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a last minute job lead

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Vancouver, 2002.08.09

I had a job interview, today. In Vancouver. My first one of those (not a phone interview, not set in some other city, not with an agency, etc) that I've had this year. Possibly the first in nine months! How typical that it should come after I've given up my apartment. I spoke with my landlord, though, and he said to keep him posted...

On my way to that interview, I passed a construction site where some guys were watching one of their fellows work. He had a sledge hammer and some full-size rebar that had been bent into a right angle in the middle. He lifted the sledge, and dropped it head-down onto one of the pieces of rebar, which he'd set up so that it leaned on the steps where his colleagues sat. The rebar snapped exactly where he'd hit it. I was surprised that it would break so easily!

rand()m quote

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

—John Gardner