And okay, look, I can see you rolling your eyes. Thinking to yourself, what kind of loser gets so much excitement out of a stupid app? Don't you have anything meaningful in your life? You're a twenty-seven-year-old woman, for goodness' sake, don't you have a career to build or beloved children to adore?
And to that I say, go do a crossword, you pretentious cow. I think you're the type of person who'll enjoy it.
No, I'm kidding.
You're entirely right.
The truth is, I don't have a lot going on for me right now. I don't have a career, just a low-paying job as a receptionist at an auto shop and a bachelor's degree in science which is entirely useless since I realized in my last year of university that I actually want a career in the arts. And I don't think I want any children, even if I had a boyfriend to make them with or a salary to afford IVF or adoption.
So...yeah. It isn't much, but I've got my Wordle. And I'm up to a three-hundred-day streak, now!
This morning, I put in DOUGH as my first guess (I was eating cookie dough for breakfast; don't judge). The H was yellow (right letter, wrong place), the rest of the letters were gray. Next, I tried PESKY (inspired by the housefly buzzing at my window), which gave me a yellow P and a green Y. Then my mom called to have a chat before she and my dad go off on vacation to New Zealand, so now I'm trying to finish the puzzle at work. Which might make me sound like an irresponsible employee, until I tell you a little more about my job.
First of all, before you ask, no, I don't have any particular interest in cars. I applied for this job for one reason and one reason only: it was near a cute house that had crazy low rent. See, in my last year of university, when I realized I wanted to work in a creative field like film or art, it was too late to go back and change my major. But I figured, hey, a bachelor's of science is still a degree. I could still apply for low-paying entry positions or internships in creative fields. Surely my passion and enthusiasm would make up for my lack of a BA.
(Spoiler alert: they didn't.)
The trouble was, for every job or internship I applied for, I was competing with equally passionate, enthusiastic people who had figured out what they wanted to do in the womb, like you're supposed to, and who not only had proper arts degrees but who had already done all these impressive, artsy things. Like when I applied for a job at an art gallery in Toronto that went to a girl who had won a National Geographic youth photography award. Or when I applied for an internship at a Vancouver film studio that went to a twenty-one-year-old who had directed an award-winning short film. And honestly, I don't blame them for not choosing me. I wouldn't have chosen me either. But it felt like I was trapped in a catch-22. I couldn't get a job without any experience, and I couldn't get any experience without getting a job.
To make some money in the meantime, I applied for a few entry-level jobs for people with a bachelor's in chemistry (my actual degree), but there I ran into the opposite problem. I had the degree and decent grades, but absolutely zero passion or enthusiasm. I didn't want to be an agricultural chemist or a toxicologist or a water chemist (whatever that is), and I just couldn't fake it well enough to get past an interview.
So, after about a hundred rejections (and eighteen months of living with my parents in their tiny condo in Halifax), I made a new plan. I was going to go back to school and do a proper, creative degree. But I already had a twenty-six-thousand-dollar student loan from my bachelor's in chemistry, and no clue which arts degree I wanted to do. I wanted to choose the right thing this time, and every time I thought I knew for sure—Writing for Film and TV, yes!—I'd get prickles of doubt when I actually started the application. Was this what I was really passionate about, or did it just sound cool? What if I dug myself twenty-six thousand dollars deeper into my student debt hole and wound up with nothing to show for it?
I waffled and I stressed, and all the while my loan payments piled up and my living situation grew a little more strained. Not that I don't get along well with my parents or anything, but it was pretty tight quarters, and I just felt so pathetic every time I'd run into an old friend and they'd ask, "Where you living these days?"
So, when my mother's friend told me her sister was looking for someone to rent their house in Waldon, Prince Edward Island, for practically nothing, I jumped onto my computer to find jobs nearby. And there were exactly two: line cook at a local restaurant and receptionist at an auto shop called Martin Auto.
I applied for both. After a ten-minute phone interview with the auto shop owner, Fred Martin, during which he asked me zero questions and complained at length about his old receptionist leaving without any warning, I got the job.
(It's probably lucky for the people of Waldon that the restaurant never called.)
