The Clothes Problem Again

I was late to class today. Not by much (the university clocktower was striking 11:00 as I ran into the building) but late nonetheless.

I was late because I didn't have anything to wear.

I didn't buy spring/summer clothes last year. While I was still in the US, I survived temping by cycling through three pairs of polyester slacks alternated with about five work-appropriate blouses. There was no air-conditioning in my apartment, so I would come home and strip to a pair of gym shorts and a tank top.

In India, I bought seven blue salwars (and one purple one -- and received one orange salwar and one silver salwar as gifts).

Long story short, there's not much in my closet that's appropriate to wear -- especially to teach -- on a warm spring day. All the temp-clothes have long worn thin. I have tried to rock a kurta over jeans, but even that just looks faded and limp, a reminder that all of my India clothes (and, in fact, all of my jeans) spent three months being washed and wrung out in a five-gallon bucket.

When I did slip into the large lecture hall, late and miserably shabby, one of the other TAs leaned over and whispered to me "don't worry, I still think you look hot."

In preparation for the upcoming move, I have started selling off seven years' worth of accumulated textbooks; I went to the theatre building lounge with a few large (and heavy) boxes, set up a makeshift display, and within the first day made $139. If I sell them all I'll have around $220. I had hoped to save the money for the move, but some of it may have to go toward clothes.

We will see.

Blue Dreams of Cherry Blossoms

Those of you following the blog know that I'm "on the market" this year; that I will need some kind of a job to follow my imminent graduation, and that I would prefer it to be a nice job, with things like sick days and health insurance, and possibilities for advancement.

Although my initial fear was that I was unqualified for anything except blogging, I have since created a pretty spiffy LinkedIn profile (wanna connect? email me at prettybluesalwar-at-gmail-dot-com), gotten my resume professionally analyzed at a Resume Rodeo, and crashed a rather famous national convention to talk to industry reps.

Long story short, I'm more qualified than I thought. Thank goodness.

What's the next step?

For me, it was deciding on where to live. I know that some people think the job should come first, but environment seemed to want to come first for me, for two reasons:

1. What I want is an opportunity rather than a specific position. My education thus far has been... um... liberal, and so I'm not lined up for any particular type of opening. Whatever job I get, I'm going to have to get through my communicative skills and my ability to sell myself. And, because I know so little about the professional work world (though I know a great deal about the service work world), I'm open to any opportunity that I can find.

2. I do not have the money, or the time, for a national job search. I have one spring break, which I know I'll have to spend in a single city, meeting and talking to as many people as possible. After graduation, I could temp in my sleepy university town, but my best bet would be to relocate to the city I visited over spring break, start temping there (at more prestigious companies, natch, with possible temp-to-perm options), and continue to meet people and apply for positions until I find something permanent.

So. Where, in the entire wide world, should I go? One friend suggested I go to Singapore; I've always wanted to live in Toronto; Chicago's just a train ride away.

I knew I didn't want to move to a city where I didn't have any connections or current friends. That's what I did after undergrad; moved to Minneapolis on the strength of an internship that fell through, and spent a year in the city with no social or professional connections. I'm smarter now. I know, for example, that the bigger your social network is, the more opportunities you have for both work and fun.

So I made a list of the places where I knew people. And then I thought about each of these places.

And then my heart did something kind of silly. It told me "Blue, the most exciting place in the world to be next year will be Washington, DC. Can you imagine, living at the heart of the place where a new president is going to be working to restore our country?"

I told my heart to be quiet for a moment, and reminded it about things like "no taxation without representation" and DC's expensivity and the fact that it might not be Obama, after all, doing the restoring (to which my heart responded "okay, but Hillary would be cool too!"), and that the idea of moving to a place because it was close to a bunch of exciting white buildings seemed... romantic, at best.

But my sister lives in DC, and I miss her.

So I called my sis to ask about life in DC, and what kind of opportunities would be available to me.

And she talked about what she was doing at work, and what her friends were doing, and then she said the sentence that clinched the deal: "... and with your skill set, we might be able to get you an entry-level job in a think tank."

Which she had to immediately follow up with "Hey! I said might!"

Long story short: after research, consideration, conversation, and a bit of idealistic romanticism (the heart wants what it wants, after all), I'm flying out to DC in two weeks to go on the "informational interview tour," to see what actually is available for a person with my resume, and whether or not I'll be moving there this summer.

Hold your thumbs for me.