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jordblorg · 6 years

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two months ago, i wrote something i intended to write four months ago

in early march, i did my belated 2017 recap post, mostly (no, let’s be honest: entirely) for my own edification, but then i kept forgetting to post it on here because i live in a house without wifi and when i do have wifi i don’t have my laptop, but i spent the weekend housesitting and so i’ve been aimlessly on my laptop for an hour and i just remembered, oh, hey, that thing! i should do that thing.

so. anyway. 2017:

from 2013 to 2016, i ended each year (or started the new one) with a recap post in some form. there were years where i didn’t feel much like doing it, but i always felt like the act of forcing myself to sit down and reflect, or at the very least remember and record, would be a useful one, if not in the present moment then certainly later. and it’s already proven true: every so often, bored and scrolling my own tumblr to try and see what it tells me about myself, i stumble upon these yearly recaps and remember something about the year that i had forgotten. sometimes it’s a specific event. other times it’s a feeling or something as specific as a food. and on a few occasions it’s been particularly delightful to see a self who has no idea what’s to come -- in 2013, for example, i visited d.c. with a friend. we spent hours walking around the supreme court building, hoping to spot a justice, to no avail -- until the moment we left, at which point we saw clarence thomas from a distance, and mainly just the back of his head. and it was thrilling.

(a year and a half later, i would spend an entire semester working at the supreme court. it was one of the happiest semesters i’ve ever had. on the first snow day of that winter, i talked about the weather with the justice standing in front of me in the cafeteria line.)

so for all these reasons, i wanted, or felt that i should want, to write a brief post recapping my 2017, in words or in photos or in memes, watercolors, you name it. and i never did. and since the new year began, every week or so, i’ve thought to myself, well, hey, this one in particular is kind of an arbitrary deadline, you should still do a lil recap. and i’ve also spent a few evenings reading the super-old entries of bloggers i’ve followed for a few years - not even people i know well personally! - because watching people learn and grow online, if that’s how they should choose to do it, can be fun.

perhaps at the end of 2018 i’ll write a post about this being the year i simultaneously wanted to bloviate endlessly about all of my opinions, and also wanted to take myself off the radar screen completely, where every day i want to quietly delete all of my social media apps from my phone but haven’t as of this writing because of some vague fear that something will happen? that i will want to know about right away? or that if i take my ear away from the ongoing conversation of smart and angry people on my twitter feed, i’ll lose learning opportunities, and then say something i should know better than to say, but not know better, because i deleted my twitter account? i tried to download two apps yesterday that severely curb one’s ability to access other apps, the Bad Apps, on one’s phone, but neither had the functionality i desired unless i paid for premium, which, at that point, can i justify paying to outsource my self-control when reality i feel like i should be able to do that myself? (is this a healthy framing? i don’t think i’m wrong, but i could probably stand to be more generous to myself, except that i don’t want to be generous, i want to have the willpower of teddy roosevelt, he who cured his own asthma basically through sheer force of will, absent all of the historic toxicity and baggage with which he must also be inextricably associated? except i also know better than to frame recovery/health narratives as a matter of willpower?) i’ve lost the thread completely at this point, assuming i was ever holding a thread in the first place?

one time, years ago, an older male relative asked me if i exhaust myself. and oh my god. i do.

anyway. here’s some free association about 2017, the year i keep accidentally thinking it is, after reminding myself that it is not 2016, which is the year in my heart that i believe it to be.

i. the beginning of 2017 feels like it was a hundred thousand years ago, and at this point last year i had no idea that i’d be in alaska and out of my old field completely, and at this point this year everything that happened to me in the first half of the last one feels like a dream.

when i think about the months of january through may, i remember the weeks on end where each day i woke up and felt a void in the center of my stomach where normally the feelings that motivate me go. i had a hard time with basic self-care. on more days than i am comfortable admitting, i would go home at the end of a workday where i’d achieved nothing, sit on the couch in my living room, surf the internet until i fell asleep, and then wake up, only to do it all again. i felt empty and blank, and underneath those thick layers of emptiness and blankness i felt the licking flames of self-hatred and terror, and so there i would sit, watching the hours go by, on my couch.

sometimes i saw my friend nathalia, and we would laugh, and that would take some of the edge off of the tension that was winding its way around my stomach and my throat.

(eventually, i saw a psychiatrist, and started treatment - and medication, which, by the way, please talk to me if you’re reading this and feel some weird internal resistance to taking medication for mental health issues, because i get it and i’ve been there, and your feelings are valid, but oh my god it was absolutely the right decision to start taking medication and i will gladly tell anyone why - but the point is that eventually, i broke down, and my dad got me into an appointment. i have never felt more exhausted than when i was trying to navigate health insurance and the mental healthcare system in this country while mired in a particularly vicious period of anxiety and depression. and yet: i could afford it. and yet: i had a parent to call, who had the time and energy and means to help, who had a friend in D.C. who made a recommendation, who was able to get me an appointment two weeks after i finally broke down to another person on the phone. i cannot imagine how i would’ve gotten through the past year without the many, immense privileges and outside support systems that i so often take for granted. i’m fighting with my own brain every day, still, and yet i am still luckier than i will ever know.)

i can still picture my short walk from the metro stop nearest my office to the building where i worked. my stomach sunk every day.

but there were some good days, too, where i didn’t have to go to the office, or even worse, the capitol, and instead got to go to my favorite building in the city, and do something i knew i was good at. they don’t let you keep the tickets you get when you’re admitted to the supreme court as a member of the press corps, because you have to turn them back in to the security guard once you’re seated, but after my first visit i tried to remember to take pictures. i knew what i was doing, and i felt like it mattered. i got some work linked by a website i admire. on at least one occasion, i wrote a story that included the voice of a source none of the national reporters on the case had chosen to include, and it was an important voice, and i felt pride in the story and in myself. in february, rupsha came and visited me and the rest of her friends on her birthday, and mollie flew into town for the celebration. we got day drunk at a local bar, and successfully begged off a slice of birthday cake from the strangers who were celebrating their own camaraderie at a different table. i found a framing co-op near my neighborhood, and it felt very adult to know how to get to the place where i could get nice things framed. nathalia and i fell in love with an exhibit at the hirschorn about ragnar kjartansson, so we went twice and stayed for hours, and both times it mattered less that i’d spent so many nights and weekends unable to muster the willpower or even desire to leave my apartment, to explore the city where i lived. sometimes, often, i felt afraid. i never went to the monuments at night. the first five months of 2017 proceeded apace.

another shiny moment in the muck: i spent new year’s eve and new year’s day in brooklyn, first at a neighborhood bar and later on a rooftop and eventually in my best friend’s apartment. i made nathalia laugh so hard with a joke about potatoes that she snorted champaign out of her nose. i slept in a tent set up on the kitchen floor, and did almost nothing, but very happily. we had a spontaneous bachelorette lunch at the MoMA. i spent the night of january 2nd curled up on a tiny loveseat in a tiny apartment, with my college roommate and her boyfriend, and the next day i borrowed a blue dress, and the three of us took the bus to city hall and bought flowers on the way, and then we helped another of our old roommates get married. i could write about my memories of this day for a very long time. it was easily one of my happiest memories of the year. after the vows, we went and ate italian food in a near-empty restaurant. after we parted ways, i went to books of wonder, made my way to the bus that would take me back to dupont circle, and read a book bobby gave me for graduation, and cried and cried and cried.

later in january i covered the protest beat at the inauguration, and watched about 50 reporters swarm a single burning trash can, and later one single burning car. i wondered how many other cars were burning in the city for reasons less obviously political. speaking of, i read this poem about four billion times. the things that bothered me at the end of 2016, including but not limited to the privilege of perceived neutrality, continued to bother me well into the new year. they bother me still. on the day in the present that i am writing this, it is international [working] women’s day, according to whoever decides these things.

also in january: after five reporters covered every conceivable angle of the inauguration, i was sent alone to cover the women’s march. i made the front page and i thought the print headline was weird and off-putting. i don’t think back on any part of january with fondness, except for the part where i saw a drunken astronaut give an amazingly concise speech. the president tried, and mostly succeeded, to ban refugees from entering the country. my brother slept over in DFW airport, passing out water bottles and screaming at the top of his lungs. my parents got home, weren’t sure where he’d gone, and then spotted him in the background of the coverage on the TV news. my cousin got her first period at the women’s march.

in february, zach was deciding where to go to college, and we gathered in austin on the flimsy pretense of data-gathering. it rained the whole time. most nights, on my walk home, i’d pass by protests. i went on a handful of unmemorable dates. rupsha’s aforementioned birthday, the best weekend of the month by far. more work.

in march and april: coverage of a new supreme court justice. some watercoloring and some beautiful weather with nathalia, and some time, but nowhere close to enough, with others. three different passover seders, many hours spent listening to aimee mann. the white house press secretary referred to concentration camps as “holocaust centers” and said, out loud, to other educated adults, that hitler “didn’t even sink to the level of using chemical weapons.”

just kidding: four different seders, including the best one, with rupsha, in new jersey. boo wore pink and miles found the afikomen. the anchor stayed in my stomach until the very end, but i saw more live music: overcoats with liz, the wild reeds with nathalia, where we stood right in the front, holding a plate of nachos and singing along.

in may i could see the light at the end of a tunnel and i flew to san francisco and i wanted to stay forever. at brunch, the young couple to our immediate left let us hold their sweet baby while they ate chicken biscuits. we went into a pirate-themed store and the department of imagination and we found a man in a storefront at the alleyway, embroidering at the end of the world. my stomach was hurting but it felt inevitable and fine.

i left my job two weeks early and drove home and didn’t feel better, and my brothers graduated high school. josh spent the week wearing dresses that suited him and walked the stage at graduation in well-fitting black heels.

the summer was a mixed bag. i sat and felt anxious in a workplace in which i felt i was not thriving, and sometimes i went home and had panic attacks. but my roommate was a comical nightmare, and i felt loved and embraced by a community that spread its arms in all directions. i crashed on couches and in beds every night of the last three weeks. i went to museums with my college roommates. we went to clubs and stayed out all night. K, still happily married, prodded me onto a surfboard. we went to lake placid and it was wonderful; we were in brooklyn and it was wonderful; i studied for the LSAT i still thought i would eventually take and stayed out late and it was wonderful. S visited and it was sometimes wonderful, and we had a conversation we had needed to have for a long, long time. by the time he reached the point he’d been avoiding, two days later, we were separated on the phone, and i stood on the street outside of rupsha’s apartment. i took notes and cried.

and then...what? i spent a week in malala, oregon, sleeping outside and flinging myself as far away from everything as i possibly could. i cried again in the airport and i wasn’t sure why. i moved to anchorage, alaska, and gradually fell in love, and maybe a post about this city is coming another day. i wrote a tiny bit about my job. i take two buses to work every day, and two buses home. i decided to run a 5k, and i half-walked half-ran with some regularity, and felt good about my body and also weird about my body. i ran the 5k. i went on more dates. i felt happy and unhappy. i went on a handful of hikes before the snow came down. i slept in a freezing cold and wind-battered tent. i made toddlers laugh and then i learned their names. we threw a birthday party for avril lavigne and watched old meg ryan movies on VHS. i listened to more great music. i made latkes and sufganiyot for hanukkah. one day erin and i came home from the gym one frosty morning only to find everyone standing on the back porch, watching two moose, a mama and a baby, taking a nap in our back yard.

on the last week of the year, i house-sat for a family with two high-energy dogs and one low-energy cat. i took allergy medicine and made good use of the borrowed car. i walked the dogs past streets named after the solar system and i drove the car down the highway and to frozen patches of beach along the coast. i spent new year’s eve in sweatpants at the blue fox. none of us wore any makeup and erin sang three karaoke songs with gusto. the countdown to 2018 took us all by surprise. i started reading more often. that was also very good.

#2017 #year in review #very belated #i'm not even bothering to reread this NOW

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vdayucla · 6 years

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Job interview questions you’ll always, always get...

The toughest job interview questions – and, not coincidentally, the ones most useful to hirers – are hypothetical or behavioural questions where interviewers ask what you’d do in different situations. “How would you handle a racist boss? How would you prioritise multiple time-consuming requests? What qualifies you to work here?” Interviewers might not know if you lied on your CV about your experience or skills. But they’ll know if you lack the experience and skills to give convincing answers to their hypothetical questions.

Any competent interviewer will ask at least some of the following questions. Here are some examples of how to sound like you’re not just making up stuff along the way, by fleshing them out with convincing details and narrative hooks...

Q: Welcome to this interrogation. How’s your day been?

A: I had a good breakfast and the weather is good. My day is already off to a good start.

Q: What’s your background?

A: My colleagues would describe me as a marketing professional with experience around the four major pillars of marketing – i.e. branding, copywriting, design and messaging. The reason I have expertise in so many areas is that, in a way, my career has evolved in the opposite direction of most other professionals. Most of my colleagues began their careers with simple project scopes, and over the years took on increasingly complex projects. When I graduated in the early 2010s, I suddenly found myself working on two rebranding initiatives at two different non-profits, simultaneously. It was a fiery baptism, but it also gave to me an understanding of the importance of macro-level strategic thinking in marketing. I remember the Vice President and I would spend hours on analysing how different fonts and brand colours could send the right or wrong message to the different local communities we wanted to reach.

Since then, I’ve taken this macro-level expertise and applied it to developing more effective micro-level projects, from brand collateral to social media. Because I have both macro- and micro-level experience, I’m able to recognise where bottlenecks and delays tend to occur – thus, I can engineer new content workflows that minimise those bottlenecks and delays. This integrated approach is how I bring value to teams, enabling them to do more whilst reducing overhead. In the end, that’s why people like working with me – because I help them to save money.

Q: What’s an example of a project you did?

A: One of my earliest and most rewarding campaigns was “Safe & Effective”, a project by Socialist Health Access to educate patients and providers in California about the effectiveness of long-term birth control methods like IUDs, which Obamacare had made free to all women – until President Trump revoked the birth control mandate last month. We knew plenty of women were excited about IUDs due to their 99.9 per cent effectiveness, but the problem was that many providers were still wrongly withholding such methods from their patients – they were under the impression that IUDs should only be offered to women who’re older than 30 or have had kids, a guideline that was reversed years ago.

To enhance our outreach, we assembled a coalition of other non-profits to help with spreading awareness. But instead of treating our coalition partners as mere assets, I wanted to them to be equal partners with an equal voice in campaign messaging. What I did was develop a campaign video and supporting collateral in which representatives from all our coalition partners had a role in speaking out for birth control advocacy. This ensured our partners had a visible stake in the campaign, and that they would own the campaign’s failure or success as much as we did. This result was greater communication and visibility versus similar past campaigns, and our analytics indicated by the end that we’d reached an audience in the high tens of thousands – a number roughly equal to the number of PCPs in California. I think we made a difference, and I’ve used a similar approach for all my subsequent project management.

Q: How would you get allies to help with a campaign?

A: The work of reaching out to allies starts well before you decide to reach out to them for help. First you must analyse your relationship with them – i.e. how have you treated them in the past, and why would they help you? The most effective allies are those which feel that they’re treated not as assets to be exploited when something is needed, but as equal partners with an equal stake and voice. And it starts be showing that you’re willing to incorporate their input into your decision-making, on projects small and large.

Q: How do you work on a team?

A: My litmus test for how well my team operates is how well we prioritise priorities, and how well we resolve conflict.

Most teams try to prioritise priorities by simply prioritising deadlines from the most senior stakeholder, but this sort of linear logic only works in a strictly top-down organisation with no exceptions. I’ve never seen a non-profit like this – most have multiple departments with overlapping senior stakeholders, all with critical projects on their plates. Whilst in some cases I’ve had the power to arbitrate whose projects are priority, I know arbitrary decisions will only lead to more conflict between stakeholders in the future.

Instead I prioritise projects by consensus, encouraging discussion between stakeholders to come to agreement on whose projects are a top priority. I consider team consensus the best sign of sound judgement and decision-making.

As for team conflict, I find it to be symptomatic of a failure to prevent such conflict in the first place, or at least communicate clearly. To inoculate against this, I’ve worked to move my teams toward transparent workflows, so that staff can not only monitor the progress of our projects through public status updates but evaluate cloud-based project documentation to understand the reasoning behind our team’s decisions. This minimises potential misunderstandings and ensures a common base of knowledge during internal discussions.

Q: Why are you interested in this job?

A: I’ll tell a feel-good story about how I come from a family of difference-makers, and how I believe I have a duty to continue that tradition. Having worked in healthcare advocacy and communication at both a macro and micro level, I see the need for communicators who can articulate the importance of complex issues to various audiences. This job would combine my professional experience around health advocacy with my personal commitment to healthcare as a basic human right – and whilst I’ve been called a socialist for my work, that’s why I’m unafraid to take this kind of job. I’m here to be a difference-maker.

Q: Why are you interested in this job’s company?

A: Whilst I’m proud of the work I’ve done on behalf of different non-profits, in recent years the causes for which I’ve advocated have become muddled, from a strategic perspective. For one recent client, I was asked to promote the organisation’s programs around children’s nutrition, addiction treatment and elder care – all at once. And although I’ve always done successful campaigns, I also recognise that advocacy is most successful when it revolves around a single issue. Some of the challenging issues for which I’ve advocated in the past include HIV/AIDS, campus violence and LGBT health discrimination. Working at your organisation would be an opportunity to refocus my career back on single issue advocacy, and given your group’s reputation, I’d be proud to advocate on your behalf.

Q: Do you have any questions?

Of course I do. A good interviewee always has questions afterward to show off his or her research skills. Don’t botch an otherwise good interview by forgetting this!

#PERSONAL

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