"The Best Laid Plans..."
It was pretty simple, really, get to Nelson, get a job, find a place to live, begin...
But like a lot of things I seriously underestimated it's proving considerably more difficult than I had anticipated. A week over schedule, reasonably I should have confirmed work in the first couple of weeks. I'm hardly unemployable, with not even a single sick day or missed shift in the past 10 years. And I'm competent, which, if you've dined out at all recently, you'll realize is a rare thing. So I should be working...
...but adapting to this has been slow. The first couple of days, apply, wear a suit, not even, a jacket and tie, people stare at you on the street, one accosts me to congratulate me, another to ask if I'm a lawyer, which is the thin edge of the conversational wedge about what she thinks of lawyers, she used to work for a bunch of them down east...
I ditch the suit. I was getting the same reputation people might get in larger urban centers if they hung out on street corners dressed as clowns, it was becoming the urban myth of the area, "did you see the guy in the suit?...", I tone it down, switch it over to jeans and a good shirt...
Still, 3 weeks now, more than, over a dozen applications for jobs I'm more than qualified for, and only a single interview. At a resort, a pleasant enough interview, I'm more than qualified for this, but the resort, they're hiring in the indefinite future, not at the moment, and the interview is something they're doing to keep on file, the bureaucracy of hotels. The hotel, it's location, stunning, but the dining room, the decor, it's right out of a bad 90's Cheesecake-Cafe or Applebees crossover, tube-metal chairs with pastel spattered cushions, tabletops, carpet, the visible evidence of heinous murder, the spatter and cast off of all good taste...
I broaden my scope. Construction companies, timber frame homes, scrap metal and lumber yards...
Nothing.
And the forest outside of the woodshed, dark, the sun up for a mere 8 hours, and not the sun but the rising of wet melancholy, damp, raining, dripping in the forest, uniform grey light for the first few hours of the day, sleep in and you'll miss it, then for the next 8 hours darkness, the computer, internet, It would be creatively ideal if I had only a few less stresses, namely a job and a place to live...
Funds are eroding, I have a trip to make back to Calgary, the budget is precarious, I need work now and I've covered this end of the valley, need to broaden my sphere of potential employers, search further south, Castlegar, Salmo, Trail, up the Silvery Slocan, my dreams are disjointed and restless, the anxiety that I should have left behind in Calgary, with the former job from hell, it should be dispelling, it's not, it's growing...
The Nephew Calls, wants to talk, they finally fired the waitress, hired a couple of new employees, young, attractive, more to his taste...he's cancelled his return to Berlin, the owner implored him, begged him to stay (and he uses the word "implore", and I'm impressed, it's good, apt..), and he tells me about how he's shorting everyone on their tips, he's the new kingpin, taking 3 times what he pays the others, and I have to wonder that for so long I split with him as an equal...
There's no missing this, it was it's own private Idaho and 7 years was enough, plenty, more than enough, but it's good to hear him, he's falling apart, having to stand up and take orders, and as precarious as it is out on this limb it's better than being there...read the Calgary local papers, the whining of landlords about high vacancy rates, there is no sympathy for them, any of them, they so happily fucked everyone over when things were good that their asking for sympathy now can only be seen as Karma...and I check my bank account for my damage deposit, I provided them with details to deposit it before I left, nothing, despite having discussed the "nominal" charges I'd be facing, carpet cleaning, steam clean the drapes, I'd never arrived in an apartment that clean in my life, let alone left one, but still...
The long evenings, read old mining reports, on the weekends I follow up on leads, find abundant garnets, have ideas about selling mineral specimens, ideas best followed up upon when I've confirmed work, search the old mining sites for curiosities of the mineral world, search for jobs, ...
Now again to canvas for work, search out the hidden job, the one for me that somehow I've overlooked, get out of the woodshed, every day the snowline creeps down the mountain, the days grow shorter, and I'm thinking that like Orpheus I've descended into my own private underworld, only lacking the musical accompaniment or talent that might make it bearable...