The slow descent into madness

Here's why I hate the job-search process, especially at my age:

When you're a twenty-year-old college student looking for a really basic summer position, you're applying to very simple, slightly-higher-than-minimum wage jobs in the service and retail industry, most like. In my case, I have little to no experience doing these kinds of things. My summer jobs have been at summer camps, theaters and office buildings. Here in Saratoga, I'm looking for your average service industry job. Unfortunately, the town seems to be glutted with students, high school and college, who want a summer position, and it seems like few people are hiring a really average little guy like me who has no previous experience.

What does that mean for me? It means I spend my days twittling my thumbs, calling places I've applied to and applying to new places, hearing my very simple first name getting mangled in all kinds of ways (So far: Max, Michael, and Arthur. Yes, Arthur.) When you're an unskilled kind of guy looking for a few hundred bucks in your pocket, people treat you like offal floating down the great river of humanity. I get referred to managers who aren't there, owners who come in when they feel like it, and on-line applications that I know never get looked at.

What makes this whole process worse is that I just learned what the Radio Play schedule is going to look like: 10 am to 5pm, Danny tells me. Which is essentially when most jobs will ask me to work. I can try and talk to Danny and Adam. If I find a night job, that'd be great, and if I found a job in the evening that worked from, say, 6 to eleven or so, that'd be great too. But I'm at a place right now where I can't be very picky. If it really comes down to it and I can only find jobs that will hire in the afternoon...well, something's gonna give, I'm not sure what. I have a paltry seven-hundred fifty in my bank account right now, which is about two hundred short of paying for the next two months rent...plus I have to pay Ben back for the money he forwarded for the security deposit, which is about two hundred fifty. And I also have to eat. I've managed to stick to the housing-project diet of pasta and tomato sauce, with the occasional gift from Margaret's Mrs. London's job. But at some point I'm going to need some vitamins in my system. Lord knows I ain't getting any of those right now.

The shitty thing is that this is my first glimpse into my life for the five years, maybe more. I'm gonna be an actor/writer, god dammit, and that means making extremely little money for long periods of time. Now, hopefully it won't be this bad all; after all, I could probably find temp jobs to keep me afloat, wherever I'll be, so I won't be scrounging for pennies and sighing wistfully at the Barnes and Noble "new music" shelf (White Stripes, your album calls to me). But it won't be too far off from this. And boy, does that ever depress me.