creepy crawly

The discrepancy between my opinion of myself and the feedback I get from the rest of the world continues to widen at an ever more alarming rate. I'm not sure where this is headed exactly.

In my head, in my body, I feel better than I ever have. I feel like I'm getting smarter and growing younger. The diverse organic vegan/mostly raw diet has been doing wonders to slow the aging process to a crawl. People tell me all the time that I look 10 years younger than I am and my energy level is just ripping. Even after staying up most of the night memorizing the Austin Craigslist postings of various categories.

I've spent this last week revising and rewriting and revising again the four variations of my resume: sound tech, boat hand, food dude, office drone. Each new version I come up with makes the previous one look like it was written by a developmentally disabled version of myself. My best explanation is that this stuff takes time to get used to again. I was out of the country for a year, not even speaking English half the time, much less thinking in terms of proper business etiquette.

I see people all around me, everywhere I go, with jobs, and I observe that a lot of these people aren't nearly as smart or as clean-cut and healthy looking as I am. At night I go to these live music events, which are world-class in terms of the performers, but the sound guys are all complacent and essentially asleep at the wheel, resulting in a flat, undynamic sound.

I look at the ads on Craigslist for servers wanted at various restaurants around town and then I go straight to yelp.com to look at what customers have said about their experiences at those restaurants. The writing, about how bad the young waitstaff is, is often fantastically descriptive and a hoot to read.

I see room for improvement everywhere. I send off concise, witty and highly appropriate cover emails with my resumes to jobs I am certainly qualified for based on my work history. I go to bed at night confident I'll hear at least something the next day.

But I've got nothing. And it's not just with job-hunting. I don't really want to get into what's going on with dating and friends. Refer to the blues standard "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out"

The thing is, I'm not down, or out. Yes, my bank account is starting to get pretty low after a year of mostly not working or working in Ecuador for $100 a week. But I'm in no way depressed or feeling negative. I'm writing this more out of astonishment than self-pity.

It's like something happened over the last couple of years and I completely missed it. In both my writing and in my speaking I am giving everyone the creeps.

There was this American couple I met in Ecuador. They were from New Hampshire. The girl was about 23 or 24, and in the Peace Corps in a rural village near ours. She and her boyfriend invited me to a party they were having, and said I should bring my guitar and play around the camp fire.

Well when the party happened, I had a sore throat and couldn't really sing worth a dime that night. But I tried. And the boyfriend knew and loved all of this obscure-for-Ecuador old Texas country music I always do: Jerry Jeff Walker, Waylon, Townes, Willie, Robert Earle Keene, Steve Earle, etc.

A week later I stopped by their bamboo hut, unannounced since there's no cell signal in the village, with a mutual older American expat friend of ours. I was there to pick up a puppy she had called me to tell me she had for me a few days earlier. By the time I got around to getting there though, the couple had fallen in love with the puppy and wanted to keep him. No surprise there. But what surprised me was I kept hearing the couple use the word "creepy" in reference to me. At first I thought they were just sort of joking and didn't even think about it.

The following week I was in Quito, at this very popular cybercafe in the new part of town, which has smoothies and cocktails and big windows so you can watch the tourists scene stroll by as you update your Facebook. So I'm updating my Facebook and having an over-sweetened carrot juice when I see this same American girl get out of a taxi with some gringa friends. She looks wasted. I picked up my phone and called her, and said "hey, look, I'm right here..." etc. and waved. She was all cold to me, as if I were just a guy hitting on her on the street, and used the word "creepy" several times. Quito is about seven hours by bus from the part of the country where our villages are. I just thought it was an interesting coincidence to see her there like that. I wasn't hitting on her. Her boyfriend is a great guy and she's not even my type at all. When did I become so "creepy" all of a sudden?

I tell this story because this is the feedback I have been getting on every front since returning to the states. And the feedback seems to be oscillating to a deafening crescendo. Women cannot get away from me fast enough when I open my mouth and I know I have fresh breath. Friends and even family are reminding me of the old Martin Luther King quote: "lukewarm acceptance is far more bewildering than outright rejection."

Yet I'm not depressed by it. I'm really not. I think it's puzzling. But fascinating at the same time. Obviously I need to do something differently. But what? Okay, I could, I suppose, learn to talk about more normal things. I've already stopped telling people I'm vegan or that I lived in Ecuador for the last six months.

Perhaps I should learn to like and talk about sports? A good teeth-whitening would certainly help. Everyone else is light years ahead of me on that one. I have excellent oral hygiene but I've never had the teeth whitened, and as everyone else has it done, the natural off-white color of my teeth stands out more and more. Sort of like if I were the last naturally small-boobed girl in Vegas.

I prefer small boobs. Oops, that was creepy wasn't it...

But what about the cover letters and resumes that seem to be getting me nowhere? Actually, it's not entirely true. I have an interview tomorrow to do something at one of the marinas out on Lake Austin. The pay is really bad. But I was able to throw together a resume comprised of all of my boating experience and I guess it must have impressed someone.

Whether or not I get that position, I'm going to start focusing more on looking for work doing sound again. I'm really good at it, have solid experience and references, and I now live in the live music capital of the world. But the entertainment business is notorious for its nepotism and I don't know anyone here yet to even try to help me get a foot in the door. I posted an ad to Craigslist this morning describing my abilities and offering to work for free.

Having typed all of this, I just got an email that may well prove that I've just spent the last half hour or so habitually whining into the keys again. Please disregard.