When Going to the Dentist is the Less Painful Experience

Today I've done practically nothing outdoors: except a leisurely cycling glide through the allotment gardens to find the lilies-of-the valley scenting the air, lilacs blossoming purple in the high branches of their trees, miniature blue forget-me-nots thronging happily along the feet of the fences, red tulips glowing in the shadows like late winter sunsets, and children chatting hidden in the garden bowers as their parents must have organized quite a few parties today.

It was the first time since 1 week and 2 days ago where I haven't had commitments, and it has been lovely.

The Interview

On Monday I finally received an answer about the interview that I described in the last post. The manager had telephoned me during the Kant 300th birthday event, and it was rather awkward. Fortunately I had put my phone on silent before the event, but he really timed the call just 2 to 5 minutes before the Chancellor of Germany started to address the room.

I would never have been and likely will never be in a position to worry about that scheduling conflict at any other time of my life. 

Of course that flabbergasting bit of timing was funny. But it was also distracting. I really agonized if it would have been more professional to stand up, leave the room, and take the call.

From what I understand of American security protocols for gatherings with the head of state, I might not have been allowed back into the room even if I were allowed to leave it. I don't know what German protocols are.

So after I arrived home, I sent an email to the interviewer explaining that I had been in the middle of an event. (I didn't think that adding detail would be anything but self-aggrandizing.) But the manager prefers to use the telephone, so no reply ever came via that corner.

Story to be continued.

The Tooth

The dentist's check-up happened on Tuesday. The assistant kindly managed to reassure me that despite a small cracking sound I'd heard, things looked fine; but the surgeon and he still seemed a little antsy in general and wanted to be sure I'd come in again for another check-up mid-May.

The Interview, Part II

In the dentist's waiting room, which was empty so it was already clear that I'd be in my appointment punctually, I tried to follow through on the promise in my email to the interview manager and call at noon. (I had received no answer to the email.)

The thing is that I'd forgotten the check-up was scheduled at noon too. So I compromised by calling at 11:55 a.m. The manager picked up and said he'd call back two minutes later. Unsurprisingly, he did not.

So I awkwardly messaged that I'd doublebooked myself. The dentist assistant was sympathetic when he opened the waiting room door, held it for me, and watched me madly typing on the way in to the examination room, and I'd explained why. He reassured me that it would just take 5 minutes.

So I went home, still clinging to my phone because I wanted to hear when it rang. That was a massive nuisance.

I don't recall when the manager did ring. But when he did, he explained that he'd been arguing with himself about hiring me for a while; in the end they'd decided to hire someone else. Reading between the lines, he'd never gotten back to me after his lunch because of guilt-related procrastination.

The rejection I understood because I'm not necessarily suited to every sales job. But what made the call painfully awkward is that I barely caught most of the words he was saying. Not because his voice isn't clear in general, but because of the call quality. 

I had to strain to hear the details of my rejection without the reward of actually understanding everything. He mentioned feedback. It sounded like he'd enjoyed our conversation, but I never found out if he had mentioned anything I should improve.

Endearing myself to interviewers on a personal level apparently just makes it tougher for them when they reject me... But if there's one lesson I already learned in my twenties, one might as well make the future repressed memory of an interview a pleasant repressed memory for both of us.

***

Anyway, the same day I walked around the neighbourhood and found a new crop of shops to apply to.

One of the shops hasn't replied yet to the question I sent that day (or the next?) about the level of experience needed for the job. So I'm going to use the lesson I learned from the Calling Back After Lunch saga, and not waste much thought on that application any more.

That said, I've been reflecting angrily about how I hate asking for the privilege of contributing to society when, during amateur journalistic work, I don't have to ask. I just do, with genuine good intent, even if the contribution turns out to be little and obscure.

That said, maybe there's a lesson in those feelings, too. Even if I may not think of myself as up to the level of a professional journalist in every way and the problem of earning a living has not been resolved, I am already putting so much effort and time into it that I may be meant to do some form of journalism at least for the present.

The Perils of Trying to Do Too Much

Last Wednesday I had a job interview. It went I thought fairly well, I happily demolished a slice of cherry streusel cake at a café while we talked, and it sounded like the interviewer planned to get in touch around Tuesday this week. But he also said — as far as I understood it — that it would be ideal if I got in touch, and save him and his hiring colleague some time. So I did, in the early afternoon this Wednesday, rather worried if I'd misunderstood and would come across as pushy. He said that he was eating lunch but would get back to me at the end of it. He has eaten an incredibly long lunch.

Then on Sunday I followed the Berlin half-marathon. It was enjoyable but, as I covered over 6 km in about 2 hours, so tiring the day after that on Monday I wasn't good for much.

Nonetheless I had a check-up at the dentist's on Monday; the surgeon was out, and it wasn't clear if everything was OK or not. In one and a half weeks, the next appointment should reveal all.

Since the course of Ibuprofen to handle any pain and swelling related to my dental surgery ran out, I've been having intense dreams (but also sleeping more soundly). All my life I've almost never had nightmares, so waking up after dreaming that I'd fallen off the side of a ship and was about to hit the water was a little alarming. A few hours afterward, of course I wondered if I was dreaming in metaphors and felt that something was off in my life, or if this was purely physiological.

So altogether I'm nervous if everything's OK, medically speaking.

Regarding the choir, I finally sent a frank email to two of the organizers when they asked why I hadn't been showing up regularly and if I was OK.

First of all I mentioned that the job search and trying to apply to university were still in progress and that my life is a bit of a mess.

Secondly I mentioned my worries about the summer concert: that singing an Israeli song that wasn't explicitly about peace, and not singing an Arabic-language song alongside it for example, was depressing me a lot.

We quickly came to an agreement that it would just be explained at the concert that we weren't singing the song for political reasons, and that the song had been planned for the programme far longer than 6 months (which I hadn't known before).

So I no longer worry as much that I'm going to become a cheerleader for famine and 30,000+ deaths, and that resolved some of my choir- and Weltschmerz-related woes. (Although I still feel that the public stances of the Berlin city government, the Green Party, the way the RBB evening news is reporting the conflict, and for example the Free University are kind of pushing me into a corner: if I claim any Jewish heritage whatsoever, I have to position myself as a victim of anti-Semites — who are supposedly always immigrants of Germany 'of course' because evidently Germany's Vergangenheitsbewältigung has been suddenly completed — and stand together with Netanyahu policy. It's not an identity I long for, and to me it couldn't be further from the multicultural, inter religious/inter-creed, and rational ideals that my Mendelssohn ancestors held. And I know it's not logical because it's really not my fault, but that as well as the discomfort I feel also about the lot of civilians on both sides in the Middle East, is still eating away at me.)

Either way, the energy required for the choir in general is still really costing me, also literally.

The whole of the weekend after this one, I've agreed to attend the bi-annual rehearsal retreat at a cost of over 70€. An organizer had offered to reduce my costs given my unemployment, but paradoxically they were also disappointed that I didn't choose the more expensive overnight stay option. That retreat will prevent me from relaxing and/or going on revitalizing journalistic excursions for those 2 days. The day after that weekend, there will be the important Kant event.

Turning up weekly to the regular choir rehearsal, instead of skipping it, is also adding pressure.

At the same time, I'm still volunteering and I enjoy seeing the people there when I go.

But I flaked twice when I was invited to join an iftar there, during Ramadan. I did send an excuse each time, and the second iftar clashed with the choir rehearsal time, but it still felt rude and I still feel uncomfortable about it.

Besides, living in a neighbourhood with Muslim families, I'd been longing to be invited to an iftar for years because it seemed nice, and I'd been delighted when it finally happened.

On Tuesday I spent much of the day baking a cake, in a haze of exhaustion; on Wednesday I brought it along as a post-Eid-al-Fitr treat.

Anyway, today I decided to celebrate the end of the 2 week sports ban by finally picking up a training regimen again that I'd abandoned a while ago, namely fulfilling fitness requirements for firefighter work.

The original regimen that inspired me to make the effort is on a piece of paper that has disappeared into the chaos on my desk. But from what I recall it requires running with a weight, push-ups, and sit-ups — in a certain quantity performed within a certain time.

And for 12 minutes I did running and walking intervals in a local park. Full of people, pets, a duck diving for food, pigeons and a timid young rabbit, aromatic pale purple lilacs, and green leaves, it was a relaxing setting.