Yes, I got a job! I was so down on myself on not being able to find employment - I type 115 WPM (which not everyone can do) and STILL couldn't find anything or the longest time - but I finally did succeed in getting a job!

I'm working at a Wendy's and it's absolutely perfect - I won't have to work too many hours, which is good since I'm still in school, and I won't make enough money to affect my financial aid. I just need a little extra cash to make ends meet, and some work experience to list on my resume after I graduate next May. I have a friend that worked at this same place for two years while he finished his degree and he liked it. So I'm very psyched. I had my first day of training today, and another day of training later this week. :)

So all the hard work of looking for a job DID pay off. The process was really hard...putting in applications and resumes at God knows how many places and almost never getting any calls back. I'm one of those people who wants to see results from the things I do...so getting almost no responses to my applications and resumes was really hard for me. Through the whole almost six-week-long process I got three interviews - a flat out "no" from one, a "I'll get back to you" that never did get back to me (which means "no"), and then, thank goodness, a job out of the third.

The thing is that I know there are many, many other people out there whose job hunts are much longer and yielding even less calls back. I'm thankful that my search was easier than theirs.

Y'know, when I was living in California, there was this strange...almost stigma about jobs. My parents always told me that no honest work is below anyone (honest work = legal work), but when I was in school (from kindergarten all the way up through high school) people I knew, even my friends, would talk badly about other people because of the jobs their parents had. I had a friend whose mom was a health educator for the state of California and made a lot of money, and I remember her talking badly about another girl, whose mom was the head person at the bakery at the local Albertson's grocery store.

So for a long time I kind of had this...complex about jobs, a complex born from growing up in that social atmosphere.

When my dad lost his job when I was in 6th grade and couldn't find another job in his industry, he started looking for any job he could get just to put food on the table - and the job he ended up getting was driving a school bus. And he didn't drive just any school bus. He drove the short bus. He drove deaf kids to and from their special school. My dad was making less money than he'd made at any job since he was 18, but he still did it so me and my mom could eat and have a roof over our heads.

And at the time, I was ashamed that my dad was a school bus driver. I didn't tell anyone. He parked the short bus in front of our house at night and then drove it to work in the morning, but I lived in a different neighborhood from my friends at school, so nobody saw it. But I didn't let anyone come over to my house during that time. I kept my dad's school bus job a secret, and I didn't tell anyone about his work until he got a job with AT&T when I was in high school.

I've worked other jobs in the past. My first job, when I was 16, was holding an arrow on the street corner on the weekends, advertising a new housing development. That wasn't so bad, socially, since a lot of other people I went to school with did that too, but I still got teased about "working the corner."

After I graduated high school, I typed medical documents for a summer (which I absolutely hated). I was an official music theory tutor for my college when I was working on my Associate's degree. After I transferred to a 4-year college in California, I worked at Disneyland (that was always one of my life's goals), which I am very proud of. I've also worked in journalism as a copy editor and reporter. And now I work at Wendy's.

A year or two ago I might have balked at the idea of working in a restaurant. But now I've finally realized that what my parents told me all those years was right: No honest work is below anyone. And that means that I've realized that it's absolutely ridiculous to talk badly about people based on where they or their parents work.

I'm happy to work at Wendy's. My co-workers and my boss are nice people. I'll get to work with the public, which is something I really like to do (I actually hate jobs where I sit in front of a computer all day). The safety standards at work are very thorough, which means I have a very low likelihood of getting hurt at work (and if I do get hurt somehow, there are plans in place to help cover my medical care while I get better). And the work schedule and pay rate fit my needs.

I'm very happy to work at Wendy's, and I'm excited for my future there. :D

|

I know I haven't written for a while. School (both English and music) have been crazy busy. Keeping up can be tough! I'm taking performance opportunities wherever I find them. I'm going to be in the student government show Dixie's Got Talent on Wednesday night. I'm really excited :)

On a sadder note, I found out last Wednesday night that my grandmother died. She was 93 years old, so I was expecting this to happen sometime but it's still really sad. I looked into going to the funeral, but it's a 10 hour drive each way between St. George, Utah, and Los Angeles, California (where my family is and where the funeral is being held) and I can't afford to fly there. I'd also miss two days of school. And my family...let's just say we don't get along very well. There will be like 20 people there at the graveside service and most of us don't like each other.

So I'm going to have to grieve on my own and go to the grave sometime this summer.

It's really hard living out here in St. George. I've never had the tightest family ever. In fact, most of my relatives are dead. My parents didn't have me until my mom was 40 and my dad was 42, and I'm an only child. So a lot of my family members died before I was born or while I was a child. And even before everyone died, my family wasn't very big in the first place. So I've got like five or six family members in California, two in Arizona, some distant cousins in Indiana who I don't really know, and my dad lives in Nevada. There is no one related to me in the entire state of Utah, and my dad's the only person related to me in Nevada.

Family never was the most important thing to me, growing up and afterwards, but out here in Utah everyone has huge families. It's exponential, the growth of families. It's like everyone's related to everyone else, if distantly, in some way or another - except for me. When I tell people that there is no one related to me in the state of Utah, they always ask my last name, and my mother's maiden name, and they never can come up with someone else who has the last name McFarlin (spelled that way) or Hank.

So yeah. It's weird. Family just isn't this important where I come from. And losing my grandmother just highlights what little family I have. Within 20 years, my entire family will probably be dead (a lot of people in my parents' generation didn't have children), and since I can't have kids and don't want kids...I'm the end of the line. It's kind of sad. I'm just glad I came to this realization a long time ago and not just now.

My friend Valerie is having her senior vocal recital tonight at 7:30. I'm excited to go. Hopefully it'll be a good time :)

|