“It’s Noon on a Thursday”

Fiction. Based on a True Moment in my Life.

by Noah Taylor

This journal entry is inspired by true events. Some of the characters, names, businesses, incidents, and certain locations and events have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes. Any similarity to the name, character or history of any person is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

You get up from the couch to walk back to the bed. He is curled up in the sheets and surrounded by a fortress of pillows in the middle of the California King bed you share. The phone illuminates his face as he watches videos of everything from cute puppies to Fortnite commentary. He’s trying to wake up from the last twelve hours spent sleeping. That should have been more than enough time, except that the two hour nap before you both go to work night shifts is always appealing. Life has become so emotionally taxing that your brains are trying to escape it in any way possible. You pull your favorite blanket around your waist and settle into the bed with your laptop. It’s getting harder and harder to reach out to your long distant friends. To do so is to admit that they are so far away. You would only be calling them with news about working at a neighborhood ice cream shop.

You moved 1,200 miles to still be working a job you could have absolutely done in the small town you had left. How were you supposed to know that getting accepted into an entry level writing position would be this hard? Of course, the field is competitive: you had acknowledged that by getting a four year degree in English! That was supposed to be at least a little appealing to employers, right? But it was not!! No one cared!! You studied hard for four years and acquired a mountain of student loan debt, only to have employers remind you that you are not special, by refusing to even acknowledge your application submission. In these moments, you wish that you at least knew an existing employee to use as a reference. In these moments, you wince as you realize that these companies neglect to spend a second looking at your resume for the same reasons college frat boys won’t let you into their shitty party: you simply do not know anyone there.

On top of a degree, these “entry level” jobs require one year of writing experience relevant to the job. On top of a degree, you must push your resume into the right, helpful hands which will then set it on top of the stack of all the other people’s resumes; all of us trying to achieve the same level of elitism. Your orange tabby flashes his lion cub face at you as he plops his lanky body down next to you. He wears an adorably discouraged face: his dark, narrowed eyes glare at you under his furrowed little forehead. He’s barely a year old, but he knows that you are a member of his pack that needs more care than you are currently giving yourself right now. The frustration projected into his glare exhausts him until his eyes are closed and his head rests on your thigh. The little man loves you, even when your future employers refuse to look at you right now.