December 8, 2020
I had just received the call from the nursing home where my Dad was living that he had tested positive for COVID-19. He was on hospice, now he had COVID. The nursing home was in outbreak status, 16 other people also tested positive just that day.
Things were bleak, so I decided it was time to get my life together and post my resume on Indeed.com. This is the natural progression, isn’t it? Awful, possibly life-changing news on top of an especially shitty year equals time to find a new career. This is the way my brain works. Always moving on to the next thing. I’ve somehow managed to straddle a line where one side is utter fear of commitment and the other side is responsible reliability. It’s best to keep a foot on both sides and keep ’em guessing. Multi-passionate or easily distracted? Looming clinical diagnosis or completely in control of the situation? Starved for distraction from this current moment in time?
Yes.
Anyway, eager and determined to gain some writing experience, and filled with dreams of employment, I created a profile and uploaded a stock resume on Indeed. I mean, who wouldn’t want to hire a farm-girl-turned-health-coach with no workforce experience? It’s kitschy, employers will love me. I’m willing to learn, I have a rather useless college degree in Agricultural Business, I can’t leave my house because I’m homeschooling, and I haven’t washed my hair in 6 days. I’m gonna slayyyyyyy on Indeed. Look out world, here I come.
I even completed a couple assessments that Indeed offered, I’m literally all in. The first assessment gave me a score of “completed”. Well that didn’t sound great, better click the toggle to “not show” that to employers. Next one, “proficient”, hell yes! I wanted to show that score off. A few hours later I was back online searching for my new career opportunity, when I clicked on my recent test link and sadly realized that proficient wasn’t that great either. On a scale of “completed” to “expert”; proficient landed smack in the middle. A bit of a setback but you can’t knock this grieving 38-year-old experiencing an early midlife crisis, down.
I applied for a lot of jobs, some free internships, and a few temp gigs. Let’s just see what happens.
December 11, 2020
Congratulations, you’ve been selected for our free editorial work internship position!!! I was kind of freaking out. It’s only 10 weeks. I’m savvy enough to handle this. Think of the experience I’ll gain. Things were worsening with my Dad and the holidays were right around the corner but yep, I’m in. The timing was perfect. They sent this along to help describe what I’d be doing during this amazing internship opportunity:
“We looking for an interns that will help with editorial needs for: online magazine, newsletters, blogs and social media post”
WTH. Shouldn’t a lifestyle magazine publication use spell check or at least have an intern check their grammar? I thought it was a little odd but it still sounded like a pretty rad opportunity so I pressed on. I watched the required Trello intro tutorial and uploaded a couple requisite boards on the workspace site. I got the sense I was a couple decades older than my co-interns-so much chatter about when their graduation dates and their class schedules. Cara, let it go, they selected you to be on the team. You’ve got this.
December 17, 2020
The first assignment was posted. It made absolutely no sense. I was relieved that a couple other people posted on the site questioning the details of the assignment. I also noticed that after a couple hours, their comments along with their small little profile bubbles disappeared. Okay, don’t question or you’ll be fired from your fake, free “job”, got it. The description of the assignment didn’t seem to be written by someone who was fluent in the English language. What was going on here? It just felt off. I questioned whether I was just that far outside of my comfort zone that I was sabotaging my dream life or if the people who were running the internship were really humans. It all seemed so weird.
December 18, 2020
My Dad passed away.
December 19, 2020
I was supposed to upload my work, instead I sent off the following email:
“Greetings, I apologize, but I don’t feel that I am a good fit for the team. Please remove me from the internship”. They responded with “noted” (no capitalization or punctuation to be found)
mpoweredstate 