The Nougatmachine

Continuing where we left off from the old site, here’s the current job situation. Today was my first day at my new part-time “in-betweener” job working in the produce department of Winn-Dixie. It’s all right, I guess, but tiring. It’s a better job than working at Willow Valley Family Restaurant was back in High School, but hardly what I want to do with the rest of my life.

“So how about that rest of your life thing,” you say. “Prove to me you won’t be in Winn-Dixie twenty years from now.”

Well, I’ve been looking for TV jobs at various stations and I’ve sent in some applications here and there, sent my resume hither and thither, and I’m definitely feeling frustrated with it. It’s one thing to not hear back from Cartoon Network (one of the places I applied to), but it’s another to actually have a contact giving you the inside scoop and still not seeming to get anywhere with it (which is also the case with another job prospect). I haven’t given up, I’m still looking into those avenues, I’m just not feeling particularly great about them now. It doesn’t help that I’ve been trying to piece together a demo reel from some saved school projects and so far I feel like a lot of the things I’ve done were fun while they were in school, but for the real world don’t look professional at all. Blah. I’m also having fun with the whole “experience catch-22″ situation wherein a lot of the jobs I’m interested in require experience, yet my lack of experience makes it harder for me to get jobs in the first place.

Which brings us to the more-or-less out-of-left-field (ugh, too clichés in a row, but I’m tired) potential job I’m looking at now, which is a “key manager” (basically, assistant manager) position at a local Gamestop. I went there last week really just as part of my in-between job search, but as I got talking to the guy at the store one thing led to another and I ended up applying for a store manager-in-training program. He then explains that the program is basically 90 days of training, after which you can become a store manager, but only if a position is open at that time. If it isn’t, you get canned, but hey, now you have something nice to put on your resumé. Retail management was something I had never really considered, but I figured, hey, it couldn’t hurt. I don’t really have any experience with retail (although I suppose the library sort of counts) but a management position certainly is more of a ‘real job’ then a clerk or cashier.

Anyway, I got a call back and had an interview two days ago. The interview went really well, I think. In the interview the manager told me that he has no real say over whether I get into their training program, as that’s handled by the district supervisor, but he’d pass my information along. But even if I don’t get into that, there’s a key manager position opening up, and am I interested? “Heck yes,” as the kids say these days, and I should find out within two weeks whether or not I get it. In a way, this would be even better than the training program (because it’s secure) but in a way, it wouldn’t be (because it pays less).

So would that be selling out and giving up on my grandiose filmmaking dreams? I don’t know. I’ve already told myself that no matter what happens I’m going to try to write a second screenplay on my own time, but this of course still doesn’t actually solve the whole “getting it made” problem, and nobody wants to be That Guy with dozens of unproduced screenplays.

But since this entry is already way too long anyway, I’ll just not think about that semi-troubling notion for now. Me being the perennial worrier I am, there will surely be more to come later, so I’ll simply postpone the navel gazing for another time.