Sunday, December 30, 2007

random thoughts and musings

I haven't had a lot to say lately though all kinds of thoughts have been bouncing around in my head. Just nothing coherent enough to write down. So I have been blog hopping and lurking in various places for the last three weeks.

I am still looking for work but the search has gone slowly. I have been looking for new sources of information but haven't found anything consistently useful. Why, you ask. Well the job boards I had been using (Indeed, Just Hired, CareerBuilder, and Monster, etc.) have had nothing useful for me. The lists can be categorized as military, driving, medical and sales. I did my military stint thirty years ago and even if I were in much better physical shape (ie, 80 lbs lighter) I don't want to revisit that job. I really, really, really, REALLY don't like driving. I do it when I absolutely have to and for only as long as I absolutely must. Besides, I don't want to try to get a CDL. I have no background for the medical jobs. And after my last interview for a sales/cashier position I have to seriously rethink that pathway. I wrote about being 'overqualified' for those types of position a while back.

I have come to realize several 'truths' through this very unsettling year. I never realized how much I hate job hunting. But I do hate it--so much that I put serious job searching off for months even though I knew my boss was going to close the party goods store well before she said so. Then I applied for tellering jobs even though I was dubious about doing so. I had resisted that avenue for a long time and had very little success in the application process. Usually I got the dreaded "we have received your application and will consider it carefully" letter followed by silence. Once I did receive a letter saying "Thank you for your interest but we have hired someone else." Mom had been pushing tellering. No heavy lifting, regular hours, decent pay. So when I did get an offer I jumped on it. I was still tentative and dubious but, what the hell, it was a job and I needed one. All too often in the past, I have jumped into jobs because at least that would end the search. And, all too often I have added a new entry to the 'been there, done that, and don't want to do it again' list.

I have also discovered that I don't like to multi-task and I don't do it well. Being the one legged man in a butt kicking contest is no fun and not very rewarding. Psychologically, I am not well suited for multi-tasking. I have a tendency to think ahead and, when interrupted, can easily pick up at the point about which I was thinking instead of the point at which I was interrupted. I tried continuously during my short stint as a teller to control that tendency but it always rose up to bite me in the ass.

Through out my adult life I have had two fall back strategies when things began to fall apart. I would either pursue a different academic goal toward a new career goal or I would find a job for two or three years as a cashier or retail sales clerk. Now neither of those strategies are viable. I don't have the resources or the faith to go the academic route again. The last time through I piled up a large student loan debt of which I doubt I will ever be free. Even if I had no student loan debt, I don't have the breezy faith of youth that there will be good paying jobs available when I finished. The last interview for a sales job ended, for all intents and purposes, when the interviewer pronounced me 'overqualified.' Mostly, however, I don't even get called for an interview.

I have said before I need to re-think my strategies but I don't know where to begin to do that.

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