What can you do?

I love movies.

Many years ago, there was a film that captured my mind and my heart. It was so interesting to me. Now that I'm older and more discerning, I think it was about something that I didn't even recognize when I was younger and the film was newer and fresher.

Broadcast News was touted as a romantic comedy. Or a romantic movie. Or a drama with romance. It's difficult to say.

Anyway, it's about how the news is news and shouldn't be entertainment. Or at least, that's what it is to me. Yeah, I identify with the Holly Hunter character more than I do with anyone or anything else. Except I've never scheduled my crying jags according to when I have time to cry.

At the very beginning of the movie, before things become complicated and complex, the William Hurt character as a child asks, "What can you do if all you can do is look good?" The sardonic subtitle then touts caustically, "Future Network Anchorman."

Ouch.

Poor good-looking dunderhead.

I am now not twenty-something. I am now not 112 pounds of excitable freshman flesh. I am not as cute as I once was, nor am I as youthful and hopeful and filled with enthusiasm as I was twenty-some years ago.

I still have the same flair with fashion that I always had, but it's harder to find garments that compliment both my age and my size as well as my taste and style. I don't want to look like Carrie from "Sex and the City;" I was always more of a Charlotte-type person, anyway. But Charlotte is perpetually slender and young. Where does she go when Charlotte grows up? There must be a place -- but it sadly is not located in Tennessee, and it is not one of the more affordable venues.

As I continue to apply for jobs and send out résumé after résumé in the vain hope of finding just one job that will take me and won't make me want to jab my eyes out with a fork, I keep coming back to -- what are my skills, exactly? What is it about me that an employer would want, anyway?

And -- gosh! I wish I could sugarcoat this more glibly! -- I keep thinking, like the William Hurt character, "What can you do if all you can do is be nice?"

I have a perfectly fine brain. It was tested a few times, and it's not a dunderhead. It's a good brain. I like it, even if math is not its main thang. It is not, under any circumstances, going to be confused with Abby Normal's brain.

But it apparently isn't wired in a completely marketable way. I can't program computers or calculate future market trends. I'm not the best person you want on your team if you're looking for "fierce and outgoing marketing and sales GENIUSES."

I can fix grammar and spelling; I can write sonnets in several rhyme patterns, and I am a diva at compliments.

But I can not be mean. I can not exclude. I am not the person you want on the phone haranguing a victim to pay his past-due bills.

I guess I am just going to have to keep looking, and I hope I am going to find something before things become dire at Chez Loftis.

After all, I was born to roll in violets every spring. I was not brought forth to bring violence to the Earth.