One Year, and Other Things

As of yesterday, it has been one year since I had my hair cut.

This was not intentional. Since my beloved stylist David up and sold his salon to move closer to his aging father to care for said father (damn him for being such a good person!), I've been at a loss. I tried a new person at a salon a couple towns away last February 15, but was less than impressed.

Since then I've just let my hair grow, and the possibility of a haircut is turning into something of a phobia. How am I ever going to find someone good with my very hard to cut hair again? I know this length isn't particularly flattering on me, and I end up pulling it up into a pony tail most of the time anyway, so I really do need to do something about it, but how? Where will I find the right person? Who will I trust? ARGH!

I've thought about it recently in light of my job search. I can be very superstitious. The last time I had my hair cut was the day before I interviewed at the company that laid me off - the last time I interviewed for a job successfully! Am I jinxing myself by not getting it cut? I may just get the ends trimmed one of these days. They do need to be cleaned up. But who to do it?

It's been a tough job search week. Rejections via email. Three meetings. I wrote how one turned out. Another lasted all of eight minutes. Yes, I said 8 minutes. Another had some possibilities - I talked to a company that had been using contractors with mixed success. I tried to convince them that they needed to hire a permanent person for consistency and continuity, and had good conversations with two of the technical staff. The HR head was adamant that this was only a short-term contract opportunity. Then I heard from them again. Apparently I did too good a job convincing them they needed a permanent employee: they now want to hire a full-time permanent writer, and I am no longer under consideration. Ugh.

I've fed most of the full-time leads to one of my former colleagues who was laid off last week. I figure I need all the karma I can get. He already has had at least one interview based on a lead I sent.

I have a couple things set up for next week. One is a real haul of a commute. It's also school vacation week next week, so I'm looking for ways to keep the kids occupied. I'm fighting off a cold or something. And I've eaten way too many chocolate chip cookies the last two days.

I keep reciting to myself, "Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. What do we do? We swim, swim."