Gloom with a View

It's been quite a while since I've posted anything of a personal nature; my last truly personal post was back in May, when I wrote about being invisible.

I believe I have mentioned the situation with my mom's emergency heart surgery in January and her seemingly never-ending recuperation due to an infection that will not go away, as well as the parallel issue of my grandmother's fall and subsequent decline and death.  However, although those things are partly what inspired this post, they are not the main reasons, nor the main issues.

The fact is, I am bored and frustrated with my life and the standstill that it seems to be in.  It occurred to me the other night, as I was thinking about this, that every one of my past hobbies and enjoyments are no longer of interest to me, and I have almost nothing to replace them with.  Dance, poetry and music have been a HUGE part of most of my life.  From childhood into adulthood,  I wrote poetry, most of which I still have and enjoy re-reading on occasion.  I listened to music all the time, but also loved to play and sing as well; I played the clarinet for five years (from 5th through 9th grades), and taught myself to play the guitar as a teen.  I have been both a church chorister and a choir director, and have sung in several church choirs as well.  I was a professional bellydancer for almost 20 years, and in the process learned to play zills (finger cymbals) and do some very basic drumming.  All of this has gone by the wayside in the last several years, and I'm not sure why.

So I am doing my best to create an "updated" life, with new hobbies and interests, and (hopefully) a new career and job to go with them.  I've got a decent number of wonderful pen pals with whom I correspond regularly, and the meetup group events and people are fun, when I can get to them.  I have also pinched Stuart's bass guitar and its accoutrements from his room, and I am going to attempt to learn to play it.  (I bought it for him for Christmas while he was still in high school, and he hasn't used it in years, so I am repo-ing the entire setup.  Move over, Patricia Morrison!)  And I've decided to try creating some gothic-style decorations to spruce up our apartment and garden.

As far as job hunting goes, I have spent quite a bit of time improving my resume and my LinkedIn profile and connections.  I also frequently check the online job boards of various museums and anthropological associations.  However, in the six years since I received my MA, I have been searching constantly, have applied for the few local jobs I found that I was both qualified for and interested in, and haven't ever gotten as far as an interview.  This situation has caused some serious depression on my part, and I'm honestly not sure how to deal with it anymore.  I feel like I wasted my time going back to school for eight years while working 40 hours a week and raising a family.  Was it worth it?  With thousands of dollars in student loans coming due, I'm not really sure anymore.

What do YOU do to promote yourself when looking for a new career/position?  Have you used LinkedIn or other online services?  If so, how did they work for you?  Do you have any advice, thoughts, or opinions you would like to share?

Fairy Outfit for Work

My apologies for not posting anything since the 3rd.  I've been running around like a mad thing, working overtime and then cavorting madly about all night with my fans going home to do my laundry, then crawl into bed.  And I'm still going to Clearlake every other weekend to visit my mom in the nursing center and take care of her house and bills.  I'm hoping someday she will finally get to go home, and I won't have to do this forever.  Anyway...

A lovely friend in Wales sent me a box of gothic goodies a few years ago, and inside it there was a GORGEOUS purple/black tunic-style top with pointy bits trailing from the sleeves and hem, and lots of beads and sequins all over it.  (Think of Stevie Nicks as a fairy.)  I adore this top, but I haven't ever worn it because "I have nowhere to wear it".  Yesterday I thought to myself, SCREW this, I'm going to wear it to work!  So I did, with a pair of plain black leggings and a pair of black leather heeled booties with silver buckles.  I look like a Dark Fairy!  :-) 

Unfortunately, my throwaway camera is full, and I don't have a new one yet, so you'll have to wait for a photo.  But rest assured, I would do Stevie Nicks proud... 

In the meantime, here is a lovely picture of a fairy for your viewing pleasure!

August: "I'm SO Goth..."

Goth is the only community that REALLY HAS discovered time travel; the past, present and future are melded into one glorious black, pink and purple family...

 

Book Review: Death, a Life

 Death, a Life  (with George Pendle)

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, it's a weird title.  And it suits the book just perfectly.  Taking the reader from before the creation of the world up to the (almost) present day, with side trips to both Heaven and Hell, the autobiography of Death Itself should indeed be considered a "life", or at least, an attempt at one.

I find this book to be both funny and terrible at the same time.  Not terrible in the sense of being written badly; on the contrary, it's beautifully written, with lots of quiet (and not so quiet) puns and plays on words that really made me smile.  Rather, it's terrible in that it brings the reader face to face with some truly horrendous aspects of people and of our society in general.  I'm sure there are a lot of things I'm still missing when I read it, but I find something new every time that I hadn't noticed before, and it gets better each time around.

Death, a Life is a "must read" for any goth worth their absinthe.

Meetup Event: Goth Mall Crawl!

Yesterday our meetup group had our first Goth Mall Crawl.  I've never been a mall goth, and I was dying to find out what it was like!  No, seriously, I just thought it would be fun, and possibly nostalgic for anyone who had ever been a mall goth, only without all the angst.  Also I haven't been shopping with anyone besides Martin in ages, so it was perfect.

Anyway, while only four of us actually made it, we had a blast!  I knew both the others already, and one brought her 16-year-old daughter, who I have seen occasionally but haven't spent time with in a few years. We met at Hot Topic, and ended up spending probably an hour there, looking through everything (and I mean EVERY thing!) and trying things on.  I ended up with a bottle of awesome pink/blue spatter nail polish and two great pairs of shorts that had "Buy one, get one for $1" tags on them!  I was really lucky to find both in my size, as there was only one pair of each left, AND they were the only ones I liked. 

The Misfits shorts (I'm thinking of removing the back pockets so you can see the letters, it says "Misfits"):



The purple/black tie-dyed distressed shorts by LOVEsick, and the nail polish (which has a LOT more blue flecks in it than this pic does):

Then we had lunch, followed by a stroll around the rest of the donut-shaped mall.  I lost count of how many stores we actually went into; it really didn't matter because we were doing so much talking, anyway.  When we finally got back to Hot Topic, we'd been there for almost five hours... no wonder my feet hurt! 

The one thing we didn't do was take any pictures.  :-(  I guess we were too busy talking to care! 

Have you ever done the mall goth thing?  

Adventures in Eyeliner - GoodGoth to the Rescue!

This post actually started out as a rant.  However, it turned into something different, thanks to good communication and lots of determination.

It all started out when I ran out of liquid eyeliner in May.  I was using Hot Topic's Blackheart line, and I really liked it, so I wanted to get more.  However, I couldn't get to the mall right away, so I grabbed the tube of Milani eyeliner I'd bought but only used once; it was awful!  Seemed to take about six minutes to dry, so unless I kept my eyes scrunched almost shut while it dried, it smeared all over the top of my eye shadow.  I used it as lightly as possible during the week, then threw it out on Sunday before I went to the mall... two malls, as it turned out.

But guess what?  Hot Topic has discontinued their Blackheart makeup line, and there was no liquid eyeliner to be had there!  So I headed back to Sephora, where I had just purchased an eye shadow palette (more on that in another post).  However, they didn't have anything much in liquid liner, so I went downstairs to M.A.C.  They're pricey, but have a good reputation.  They had two types of liquid liner, one for thin lines, and the Penultimate Eye Liner, a pen-style liner which was supposed to be SO much more versatile than a brush applicator, with options for both thin and thicker lines; I picked that one, and walked out with a $20 (+ tax) liner instead of the $3 one I came for.  Problem solved?  Not even...

The Penultimate Eye Liner turned out to be the Penultimate Disaster.  It would only make very thin lines, it did not have any staying power and was gone under my eyes before the end of the day, and worst of all...  IT. WOULD. NOT. DRY.  Acckkk!!  After a week, I took it back to the store for a refund.  I decided to use just pencil until I could find something acceptable.  It didn't look right and didn't stay on particularly well, but at least I didn't look like I had two smeary black raccoon eyes!

Then I got an e-mail from GoodGoth.com advertising their "13% Off for Friday the 13th" sale.  I had found a liquid liner there that I liked awhile back, but they stopped carrying it when I tried to get more.  On the off chance that they had something else, I checked... and there it was again, Kleancolor's Hardcore Black Metallic Liquid Liner!!  For the same $20 (no tax, shipping included) that I had used to purchase a single liner from M.A.C., I got FIVE of these.  :-)

Nine days later... I finally received my order.  (They take anywhere from 2-9 business days to actually ship an order; I guess it depends on if they have it in stock or have to order it, but that's a bit long, if you ask me.)  I opened the box and happily put my liners away.  Next morning, I opened one and used it -- or tried to.  After several minutes of shaking and scraping inside the tube, I barely had anything on the brush.  It was either almost completely dried out or almost empty!  I tried all five tubes, and two of them were bad.  Arrrgghhh!!  At least I had three good ones, so I wasn't stranded again, but I was not a happy bat.

I checked GoodGoth's return/exchange policy, only to find that they don't allow returns OR exchanges on cosmetics "for health reasons".  In a total snit, I sent off an e-mail telling them that I was furious because I got defective items and couldn't exchange them, and that I was never going to buy from them again BUT I would be sure to tell all my friends about it.  After the weekend, I got a very nice e-mail from them saying that their policy is worded that way so people don't order makeup and then return it just because they don't like the color, or whatever.  But because I had received "defective" goods, they would be glad to exchange or refund, my choice.  Sweet!  I told them I'd love an exchange, and did I need to return the bad ones?  They replied that I did NOT have to return them (they took my word for it), and my replacements were already on their way!  Two days later, I had my package... and they didn't just send two replacements, they replaced my ENTIRE order!!  I now have EIGHT tubes of eye liner, which will probably last me for at least the rest of the year!  (And even if some of them turn out to be bad, I won't complain.)

So, true to my promise, I have now told my friends all about how GoodGoth.com came through for me when I totally did NOT expect it.  I guess the moral of the story is:  Don't give up, but do speak up!  If you never ask, the answer is always No.  If you DO ask, sometimes you get even more than you asked for!  :-)

July: "I'm SO Goth..."

"Steampunk is what happens when Victorian goths discover the color brown..."






Well, I'm not really into steampunk, but I love this photo and the wonderful outfits!!  (Is that guy wearing a dead bird???)  And I also happen to like brown...  ;-)