I tried to make some notes last night about topics I wanted to address in today�s diary entry, which I intended to make good as penance for yesterday�s shitty one and also for the several empty days between the shitty one and the one that preceded it. (My sister wrote last night, apropos of some issues she�s having with Blogger, "I have to type in Word and then c&p, but it's too easy to just never finish when you're in Word, you know?" Oh yes, I know.) But I think I need to learn to make better lists or to lay off the cabernet before I do so, because here�s the beginning of last night�s abortive attempt: 1. Other thing 2. For example. My sister reads my diary now and I read hers � Mary, shall I link to you here? � so I hope we do not get into a feud anytime soon because then what venue would be left to me in which to trash her? I would be sadly bereft.

I am at the bacon shack, parked in front of my PC in full office-girl regalia. This is not because I�m deluded but because I have a superstition about sending out resumes, writing cover letters, etc. � I like to be in uniform when I do these activities, the exact opposite of Penn and the Nazi flag, I like to dress and comport myself professionally and I guess as if I already have the job, a job; I feel like it keeps me focused and fully in mind of what I�m doing. I hope that doesn�t sound pathetic. Steve likes to talk about a mythical (theoretical?) one percent, like if you partly lock your knee joints you will be, he says, a one percent better swimmer. Now that I think about it, maybe the "mythical" should be mine, at least in this case. If I feel one percent better about myself and/or the tasks at hand, then I will come off one percent better and sooner or later, statistically speaking, that one percent is bound to make the difference. Though now that I think about this, putting my faith in a combination of mythology and statistics seems an unmissable recipe for disappointment, so maybe I will try to refine my metrics one of these days. Yesterday afternoon I spent upwards of three hours customizing resumes and composing cover letters for two jobs. It�s a lot of time, right? And it�s so easy not to spend the time, because on Monster and HotJobs you can Apply For This Job by clicking a button. But as I have said before, I think and believe-it-because-I-have-to that there are companies that will recognize and appreciate the time you�ve put in just for them, for their job only, and that your effort will register with them in exactly the way you want it to. Also don�t you know I am prejudiced in favor of the narrative, and I like to make the cover letter serve that purpose at the same time as it functions as a Cliff Notes version of the resume. Part of what�s going on when I�m sitting here in my Ann Taylor skirt is that I�m asking, OK, who am I when I am applying for this job? And then I answer the question to myself and find a way to answer it, in words and logically � sometimes there are no words to the to-myself part � to someone else. The reason I don�t apply for that many jobs despite what I suppose you might call my desperation, the reason I viscerally resist taking the first dumb secretarial job I could get: I think it has to do with this, with how I need Potential Outcome X to be a condition that makes sense. Or � a phrase has stuck with me lately from the New Yorker capsule review of "Thirteen," an emotionally coherent work about incoherent longing � to have coherence. And the thing is there�s no one way to make sense, I know this when I read the listings for two very different jobs, say, and know equally viscerally that I could be happy and do well at both of them; the Latin root haereo means to stick to but also to have become stuck or bogged down, it�s when you make it cohaereo that you get the idea of externalization and connection that the English retains. One must never think of the narrative as the enemy or the rut, that is my point. So I write two very different cover letters making two different cases that if you were a robot *you* could make the case might as well be from two different people, and nevertheless they are both true, 100% true, and when that is so they are worth every minute I put into them. And if I can�t write a letter that�s this kind of true, I don�t want the job.

[Although this didn�t make it onto my list � that is, I don�t think it did � I was also thinking last night about this kind of true vs. lying or should I say "lying"; someone�s Sunday Google search led him or her to a page on my diary on which that issue is self-flagellatingly front and center. Mostly there�s a chunk of my life I wish I could forget or at least forget how I acted during it in failing to do the most basic kind of standing up for myself, pass over, but every once in a while I like to poke at one part of the scar and try to reconstruct how it was that I thought it was a good idea, how it was rational, to use that term (a) for so many diverse habits of (my) mind that (b) had less to do with lying than with conceding-not-conceding that (1) the truth and (2) telling it could be pretty fucking scary. What, finally, did I lie about? Nothing. What did I do that was so bad?]

And actually � I�m not bragging here so much as reminding myself � when I do write such a letter, when I really mean it, my response rate is nothing to be ashamed of. So yesterday afternoon I sent out one, two long-belabored coherencies and this morning in my Inbox I had a reply to one of them asking me what my salary requirements were. This morning already! I know, it�s not much (but it�s mine) but I implore you, please try to understand how much even a little thing like this matters to me and assures me that in some small way I can make myself understood. I went online to investigate some recent salary surveys and I must say I almost stopped breathing � there�s one job title, for instance, that describes positions for which I was applying three years ago, and during that time the job�s median salary has gone down over 30%. Aiee. The median for the job I applied for yesterday is about 25% more than what perma-Gastro would have topped out at and 31% less than what Lucille is getting at the government job that should have been mine, a tiny bit more than the U.S. military is paying Popeye before per diems and that sort of thing enter into it. (Tell me again why I bothered going to college, would you?) And of course in replying to the e-mail I had to lowball it even further and give them a number that ends up being sub-Popeye and slightly less than I was making when I got my first software raise in October of 1997. O� sont les neiges d�antan? I mean, fuck. Must remind self: It�s a stable company and a stable industry. The job does sound cool and like I�d be good at it, and it�s clear from the job description that it answers to more senior positions into which a peon with moxie and skills and a few years� experience could potentially make an internal move. It is, first and foremost, a job. Must remind self: I wouldn�t feel nearly as lousy about myself and the salary range I�m apparently looking at if people around me who toil in more recession-proof m�tiers didn�t insist on reporting theirs or, worse, on tsk-tsking conspiratorially about the grave misfortune of some poor bastard they then proceed to tell me about and it turns out he�s making more than I could dream of; in this regard I feel like I imagine Sundry does when people slag on Bellevue to her face, how on earth do people think that kind of behavior is acceptable? This salary range is where I fucking *live*, so shut up. I feel like I�m totally becoming a socialist, I increasingly don�t want to spend time with people who have or make more money than I do � and, no pity please just the facts, this is pretty much everyone � because sooner or later someone�s going to raise the salary subject because they were raised in a barn and they do think this behavior is acceptable and I�m in for another round of maintaining a smiley silence that means, my compatriots gradually realize as their conversational sallies remain unmet, the poor bastard is me. It�s not fun. And frankly this is another big part of the reason that several months or a few years of mostly avoiding the social scene seems so enticing � and ditto why I�m so narcissistically in love with Steve�s scenario from Sunday night in which someone would say something like, Oh, I should have paid more attention in school and ditched fewer classes, I should read more, I should be more down with concepts like the ones she's spouting � because I am sick of justifying myself in the money respect. If I have to live my life as a library-patronizing Book Club of one, well that is not my first choice but I am prepared to do it. Rowr.

Then while I was composing the little-match-girl reply to this morning�s salary inquiry, an HR rep from the same company called me and scheduled me to come in for the good old skills test on Thursday morning at eleven. I have to go get a book and study a bit for that � I wonder if I�m ever going to get around to writing about the last test I took, on Friday � so here�s where I�m calling Time on this entry, here's where I close Word.

Long Winters at the Tractor tonight with Mrs. Roboto. Tomorrow night I�m feeding protein and vegetable matter to a malnourished law student I know, and then a major cooking project looms for this coming weekend. Next weekend is for camping.