rote

One activity to try at home (preferably without witnesses) is to repeat one’s name until becomes meaningless. I can remember a schoolmate doing this as a little kid and I couldn’t identify the point for her perspective when the repetition became a transcendent thing, numb and unthinking like a trance, but for me it was when “Rosie” intoned turned into “Zero.”
It can be an interesting experience, to lose oneself—akin to trying to reconcile an optical illusion, and I think just as interesting are venues, formats and presentation that somehow always either require rehearsal or become invisible altogether.  There’s the traveling mat of one’s commute or household inventories that fade into the background, not looked at any longer (though one might notice their alteration or absence quicker than one would expect), but with the former, there are processes, no matter how dull or stale and imprinted to memory that don’t become obedient reflexes, something done in one’s sleep. Job searching, no matter how automated and centralized it is made, cherry-picking from a database rather than patrolling a beat or rustling the classifieds, seems to be one of those things.

Even something important and demanding is prone to distraction, and possibly because there is such a wide and raw focus with the unknown and expectations, makes the process, the search even more of a vehicle for the stickier burrs that refuse to stay in the background and are obnoxious cheerleaders that make it easier to miss other steps and details.One gets around the glitches and limitations soon enough, but still the slightest things refuse to flag.  There was one phrase that ran through every vacancy announcement that I took a second, considered look at, describing the city where the job was located, as the Nice of the North.  That repeating characterization drove me really to distraction.  I suppose because it was a constant amid a lot of variables.  While I think that is an apt and creative comparison and I do not consider myself a sophisticate, I do have to wonder at this effort to impart this bare fact to prospective employees.  I wondered if the targeted audience would think of the city in Southern France rather than struggling to understand the moniker, something like calling New Orleans the Big Easy.  I am glad that I have secured a position in the Nice of the North, though, so I will not need to face these daily diversions and am wishing everyone else the same luck, success and escape as well.