Hard to stay positive

I got an interview for one of the many jobs I applied to over the past few weeks. I had to take a test online to qualify for this interview, my resume and degrees were not enough to secure employment. Bear in mind, I have both a B.A. and an M.F.A. in addition to a high school diploma, and I submitted a resume for this position and a cover letter. While this alone does not imply that I am an intelligent person, the lack of spelling and grammar mistakes in my cover letter should indicate that I am.

The test was in two parts. The first was a mini SAT. There were 50 questions that I was to answer in 15 minutes. I got through about 36 of them. I had to answer analogies, choose words to complete sentences, do basic arithmetic, and answer questions that involved multiple percentages and variables. The only thing missing from the test was a reading comprehension section.

The second test was a personality test. I decided to channel a more optimistic version of myself to answer its questions. Basically, I pretended I was high, which tends to dull the pain of the futility of these past few weeks. This test consisted of 30-50 statements that I had to rank based on how closely I identified with each on a scale of 1 (always) to 5 (never).

I must have passed the test, because I received a phone call about an hour after I finished. Now I have to go to the president's house to finish my interview. I received his address (with no name or business information) in an e-mail (that, ironically, included a few misspellings). The address is in the Palisades, which is at minimum over an hour drive.

I am so desperate for work that I must drive well over an hour to interview off-site for a company president who cares enough to interview an entry-level IT worker in person but does not care enough to leave his million dollar home (the property the house is on was sold for $650,000 in 2003 according to public records via Google, so I am assuming it has appreciated with the bubble since then) to go into work. If I do not get the position, I am going to be pissed.

I put my motorcycle on craigslist yesterday. I put two SLR lenses on eBay yesterday and an electronic music computer interface on today that should fetch a few hundred bucks. I finished the household budget, so I now know that even if I get the job, we're still not nearly making enough to survive. We can't figure out what else to cut because the majority of the expenses are going to rent, groceries (I just did comparison shopping between Ralph's and Trader Joe's today to make sure that we were spending close to minimum on food), and vehicle maintenance.

I feel like there's no way out of this mess and that I've wasted the past three years of my life getting an MFA that I can't afford to buy a frame for.

j