how terrifying, to be aging and girl. at 18 i was told by men that i was “the perfect age,” and i still thought it was a compliment. is it because at 20 i figured out how sharp those words were. i felt old at 21, felt like if grey hairs came and my spine cracked i was done for. how scary. i am reminded constantly by “realistic” ideas in fantasy novels that i should have five kids.
my life feels short. like it is squeezed into my twenties. like at 30 i become ghost, just another mother or hard worker or both, just another background character. like if i am not settled and making a difference by 27 i should just give up already. is this something men feel? like a clock is painted on their back, one hand warning: your beauty is something you are valued for and it is something you cannot get back.
and why was i only beautiful, i wonder, at 18 on a riverbank. i’m told often my childish face is a blessing. that i shouldn’t want to look older. one told me i was a trap falling: “you look young but you’re not” he said to me, “it kind of led me on”. am i not young?
maybe i am wrong. maybe it’s just how we all feel, getting old, like time is slipping from us. maybe men do worry that they will be alone forever if they don’t settle by thirty, maybe it’s even because they think they’ll turn ugly. maybe we all squish our lives into that incredibly young decade. what do i know. i’m still learning.
I’m almost 25 and I’ve been feeling this a lot lately.
As a 48 year old lesbian, I offer my perspective on aging, and you all can take it or leave it.
Our understanding of our own aging is very much conditioned by the priorities of straight men, who in the aggregate understand beauty and femininity, indeed women in general, in literally superficial terms. Most of the ads you see for anti-aging products, for instance, focus on its *visible* symptoms: graying hair, wrinkling skin or discolored skin, sagging breasts, changes in body shape, etc. These are the symptoms of female aging that men perceive, and they are the ones that the cosmetics and the larger anti-aging industry therefore target. (Men do have their own anxieties about visibly aging, mostly related to hair loss and body shape; but they are not, for instance, generally terrified by the appearance of wrinkles, unless they work in the entertainment industry.)
But aging is not just something that happens to everyone else’s perception of you; it is something that happens in your own body, at levels deeper than anyone else (especially anyone male) is ever likely to perceive. From my POV the really important thing about aging is how you feel. Your body is where you live; it is for you. Aging is inevitable, but it can to some extent be intentional, in that you can (to some extent; all this is limited by the amount of time and money available to you and the healthfulness of the environments you have lived in and how you did in the DNA lottery) choose to do things that will help preserve the things about your body that make YOU happy to be living there–things like flexibility, strength, and the smooth functioning of your major organs. Generally, if you’re healthy, you don’t think about any of this stuff at 18 or 25; but when you are 40, you will start to take more of an interest as you come to understand how important all of this is to your own ability to enjoy life.
So that sucks, as does menopause, which is the unacknowledged referent of a lot of cultural anxieties about female aging. But the point I want to make is: one of the worst things that the phenomenon described so evocatively by the OP does to girls and young women is to make them so anxious about their own bodies that they are unable to enjoy and appreciate their youth while they have it. And that is theft. It really is. I miss youth, but even more do I regret the fact that when I was young I was so fucked up by cultural obsessions about female beauty that I was unable to fully enjoy the body that I had then. I did not appreciate its many excellent qualities, and it was a long time before I allowed myself to accept and act on its desires. At a time when I was beautiful, I thought I was fat and ugly, and that because no man would ever find me attractive, I was doomed to loneliness and isolation. After I met Mrs. Plaidder, her conviction of my beauty eventually passed into me. As a result, I enjoyed my life in general a lot more in my 30s than I did in my teens. I’ve enjoyed my 40s more too, apart from the cancer and the current catastrophe. Age does actually bring experience and knowledge and, to those able to profit from it, wisdom. You do gain, even as you lose.
Catullus, yelling in Latin verse at his lover Lesbia, asks her venomously, “cui videberis bella?” By whom will you be seen to be beautiful? It’s a question that still poisons our sense of self and our understanding of our own possibilities. By myself, asshole, she should have replied; and so may we all, at any age.
Long post, but – my three cents. At 67 I don’t feel old and/or ugly. In fact, I really enjoy myself. I’m happy with how I look – because I got over the brainwashed way we see ourselves. As plaidadder said: “even more do I regret the fact that when I was young I was so fucked up by cultural obsessions about female beauty that I was unable to fully enjoy the body that I had then.” BTW, plaidadder – you are STILL beautiful, trust me. The American cult of youth and they way of evaluating women’s beauty as inevitably liked to age is fucking TOXIC. I now live in South America; was complemented ( in a non-creepy way) by two guys less than half my age last week, grey hair & all. Love it here.
You will never feel as old as you do in your late 20s to late 30s. Seriously. Western culture makes the passing of youth into a tragic death and that’s – so fucking sad. Once it has passed and you can no longer reasonably think of yourself as young, no matter how desperately you try to hang on to it – you find yourself in a whole other country, you realize that you’ve lived on one side of a mountain all your life and told there’s nothing beyond it only to discover that there is, in fact, an entire world on the other side. Don’t believe the lie.
I enjoyed this post. I also lacked the clarity on culturally imposed bullshit to enjoy my youth and beauty, and at 47, I have good days and bad days. I’m looking forward to one day not giving a flying fuck what anyone thinks about my body. I’m embarrassed and a little ashamed to report that I’m not there yet.
What I like about getting older (I’m 46.) is that the less “attractive” I become, the more I get to fill that space with things I choose. The more invisible I become as a person with whom someone may wish to have sex, the more I can just wear clothes that I like and think are pretty, the more I feel free to let my hair have no real “style.” I wear flat shoes that I think are cute. I wear the same earrings I’ve worn for twenty years. I get to choose to present myself as eccentric or artsy or sloppy or outdated without much commentary from the peanut gallery, because nobody is concerned any more with my fuckablity. And without the constant input, I have more room for my own opinion.
Not that I’m there all the time, but I’m sure there a hell of a lot more often than when I was in my twenties.
One of the things I love best about tumblr (and there are many, many things) is that here I have found a circle of middle-aged and older women who are kind and wise and brave, and are willing to share their experiences and to mentor younger women through aspects of aging. I’m 40, and I feel like I am beginning a journey into a new phase of life with a tribe of women beside me. It is so hugely valuable. ❤️
Well, at 67, I can tell you that finally no one is looking at me like a tarted-up slab of meat with a vagina. Of course, I’m easy to mistake for a little old lady now, my hair having come in a disorderly charcoal grey after my chemo. But that’s a fun stereotype to work (some years ago the teens I was working with described my personal style as “granny goth”), and it also lets you comment and converse with other people with impunity: no one really worries if their kid shares a word in the store with “that granny” and when someone is unspeakably rude, you can just fire right back at them and they actually, sometimes, demonstrate at least momentary guilt. I dress for my own comfort—although I believe one can demonstrate respect by dressing nicely for things like meetings or travel, I tend to mean beyond what simply amuses me that I am clean, relatively ordered, and have all body parts covered that would cause arrest in my local jurisdiction.
The rest of it? Fuck that noise; I’m old and I haven’t got time for that shit.
Just to chirp in (45). One of the many gifts of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival was the intergenerational community of dykes. So first, as a dyke, I wasn’t around men a lot who were telling me how unfuckable I was. So aside from the general socialization, inside stepped a ton of bullshit. But also, at 21 I was hanging with wyms who were 40, 50, 60. I was seeing all of these older women in their fullness and glory and sexiness and intelligence and BEAUTY and like everything that happened there, I realized the head trips about aging were a lie.
These women, who embraced being crones, were EVERYTHING. I wanted to be them. And as I age, I remember their power, their gorgeousness. I aim for it with all my might.
Unlearning lies is such hard work, but patriarchy spends a lot of energy reviling things that are powerful.
I can’t believe all the wisdom in these posts above. you GO. I am so in love with all y’all.
There is so much women are not only not taught, but flat-out LIED TO about aging. Even within fandom, a space that is very much women-driven, occasionally you come across someone trying to pressure older women to bow out because our mere presence makes some people uncomfy (and sometimes by “older” they mean over 30, never mind the 40+, 50+, 60+ women speaking up here).
Because we are not taught to respect older women as sexual beings, as beings with our own interests, our own passions, our own weaknesses, and our own right to take up space and be fully present even though we are no longer sexually desirable (to SOME) and might not be willing or interested in taking up a “mom/grandmom” role.
When I was in my 20s I was doing a lot of music writing and one of my biggest role models who I sort of knew personally was Deena Weinstein, who was doing exceptional work on metal culture – very little studied in academia at that time – and she was doing it as a (at the time) very rare visibly middle-aged woman at metal shows banging her head off to Cannibal Corpse. (She is not “detached.” She’s in the mosh pit. She loves the fuck out of it, and it shows.) Lots of people were lining up to tell her in one way or another she ought to be “acting her age,” whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean. I looked up to her as the giant badass she is.
A few things they don’t tell you about aging, that I know at 48 (and I know to some people here, I’m still a baby, and that’s OK)
1. Menopause is real and for some people perimenopause takes years. Holy shit. It’s as big an upheaval as puberty – but, like puberty, it’s not a disaster it’s just a shift. Respect it but don’t fear it. Most of all, don’t fear talking about it honestly.
2. Being sexually invisible to strange men is a fucking blessing, especially if you take public transit every day. What a gift to actually be able to read in peace most of the time. Don’t dread this!
3. Judgmental opinions of trivial people become a lot more obvious for what they are, over time.
4. Your interest in sex might decrease. OR IT MIGHT NOT. IT MIGHT EVEN INCREASE. In a culture that is horrified by the sexuality of older women, consider who is served by the assumption that loss of libido is a thing that always happens. (Or that it should.)
5. You ARE still the same person you were at 17, at 24, at 39, etc. You’re just a little bit MORE that same person.
6. You have the right to discuss and write about any age you’ve passed through. You own your experiences and you can do with them as you will, creatively. You have been a child, a teenager, a young adult, a middle-aged person – you have memories that you are always entitled to draw upon, for any reason at any time.
I’m so, so fucking glad I’ve had women friends older than me (and in some cases, older than my own parents) since my early 20′s. Seeing women older than me enjoying their lives and being interesting and doing fun things and even (gasp!) having active sex lives, meant I haven’t been nearly as freaked out about getting older.
Things I have enjoyed about getting older to this point (37):
Increased self confidence
Learned patience
Managing my anxiety and depression
Enjoying the body I have, right now as it is
Things I am not enjoying:
why is it so hard to get off the floor??
I get tired from physical activity faster
I can fuck up my back/neck in 0.5 seconds
Things I give zero fucks about:
grey hair
wrinkles
For all of you up thread fretting about menopause, feel free to ask (my inbox is open). I’ve actually been through it twice, one naturally and then because that didn’t work out as well as hoped, surgically. And I’ve done a lot of research on the topic. So fuck the conspiracy of silence and know that I’m available for questions or just blowing off steam.
Well, make yourself a cup of tea and prepare for a long read, because there are lots of myths about nutrition. I should start first and foremost by saying that I am not going to tell anyone what to feed their cat, or dog, unless that animal is a patient of mine. I’m only going to tell you what to consider.
The first one is that lots and lots of laypeople sites will say ‘meat should be the first ingredient’ often followed by ‘no nasty byproducts’ and this is not strictly the case. Cat food must have meat in it, but it doesn’t strictly have to be the first ingredient, especially if it uses multiple meat sources.
What I want to know about any given wet cat food is this:
Is it a ‘guaranteed analysis’ or a ‘typical analysis’. A guaranteed analysis is superior.
How much of it is water, indicated by ‘Moisture percentage’
How much is protein, and is that figure ‘as fed’ or ‘as dry matter’.
How much is fat, and is that figure ‘as fed’ or ‘as dry matter’.
Macro and micronutrients are also important, especially taurine and in growing cats, but that information is often unreasonably difficult to find outside of the premium diets.
This is a large part of the reason, incidentally, that vets and a profession often recommend a couple of brands over other. Getting all the information I require to confidently recommend a diet is easy for Hills, Royal Canin, Advance, etc but nearly impossible without phoning and begging any of the supermarket brands. Honestly, if a brand of food wants me to be able to honestly recommend it, it needs to provide its nutritional information in an easily accessible manner. Otherwise you have to go to the store to start getting any nutritional info, as I did.
Some brands have a guaranteed analysis, which is more reliable and suggests better quality than a typical analysis
Some packets will clearly state they are compliant with AAFCO (
The Association of American Feed Control) recommendations, even here in Australia.
Then others, like Smitten, will subtly say ‘Complementary food only’, which means you cannot guarantee or expect a cat fed that food alone to remain healthy for a year. It’s not well marked.
Only one of them offered any indication of the Moisture Content, which is what you need to make sure you’re comparing apples with apples.
The moisture content is important, because if you look at those labels as-is you will see all of these diets only offer 9% to 13% protein. For a species that requires a high protein diet, that doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but that’s because you’re not taking the water into account.
To simplify, it’s not unreasonable to consider food as being made up of only four things: protein, fat, carbohydrates or water.
All of these diets list their fat and protein, but only Fancy Feast Originals listed its moisture percentage, and once you know the percentage of three components, you can use simple maths to figure out the fourth. Fancy Feast isn’t the most expensive, nor is it the cheapest, it’s middle of the range.
But why are there always carbohydrates in my cat food? Because there’s always carbohydrates in meat. Glycogen is the most common, it’s the energy storage molecule in muscle and liver that makes it taste good, and incidentally the cat uses the same enzymes to digest it as they do starch. This is probably why they often like starchy things. Cats can and do digest carbohydrates, beware of any source that claims they do not.
So out of the canned foods at my supermarket, you’d think they all sound pretty similar with their protein ranging from 9-13% and their fat from 1.5-5.5%. But you have no way to compare them without knowing the moisture content.
If one diet is 9% protein, 2% fat and 80% moisture, then it’s 9% carbohydrate. If it’s 9% protein, 2% fat and 70% moisture, then it’s 19% carbohydrate.
Unfortunately, finding the moisture content of many of these diets is difficult. However, it’s not unreasonable to assume that cheap wet food contains a higher moisture content, as it’s usually the case. Water is cheap.
If you can get the moisture content, you can calculate the percentage of fat/protein or carbohydrate as a Dry Matter Percentage (what’s left after removing the water). It’s simply the nutrient % / (100- moisture %)
For a normal cat, we’re looking for a protein level that’s at least 25-35% of the dry matter, and fat that’s 10-30% of the dry matter, depending on its digestibility.
For reference, the Fancy Feast Originals can in this sample had 55% protein and 10% fat by dry matter, which is more than the minimum amount of protein, but that’s perfectly alright for a normal cat.
If you compare that to the ‘Gourmet Delight’ Natural Grain Free diet, you have to guess the moisture percentage. If you guess moisture at 80%, then by dry matter you have 45% protein 7.5% fat and more carbohydrates than the Fancy Feast had. If you guess only 70% moisture, and most canned foods are between 70-80%, then those numbers start to look even worse.
The fancy ‘Natural’ and ‘Grain free’ means absolutely nothing for the cats.
(The ‘natural, grain free’ dies even specifies ‘no nasty byproducts’ on the tin and the website is full of dumbed-down myths to sell you your food. Also check out the people listed as answering their FAQs, I can’t even tell whether they’re vets or not. No ‘Dr’ or qualification, and not easy to Google.)
You would think cheap cat food is going to be poorer quality than expensive cat food, but especially in the case of the Grain Free trend, it’s not always the case. This is because if something is more expensive, it is often perceived as better by consumers, even if it is really not, so the manufacturer can hike the price up a bit freely
So after you’ve decided whether the diet has enough protein, enough fat, and meets suitable nutritional guidelines like
AAFCO, then you look at what the ingredients actually are. Most meats are going to be around 90% digestible and usable by the cats, while vegetable proteins are only 40-50% useful at all. So if the diet has a lot of high protein vegetables, that protein percentage may be artificially elevated and not utilized well by the cat’s metabolism.
I’m not going to talk about grain free versus not, because the vast majority of the time it makes no difference to the cat and is simply a personal choice on the part of the human feeding it.
Lastly, look at how much you need to feed to maintain a body weight. If the food doesn’t tell you the moisture percentage, and doesn’t tell you the calorie content, it should at the very least have a feeding guide. If you need to feed twice as many packets of one food to maintain weight as another, then it’s probably either lower quality, higher fiber or higher moisture than another.
That said, you might want a lower calorie food or a higher moisture food to help a cat feel full while losing weight, or to improve stool quality. That’s ok, pick something that suits your purpose.
With me all the way to the end? Well done. Crack out a biscuit to have with your tea.
TL:DR:
You wont find all the nutritional info you need on the packet
Check the protein and fat levels
Check whether it’s a complete diet, (eg
AAFCO
standard) or a ‘Complementary food’
Make sure it’s got meat/fish
And this rather long post is the simplest I can make cat wet food for you.
(Oh, and if you have something to add to the conversation, please do so in a reply or reblog. Random anecdotes sent to the ask box will not be published to keep the topic all in one place)
Unfortunately no. I’m also an awful flyer and get severe migraines from it, and I’ve never been able to overcome it 😦
I just wind up standing in passport control on the other side, swaying and feeling like I’m about to have a full on aura migraine/collapse.
Maybe someone else will have some handy advice though?
Sorry if this is obvious stuff, but I fly fairly frequently and have had some bad flights- I spent the last one with my head pressed against the seat in front of me and my hoodie up the entire time, lol- here is my accumulated experience, maybe some of it will be helpful:
-don’t rush on or off the plane. There’s only one or two exits, a certain number of seats, and everyone has to wait their turn, you might as well stay comfortably seated at the gate or in your seat until the line has moved.
-make sure you have water with you, and that you’re properly hydrated before the flight. Small sips can help if you feel sick or your head hurts.
-getting a good night’s sleep is also very helpful
-try not to fly hungry.
-uh, gross but true- try to give yourself time before the journey to do all your bathroom business in peace. Rushing out of the house in the morning without going number two does not help because your bowels are gonna wake up at 35,000 feet while the seatbelt light is still on.
-sucking hard on a sweet or chewing some gum can really help relieve the pain from the altitude change, and on take-off and landing. You can even just suck on your teeth, honestly.
-disposable tissues are your friend. You can blow your nose, spit into them if you have a nasty taste in your mouth, wipe your brow. Cloth tissues are ok too, actually, you just have to keep them afterwards 😛
-take a small soft pillow on the flight, or something to make it possible to rest your head comfortably. It may not seem like much but it can make a huge difference.
-comfy clothes. Don’t worry about flying dress code, that doesn’t exist anymore. If the flight is longer than a couple of hours you should wear stuff that won’t poke or scratch or restrict your breathing.
-if you like listening to audiobooks or music and it doesn’t make your headaches worse, prep something soothing and comfortable for the flight, to drown out the engine hum. Sometimes I just put on an audiobook and drift off without even listening to the words.
-always ask the flight crew for help if you need it. You can tell them as you get on the plane that you’re not feeling well and would appreciate a glass of water as soon as they can, for example, or a sick bag just in case. If you’re polite, they are usually very accommodating. I mean they should be either way but being polite makes their jobs easier.
-do not feel bad about feeling sick or being anxious. This happens to people all the time on planes. If you need to go to the bathroom and stay there for twenty minutes, that’s ok. If you need to ask the person next to you to move so you can leave your seat, that’s ok. If you don’t want to talk to them, that’s ok- you have nothing to apologise for and have no obligations to be sociable.
I just want to add that a pair of noise cancelling headphones can help a LOT. I have a cheap-ass pair and even they changed things from ‘I feel like my ears are bleeding’ to ‘I actually snoozed a bit’.
Not a shitpost, but some advice for my younger followers:
Try to eat healthy. I’m not saying you should live in whole foods, but try to get in the habit of having fruit or veggies whenever you can. You might be fifteen and feel invincible chugging three cans of energy drinks, but trust me. In a few years your body is gonna be craving all the healthy shit you didn’t eat as a kid.
Don’t romanticize staying up late. It’s not healthy. You may score brownie points with your friends if you pull an all-nighter for no discernible reason, but your body will hate you. Believe me when I say everything catches back up to you by the time you’re in your late teens. If you fuck up your sleep patterns while you’re young, you’ve pretty much screwed yourself over for the next few years.
Trust your gut. If you think someone is creepy, keep your distance. Even if your friends insist they’re an okay person, keep your distance. Better safe than sorry. And most of the time, you’ll end up right.
There’s no point in teasing people for their appearance. There’s no point at all. We all have to get up at like 6am to learn about things we don’t care about, let people wear whatever the hell they want. Shut your mouth and move on.
If someone older than you tries to talk to you out of nowhere, stay on your goddamn guard. Even if they’re a person you greatly admire, even if you think they’re the coolest person ever- You are under no obligation to humor them. If they start asking invasive questions (about your age, your sexual habits, anything that raises Warning Bells) then you need to get the hell out of there. Stop responding, either gradually or all at once. Whatever works for you. You’re not being rude- you’re looking out for yourself.
Be kind to people younger than you. You were just like them not too long ago.
cleaning with ADHD is a nightmare. it’s an endless cycle of finding a half-finished chore and stopping the one you were already working on, then remembering that something else needs to be done and getting started on that, then finding half-finished chore and
i have the solution! i call it ‘junebugging’.
have you ever seen a junebug get to grips with a window screen? it’s remarkably persistent, but not very focused. all that matters is location.
how to junebug: choose the location you feel you can probably get some shit done on today. be specific. not ‘the bathroom’ but ‘the bathroom sink’. you are not choosing a range, you are choosing a center; you will move around, but your location is where you’ll keep coming back to. mentally stick a pin in it. consider yourself tethered to that spot by a long mental bungee cord.
go to your location. look at stuff. move stuff around. do a thing. get distracted. remember you’re junebugging the bathroom sink and go back there. look at it some more. do a different thing. get distracted. get a sandwich. remember you’re junebugging and go back to the bathroom sink.
nt’s will go crazy watching you, and if they demand to know When You Will Be Done you will probably have to roll them in a carpet and stuff them up the chimney. you’re done when you feel done, or you’re too bored to live, or it’s bedtime, or any number of other markers, you get to pick. but the thing is, by returning repeatedly to that one spot, you harness the ‘hyperactivity’ part instead of wasting all that energy battling with the ‘attention deficit’ part.
not only will the bathroom sink almost certainly be clean, and probably the mirror and soap dish too, you might’ve swapped in a fresh toothbrush, a new soap, you might’ve unclogged the drain – you will probably also have cleaned or fixed up several things in the near vicinity, or in the path between the sink and where you get the fresh toothbrush, or maybe you did your grocery shopping cuz you were out of soap, or maybe you couldn’t find a clean hand towel and ended up doing laundry.
this is good. you got shit done! it wasn’t necessarily Cleaned The Bathroom in the way nt’s think of it, but screw ‘em. things are better than they were.
plus you worked off enough energy to be able to sleep. which is not small potatoes when living the ADHD life. 😀
I keep forgetting what the differences are in the over the counter pain relievers, so I made a handy chart.
This Is Important.
I always had really really horrible growing pains as a kid. Like, I clearly remember being curled up on the floor crying because it felt like some evil person had stuck a fork in my calf and was twisting it around like spaghetti. Mom always had me take ibuprofen for it, and when that didn’t do anything, she just gave me more.
Now the stuff barely works on me, even when I take it for the things it actually fixes.
Please, please, double-check to make sure you’re taking the right medicines for your pain.
My mom always gave me tylonel for period cramps as a kid and it never did anything. It’s nice to know now that she was literally giving me the least effective option
And please PLEASE note that as the chart says, acetaminophen “can be taken with NSAIDs”, which means you can take Tylenol/acetaminophen AND one of the other listed pain-relievers.
My mom has been a doctor for 40+ years, and her standard advice for headaches is, take two regular-strength Advil, and then if that doesn’t work, ALSO take two regular-strength Tylenol.
Yesterday my dad told me something that I think maybe more people need to hear.
You’re allowed to just do things for fun.
He told me that in this modern society, especially the United States, we seem to have this attitude that we shouldn’t do something unless we’re aiming to be the best at it. If we can’t sing like Beyonce or Frank Sinatra or something there’s no point to singing. If we can’t make the next big breakthrough there’s no point in looking into mechanics and engineering.
But, he tells me, it took him a long time to figure out that life doesn’t have to be a race. If you want to take up the piano when you’re a teenager or later you’re not going to master it. You’re not going to be able to play to huge concert halls, but that also shouldn’t stop you. You can study a language out of curiosity and then drop the ball if you want. You can just get okay at something or even be terrible at it. You can drop it for days or years and then pick it up again and it doesn’t have to be a shameful thing.
I’m really glad he told me that because today I opened my sketchpad for the first time in months and just started drawing. And it looks terrible. But I don’t care. I don’t have the talent or patience or spacial awareness to get anywhere near good at drawing, but it’s fun. It helps me focus my mind and nobody has to see it.
And because of what he told me, I’m thinking maybe someday soon I will take up the bass guitar. And I won’t worry about how well I do, or how fast I learn, or that I haven’t played an instrument since sixth grade, or that I don’t have that much time to practice. I’m just gonna enjoy the experience. Maybe I’ll try swing dancing again and take a class because I’m not the best dancer but damn if it isn’t fun.
Yeah, you don’t have to be good at things. It’s not a requirement. Maybe that seems obvious but it had never occurred to me before. You’re allowed to just enjoy what you’re doing. For me, that feels like a life changing revelation. I don’t have to be good at something to like it. I don’t have to put 100% effort into everything I do. It’s kind of amazing.
“Oh, No!” job searching versus “Oh, Yes!” job searching
So I’m increasingly convinced that there are two major categories or types of job search out there, and the advice for each is diametrically opposed to the advice for the other. Which leads to a lot of frustration from people and advice that will help someone doing a No search but would really harm the candidacy of someone doing a Yes search, or vice versa.
An “Oh, No!” job search is where you’re going “Oh no, I have no fucking money and I need a job yesterday.”
An “Oh, Yes!” job search is where you’re going “Oh yes, this looks like a job I’d love to do.”
A No job search is one where your overriding concern is GET THE JOB BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.
A Yes job search is one where your overriding concern is finding a job that is the Right Fit for you and checks off a good chunk of your “dream job” checklist – or at least, checks off more of it than your current job does.
A No job search one where advice to be honest about your experience and/or lack thereof, because “it’s about finding the right mutual fit of each other’s needs”, is bullshit bc you need to pay the goddamn rent and buy enough food to make it through another week, and who gives a fuck about ~right fit~?
A Yes job search is one where you’re interviewing the company as much as they’re interviewing you, because you can and will turn down the job if you don’t think you’ll work out well there long term.
So you can see why those are two completely different worlds and the advice for one is literally the opposite of the advice for the other.
Someone who has a job (or a well-off family or partner, or a good cushion of savings), and who is looking for a good next career move, a lateral shift of career focus, better pay, shorter commute, or any of the other non-immediate critical reasons people look for new jobs, absolutely should NOT lie on their resume or exaggerate their skills in the interview, because that sets them up for failure in the new role if they get it. They could wind up moving into a new job that is actually not a good fit for them and they are back to job searching in a few months – in a worse case scenario, they could be fired for poor performance.
Someone who’s broke and struggling…loves, you have my wholehearted permission and encouragement to do whatever the fuck you have to, in order to game the job search process and get a job. Lie, exaggerate, fake it til you make it. Do what you have to do. It might not be The Right Job but it’ll keep you going while you keep hunting for the right job.
But it’s so rare that I see people acknowledge this difference, and it gets frustrating watching people give advice that’s right for one to someone who’s doing the other. A person asks a recruiter for advice on how to fake a skill they don’t really have bc they really really need to get this job they’re interviewing for next week, and the recruiter explains that faking a skill they don’t have will just backfire on them in the end, and it’s better if they don’t – they should admit their ignorance in this interview and see if they get hired anyway, and if not, in the future they should target their search toward jobs that are a better fit.
Which is not *untrue*, exactly, but tbh sometimes “get a job so I don’t wind up homeless” has to take precedence over “be honest if the job isn’t a great fit for your skills”.
The ability to be picky in a job search IS A FUCKING LUXURY. It’s something you get to do when you have an in-demand professional skillset, a strong reputation in your field, a good network of contacts, and some breathing room from financial pressure.
I know, because I’ve been in both places within the last 5 years. I’ve been the underemployed retail/service/temp worker who just needed a job, any job, please gods. And now, I’m the stable professional with marketable skills who might be interested in moving up the ladder with a new job, but getting or not getting a new job isn’t going to make or break me.
And yet I also worry about people hearing the “do whatever you gotta do to get the job” advice taking that to heart as blanket advice for the future, and maintaining that mindset even once they’re able to get themselves positioned for a Yes search. Because when you’re doing a Yes search, lies and exaggeration come with a much higher cost – with a No search, you’ve got not much to lose by risking lies and exaggeration; with a Yes search, you’re sacrificing current stability for the potential of future betterment, which means you do actually have a fair bit to lose if the gamble doesn’t pan out.
Please, my dears. Love yourselves. Learn to make the distinction between types of job search, learn to critically examine the advice you get and discern which search type it applies to before you swallow anything and move forward with a strategy based on potentially very very bad advice.
Neither turn your nose up at people coaching job seekers to lie their way into a job, nor roll your eyes at people encouraging job seekers to have an honest back-and-forth with hiring managers about whether it’s the right job for them. Both strategies have a place. I would be thrilled if we lived in a world where everyone’s search was a Yes search and nobody was ever compelled by economic desperation to lie their way into jobs that will be bad for them, because a bad job is less worse than poverty – but we don’t live in that world yet, and until we do, “fake it til you make it” job search advice still has a place in the conversation.
But also remember, don’t drag that strategy forward with you once you’ve got your baseline stability in place. When you make the shift to a Yes search, that can and will come back to bite you, hard.
Since once in a blue moon I actually discover a decent rule for adulting, and since I know I have followers a few years younger than me who are just entering the workforce, I want to tell you about a very important phrase.
“I won’t be available.”
Imagine you’re at work and your boss asks you to come in on Saturday. Saturday is usually your day off–coming in Saturdays is not an obligation to keep your job. Maybe you were going to watch a movie with a friend, or maybe you were just going to lie in bed and eat ice cream for eight hours, but either way you really, really don’t want to give up your day off.
If you consider yourself a millennial you’ve probably been raised to believe you need to justify not being constantly at work. And if you’re a gen-Z kid you’re likely getting the same toxic messages that we did. So in a situation like that, you might be inclined to do one of three things:
Tell your boss you’d rather not give up your day off. Cave when they pressure you to come in anyway, since you’re not doing anything important.
Tell your boss you’d rather not give up your day off. Over-apologize and worry that you looked bad/unprofessional.
Lie and say you’ve got a doctor’s appointment or some other activity that feels like an adequate justification for not working.
The fact is, it doesn’t matter to your boss whether you’re having open heart surgery or watching anime in your underwear on Saturday. The only thing that affects them is the fact that you won’t be at work. So telling them why you won’t be at work only gives them reason to try and pressure you to come in anyway.
If you say “I won’t be available,” giving no further information, you’d be surprised how often that’s enough. Be polite and sympathetic in your tone, maybe even say “sorry, but I won’t be available.” But don’t make an excuse. If your boss is a professional individual, they’ll accept that as a ‘no’ and try to find someone else.
But bosses aren’t always professional. Sometimes they’re whiny little tyrants. So, what if they pressure you further? The answer is–politely and sympathetically give them no further information.
“Are you sure you’re not available?” “Sorry, but yes.”
“Why won’t you be available?” “I have a prior commitment.” (Which you do, even if it’s only to yourself.)
“What’s your prior commitment?” “Sorry, but that’s kind of personal.”
“Can you reschedule it?” “I’m afraid not. Maybe someone else can come in?”
If you don’t give them anything to work with, they can’t pressure you into going beyond your obligations as an employee. And when they realize that, they’ll also realize they have to find someone else to come in and move on.
THIS^
I can rubber stamp this as something I have learned as an Adult, too.
Steel Phoenix Studios 