Strange place

I woke up today way too late feeling way too icky. I ended up staying home when mom and David went to go work on the house because I figured I couldn't be too much help feeling this icky.

Hopefully this will end up being a semi-productive day, but I have my doubts. It's rainy, I'm tired, I have soreness as if I exercised but I am fairly certain I didn't. I guess I'll drink some green tea in a bit to see if I can get myself going.

I think my sleep cycles have been very short lately. I think it's supposed to be around 90 minutes before one reaches the REM part of the cycle, but I keep having elaborate dreams and waking up from them just an hour after I fell asleep. I've never been one to consistently wake up in the middle of the night, but lately it's been a nightly occurrence.

I can't think of anything else to write about, so I guess I will write about my dream.

I can't remember where we were coming from, but my mom and I were in my car on our way home when we stopped in Santa Cruz. We met up with my brother there and he wanted us to have dinner there. I was really tired and suggested we finish the drive back home first and have dinner there, but my brother said that he can't do that because he was going back to Fresno.

Somehow we ended up in the place where he was living in my dream and we were going to spend the night there. Completely unlike reality, my brother lived in a really bad area in a kind of run down place. At one point, I was in the kitchen and some random kid came in. I thought about telling the kid to leave, but then I noticed him go to the sink and put cold water and his wrist like it hurt. Then I saw a woman outside and wondered if she hurt the boy. So I went to the screen door of the place and shut it and held it closed because the screen door would not lock. I didn't say anything but stood there trying to communicate "You can't come in here." The woman didn't really react, she just left. Then I remembered that my brother only had exclusive right to his room and that this kitchen was common area. The kid wasn't wrong to come into the house and I had no right to keep the woman out (other than to protect the child.)

So we spent the night. The next morning, I was packing my things. My mom told me to pack carefully because people are often robbed in the area. When I finished, neither my mom or brother were there. For some reason, I didn't feel like I was in an appropriate place to change so I left the room still in the sweats and shirt that I slept in with my hair not brushed. I found mom and Jesse at a breakfast place down stairs where there was bagels and juice (like at a hotel). They already got their breakfast and went to a table, I went to get mine wondering where I could find a public restroom to change in and then got into a conversation with someone about something. Then I woke up never having had the opportunity to find mom and Jesse again, eat breakfast, or change my clothes.

Weird. I wonder why I dreamed that.

Doors

I am pretty bad at this once a day thing. (haha) I was helping out with the rental house in Salinas again, so I was a bit too preoccupied with that to remember this silly thing that I am trying to turn into a habit.

One thing we're trying to do is replace the door on the house. The only problem is that it is an old house and the door is wider than standard doors are now and they don't have a lot of money to spend on anything right now. My mom and I already checked the Last Chance shop at the local dump and also the Habitat for Humanity store. I used my handy dandy smart phone, google'd, and found a list of businesses that sell recycled materials for houses and we found another place in Castroville to look at doors at. Unfortunately, we haven't had any luck. The search has been kind of fun, at least in my opinion. I've enjoyed going to those places and seeing all of the things they have.

(They kind of make me wish even more I had my own place to furnish, however...)

Some people who know me well might know this, but I can be very stubborn when I get involved in a task. I keep telling my mom we should call the business on the list I found in Santa Cruz to see if they have what we are looking for. It can be hard for me to move on once I have a search going. (In fact, I just might hop back onto Craigslist after I post this.)

Consequently, I haven't done a lot of applying for jobs in the past few days. It's not as if I am wasting my time, however, since helping my mom out was part of the deal for my rent at her place to be so cheap. I like this to feel equitable so that I can feel like an adult amidst the overall standstill my life is in.  Other than that, my main focus right now should be preparing for my interview, which is in a week and two days! (yayyy!) I can't believe how time flies.

Sleepy

I didn't get much sleep last night. For some reason, I couldn't get to sleep until around 5 am. Then I woke up overheated around an hour later from probably the weirdest and one of the creepiest dreams I've ever had. I had to type it up on my phone before my heart rate would settle enough to go back to sleep. I'm trying not to nap because then I won't sleep well tonight. We'll see how that goes.

Certainly this is a good excuse to have a short blog today?

I would be applying for jobs, but I am a bit worried because I don't know what the quality of my applications will be as I am so tired.  I guess I'll try anyway.

Sidenote- it's so easy to forget how great it is to make a meal of Costco samples when it's been a while. :)

Ho Hum...

I really REALLY wish I had more things going on these days to talk about. It would make this whole daily blogging thing a heck of a lot easier.

Hmm...

I succeeded in applying for two jobs yesterday. Today is laundry day so that's currently in progress. I'm hoping that I might get two more applications in today, but I might end up going to Salinas again today so who knows.

I really want to see the movie Pitch Perfect which came out into theaters yesterday. I think it looks like an entertaining movie. I just wish I had people in my own demographic (female, in 20s) around to go with who I think would like that movie. I really don't think that mom and David would like it very much. Maybe it will still be in theaters when Krys (and maybe Bethany) will be visiting California later that month. Of course, in an ideal world my interview would turn out great and I would be working on moving to San Francisco by then, so who knows if seeing a movie then would be practical.

I miss the MIIS days when I had more friends around. :/

Hopefully, though, I can get a job and move soon. Then I can establish everything I don't have established now. So tired of the standstill. And watching my bank account balance go down.

Whoops

So much for the daily blog goal! I ended up skipping yesterday. I ended up going to Salinas with my mom and her husband to help them clean their rental property and get it ready for the next tenants. They do need the income from that and, although I am paying some money each month I stay here while job hunting, I do need to do things like this to make things more equitable between us.

After that, I was pretty exhausted and almost all of my favorite shows are on Thursdays now, so you know how that goes. (haha) Yesterday was my first headache free day in a while and today seems to be going well so far.

Right now I have to get myself motivated to keep applying for jobs. I almost want to just focus on the upcoming interview, but I know that if I want to move on with things in my life that I need to stop myself from putting all of my hopes and energy into just one opportunity.

Goal- two applications done and emailed by the end of today.

Restless and overheated

Don't you just hate it when you wake up in the middle of the night and you're suddenly stressing out over things that you can't even really understand? It's like your brain wants to stress so much that it can't even bother figure out what it is stressing about; instead you have all these rambling thoughts that make no sense flying through your conscious as if they were things of actual importance. Once you get back to sleep or wake up more,  you won't even remember what those things were.

I had that at 4 am this morning. It seems to happen to me a lot these days. I think it's a side effect to not having a real routine or solid deadlines to worry about. I know that I tend to thrive on stress in a way (at least until the point that I get overwhelmed, but I can handle a lot. The idea that my mind seems to need it to an extent is interesting. It's like my brain is restless and bored without it.

Part of what's been screwing with my head lately has also been the heat. We've had record high temperatures in the area during the past few days. I think high temperatures in places that are acclimated to it is fine because there are air conditioners everywhere, but it's much more difficult to escape the heat here. My mom and I think we have an allergy to the heat because we both tend to get itchy and rashes when we sweat a lot. I've also been having a lot of headaches and congestion.

Anyway, I just got back from walking the dog and there's a nice breeze now. I guess we finally have the "cool off" that the weatherman on TV has been promising. Now that I am feeling better, I can start refocusing my energies on applications and preparing for my upcoming interview. 

Job hunt, other fun stuff

What better reason is there to jump back into blogging than necessity?
Necessity? I'll go into that part later.
I just checked my blog to see when I've last posted here. A year ago yesterday. I guess there is a lot of catching up to do. I graduated with my Masters degree last May and started the job hunt. Despite my optimism/denial that told me that somehow I would be immune to the problems finding jobs that everyone else runs into, after four months of applying I am still unemployed.
Four months has been the longest I've gone without a school or job to go to and it has been a very stressful experience. It is very discouraging to write cover letter after cover letter with no response.
I keep having to remind myself to have fun. I've done a bit of traveling just around the state- the Bay Area, Sonora, San Diego, and Fresno. Those trips have helped me stay sane.
I have a bit of guilt whenever I go too long without applying to anything, though.
 So now we're in the present. I actually have a job interview coming up! It will be my first one since graduating. Since it's not until the 19th, I have lots of time to prepare. There will be a writing test before the interview.
The writing test worries me a little. As you might be able to tell by the lack of updates on the blog, I haven't been feeling like much of a writer lately. In a way, I feel like I've lost the ability to express myself in words somehow. I've really wanted to get it back for some time now, so now that I have an upcoming test and possibly a job that requires writing skill, it is time to try to get this ability back. So here I am back on the blog and I plan to write a blog entry every day at least until the interview.
Here goes nothing!