellent sign. I'm going to be enjobbed in no time and get paid big big $dollars$ with benefits up the wazoo AND a Target discount, bitches!



FACE PLANT. Not the case at all. Five interviews (three of which were god-awful phone interviews) down the road and I never heard back from Target. I was dragged around like a dead dog on a leash for over a month with the ALMIGHTY TARGET and they never even gave me the courtesy of a computer generated email saying I was not awarded the job of ultimate corporate ass-kisser of the year, or whatever.

Oh, it's okay. It's just my life and livelihood you're kicking around and stringing along for far too long. No worries. I'll be fine.

BEAU. Triumphant in dog life.


In hindsight, thank goodness I'm not working there. I am not Target material. It was clearly not meant to be. I was meant to suffer longer than that. Unemployment loves me and wants me to stay entombed with it for as long as possible. And maybe longer. Unemployment wants me to wallow with it in the darkness to which it sleeps.

Following the rejection from Target, I got my ass into gear. Being removed from Facebook was several blessings built into one. Suddenly I am a productive person. Coffee became my co-pilot. He wore those old school goggles and a scarf; it was really cute. At this point in time, I have applied to an unknown number of jobs. I haven't really kept track. I'm just pooping the applications and cover letters out like an industrial printing machine. One job in particular I believed was a job MADE FOR ME. I had an awesome phone interview with them. I was actually a rock star and not bullshitting them like I did for Target. How could they NOT want me to work for them?





And then....silence.

Silence is cruel cruel company. Silence is a killer.

With all of my unstructured free time, I find myself over thinking everything, thinking too much, and over analyzing everything I said in the interview and wondering how I turned them off. Maybe my mistake was having the interview on a Friday so they had an entire weekend to forget about me. But how could they forget about me? It's just impossible. How can they not see my value? I HAVE VALUE!!! I am dying. LITERALLY dying. No, not literally. Literarily dying, yes.

With my excess free time, I end up watching a lot of nonsense on the Netflix. I mostly stick with stand-up comedian/comedienne performances because I can pretend that they are speaking directly to me. We are just friends hanging out casually talking about how annoying everyone is. I am best friends with Louis C.K, Patton Oswalt, Mike Birbiglia, and Reggie Watts. Don't be jealous. What we have is special. Another thing that comes from these friendships is inspiration. I started thinking to myself “Self, you could totally do stand-up. Just be your weird self and people will follow what you are and what you are saying and instantaneously love you. One day you too could have a special on the Netflix.”

Late at night, still shaking from caffeine consumed hours earlier, I look at myself in the bathroom mirror and begin performing the genesis of what will be my burgeoning stand-up comedian career. I talk about nose hairs and make-up and pretending to be a girl mostly because that's what I do whenever I'm in the bathroom staring at myself for too long. I'M HILARIOUS! I am literally the funniest human being in the Universe. Hollywood needs me in their already overly concentrated pot of not-actually-funny-people trying to make it big.

BEAU & Laurax. Dynamic Duo.


Unemployment also breeds a lot of selfie photo taking which is mostly despicable. And then, in my own self consciousness and embarrassment, I aim my miniature computer at my dog Beau. I'm hoping to turn him into an Instagram sensation. So far, it's not taking but I will remain patient with my dog's blossoming fame and subsequent fortune. It's quite an injustice that cats seem to get so much more attention and affection in the internet world than dogs and I'm trying to fight back. One dogstagram at a time...

The children I babysit twice a week are also frequent subjects in my Instagram art. It kind of boggles my mind that the 15 month year old kid knows exactly what I'm doing when I point my iPhone toward him. He puts on this cheezy smile face where his eyes become small slits and his mouth takes up the rest of the free space on his face. He has it down to an art and it gets me every time. Serious swooning. And for a split second, I understand why people keep make babies. I just hope his mom doesn't mind me pasting her children's faces all over the interwebs...Maybe they'll become Instagram sensations. You never know.


Babinstagram stardom will be mine.




What was I talking about? Oh yeah, I'm still unemployed.

Baby Mic Drop.

BOOK REPORT #2

Dudes,

Do you ever get introduced to a book, read the first page, and thereupon tear through the pages like it's a bar of fancy chocolate? (mmmmmm...fancy chocolate...)

I've been on a nonfiction kick for the last couple of weeks. For some reason, the idea of reading about fictional characters right now is a big turn off for me. I've got enough stuff going on in my life and rattling around in my head right now that's stranger than fiction. Why should I invest more precious brain juices on those characters? Why not suck up some real earth knowledges? Yes.....earthly earth knowledge sounds delicious right about now.

So anyway, back to the books. I had a makeshift two-person book club going for a month or so, which has since dismantled (story of my life right now. Everything's falling apart!!!! Me, dramatic?) For our second book in our book club, I chose the The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. He writes primarily about food (which (reading about food) can be detrimental to the mental health of any Peace Corps Volunteer, by the way.) Another book of his that I read years ago was The Botany of Desire, in which he explores the beneficial relationship (co-dependent?) between humans and four specific plants: apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes.

You like food? READ THIS!


What I loved about The Omnivore's Dilemma was Pollan's personal experience throughout his journey into the world of different food industries and food-life philosophies. The first part goes into the dark, dingy depths of the corn industry of America. Man, I love corn. But in a very different way than you'd expect. The only way I really like to eat corn is raw (DON'T KNOCK IT TILL YOU TRY IT!) But what I really REALLY love about corn is it's history in America and how it grows. I had a cornucopia of corn knowledge prior to reading this book due to one of my favorite people in the Universe, Jeffry Nistler.

This is Jeff rocking not one but TWO man-purses (the top one MIGHT be a camera bag...)


Jeff is, among many other talents, a farmer and I was lucky enough to work for him for 8 years (hopefully he'll take me back when I'm an unemployed returned peace corps volunteer.) I was a farm hand; especially skilled at hoeing and transplanting melons. Jeff's specialty is sweet corn in the summertime, pumpkins and squash (among other curious gourds) in the fall-time, trees in the wintertime, and exploring Peru in the dead of wintertime. He also builds bikes!

Not sure who is enlightening who here: Jeff on the left. That other guy with the cane is awesome.


And so it was Jeff who instilled me with a great many nuggets of corn facts. This is why I am now proud to call myself a corn snob. But the corn that Jeff grows is different than the corn Pollan highlights in the first part of his book. He attempts to follow corn from a farm in Iowa to one of the many places it could be taken throughout America - from feedlots (or CAFOs: Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) in Kansas all the way to a McDonald's in Marin County California. Basically, this corn that Pollan is talking about is feeding most Americans unknowingly. Example: a McDonald's chicken nugget (mmmmmm chicken nuggets) has 38 ingredients, 13 of which are differently processed versions of corn. (mmmmmmmm...?)

After he tears the industrialized food industry a new one, he moves on to the "ORGANIC" food industry. And this part just makes me giddy because organic food truly is an industry which is completely contradictory of what the Organic food people are constantly preaching. I understand what organic food is attempting to say and do but how they end up doing it is not by definition organic. There are just TOO many people in America trying to be organic at the same time. So get off your high horse. You're not better than everyone else if you eat organic sausages or granola cereal. And then there's thing thing called "Beyond Organic" which is really what Organic wishes it could be. Just read the damn book and you'll know what I'm talking about.

The last meal Pollan explores is that of a hunter-gatherer which was by far my favorite of his adventures. He killed a wild boar in California which was one of his first experiences hunting. He went morel mushroom hunting with a bunch of weird dudes in a forest. He usufruct some cherries to make a dessert. Can I go back to America and live as a hunter-gatherer? Do I know anyone that knows how to identify mushrooms? If so, please speak up! Teach me your ways.

If you care at all about what you eat (where it comes from and how it is what it is) you should read The Omnivore's Dilemma. But don't take my word for it!!! #READING RAINBOW.

QUIET: Hard thing to come by in Cambodia.


On to the next one, on the the next one: before I let my mind slip into complete malaise, I zapped my next book into motion on my fancy little nook e-reader thingy (thanks mom and dad.) Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain (my new best friend.) My friend and old co-worker Elliott (Read about him here!) gave me his copy when he finished it last year but I didn't have enough time to read it before flying away on an aeroplane to Cambodia. So I downloaded a copy from the mighty interwebs (completely legally; bought and paid for.)

"Restorative Niche": my bedroom in a South Minneapolis basement.


I couldn't put this book down and the best part was, I didn't want to leave my room or my other secret reading nook while reading it. I needed to be alone! I was learning about myself and needed to pay close attention. If you've been an avid "Laurax Doodles in Khmer" reader then you'd know that I've struggled a bit with the "Who Am I?" question, feel guilt-ridden when I hermit myself too much, and feel too much pressure in the spotlight at times. In certain chapters I felt like I was reading about myself!

The book is about 300 pages and I highlighted it 92 different times (awesome feature of the nook)! Here are some highlighted highlights:

• "cross the street to avoid making aimless chitchat with random acquaintances"
• "many introverts are prone from earliest childhood to strong guilt feelings; we also know that we all tend to project our own reactions on to others" (whoa...)
• "people who tend to [suppress their negative emotions] regularly, might start to see the world in a more negative light." (ruh-roh!)
• "self-monitors are highly skilled at modifying their behavior to the social demands of a situation." (hello, pseudo-extrovert Laurax.)
• "taking shelter in bathrooms is a surprisingly common phenomenon, as you probably know if you're an introvert." (I love bathroom hideaways. Stalls are a great place to cry.)
• "we can stretch our personalities, but only up to a point."
• "introverts often feel as if they express themselves better in writing that in conversation." (blogging!)

This book helped me realize that I am not totally whacked out. That maybe the things I do are more normal than I thought they were. It also made me realize why I oftentimes feel completely overwhelmed in my village. Like I've said before, PCVs are "on duty" the moment they walk out of their bedroom and that can be draining when it's every single day, especially for someone with introverted tendencies. There aren't many "restorative niches" or quiet places to re-energize. I think, with confirmation from this book, there are many people that struggle to understand who they truly are. We try to put ourselves in to boxes; extrovert-introvert, outgoing-reserved, etc etc, but we don't have to be one or the other and we really can't be. It's just not possible. I've spent a lot of my life trying to be what people want me to be. One thing that makes me happier than anything is to make other people happy; but my misstep here was not taking care of myself first. I didn't recognize when I needed to disappear and find my "restorative niche" so I too could be happy.

One of my "Restorative Niches": My desk back home. Cluttered and yet so peaceful. Look! I'm on Facebook. Lolz.


You don't have to be introverted to read Quiet. If anything, it just makes you think about what makes you happiest and how knowing that can lead you to a life where you are truer to yourself. Or as Shakespeare once said (according to the book) "To thine own self be true."

Another "Restorative Niche": solo walks in Minneapolis


My current mission(book): Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach. This lady is HI-Larious. Laughing out loud over here. I also read Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. I want to be this lady's friend also.

Packing for Mars: puking in zero-gravity and shit. Good stuff.


Read on, friends. READ. To infinity and beyond.