Tag: job hunting

Damn it, Idris!

On By StevenIn Life At Home11 Comments

Editor’s note:  The text of this post was written a few days ago, and at that time I was still furiously job hunting.  I was planning on fleshing this out with a few more humorous references to ways in which Idris Elba makes me feel inadequate before posting it.  Earlier today, however, I received the wonderful news that I finally have a job offer.  Suck it, Idris!  Rather than rewriting the whole thing, I’m just going to post the most recent draft below this line, because it’s just funnier that way.

I am now the same age as Batman, Electra, Black Adam, Heimdall, Judge Dredd, Lex Luthor, Cyborg, Captain Cold, and the Tick.

Or, to put it another way, Ben Afleck, Jennifer Garner, Idris Elba, Dwayne “The Rock Johnson,” Karl Urban, Michael Rosenbaum, Khary Payton, Wentworth Miller, and Peter Serafinowicz were all born in 1972, just like me.

Britney Spears, Nelly Furtado, Lucy Liu, Maria Callas, Stone Phillips, Ray Walston, and Gianni Versace all share my birthday, but from different years.

This is me, at 45.  The one on the left, obviously.  The one on the right is Idris Elba, also 45.

 

Idris Elba is three months older than me. Every time I see him on a screen, I feel inadequate.

As I start my 45th year, I am unemployed.  My last gig was a contract which ended on the 31st of October, because the  project was nearing completion.  The following five weeks marks the longest period of unemployment I’ve had since I was in high school, not counting those times that I was a full time student.   It’s a strange sensation.

Idris Elba, on the other hand, has more work than he can handle.  He’s not just a stage and film and television actor- that handsome son of a gun is also a DJ and music producer.  I honestly didn’t know this until I started researching him for this post, but Idris Elba has released music under the names DJ Big Driis, Big Driis the Londoner, and 7 Dub.  He DJ’d an NBA All Star Party at the Venetian in Las Vegas in 2007.  He’s featured on a Macklemore and Ryan Lewis album!  Damn it, Idris, we get it!  You’re a triple-threat.

I spent nearly fifteen years at my last company, and I enjoyed the comfort that seniority provided.  I knew my company inside and out, and I knew the people around me incredibly well.  The last time I stared with a new employer, I was in my twenties.  Joining a new company at the bottom rung in an industry flooded by newer college graduates with mad skills makes me feel kind of like this:

Job hunting is exhausting and stressful.    I know that I have a lot to offer potential employers, but I’ve never been good at selling myself.   At times, waves of doubt and low self esteem hit me.

Still, I keep at it. I apply to a minimum of five positions a week, and I do more if there are good postings that week. I’ve been averaging one or two interviews a week, but with no job offers so far.

I think that smug bastard Idris Elba*, in the same position, would already have several job offers.  And a magazine cover.  And possibly a hit single.

I wonder how one applies to be the defender of the Bifrost.

*I have no actual knowledge that Idris Elba is a smug bastard.  From every indication, he’s actually a genuinely nice guy who is entirely unaware of how inferior he makes the rest of us feel.

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Whasaaaaaaaap?

On By StevenIn Life At Home6 Comments

I apologize for using a seventeen year old commercial as my subject line, but it’s kind of appropriate.  It feels like it’s been at least that long since I really posted anything, not counting that one post with the yummy cinnamon rolls.

I’ve tried to come back to the blog numerous times, but each time I do, that blank post box just stares accusingly at me, asking why I haven’t fed it.  The further you go between posts, the more difficult it is to wrench yourself back to regular blogging.

So getting back to where I’ve been and what’s been going on since my last truly informative post, let’s start with the stuff that’s not changed:  My relationship with Amelie is still great, and we have loads of fun together.  My family is all pretty much the same as they were before.  My dad is doing a little bit better, actually-  he was diagnosed with some form of Parkinsons and the medication they gave him specific to that has helped his mobility quite a bit.

For the changing things, though-  my apartment lease ended on December 9th, and I moved into my brother’s spare room as a transitional thing.  I’m still there.  My job ended on December 15th, and the following Monday I took a six month contract doing pretty much exactly the same thing I had been doing previously.  The difference is that now I’m working from home instead of an office, except for that one time that Dave and I tried a Regus co-working space.  That was kind of neat, actually, and maybe I should have used that experience as a blog post.

Although my departure from Mr. Company was in December, it’s not until the first of April that the company that hired me in 2002 is really and truly dead.  The last few people left at the office have their last day at the end of this month, and there’s going to be a final happy hour near the old office-  I plan on going, but I suspect it will be a fairly somber outing for a happy hour.    The death of my fourteen year career with my former Mr. Company might be an entire separate blog post in the future, because there’s a lot to unpack there.   I’m still waiting for the actual realization that it’s truly over.   I suspect I’m in some form of denial because I’m still doing more or less the same work, at least until the end of the contract.

The biggest thing happening in my life at the moment is that I’m relocating.  You may have noticed that most of the concert dates in the sidebar of this blog have started to be located in Central Florida.  That’s because Orlando is where I’m heading.   I’ve already moved everything that was in my storage unit here up to Orlando, during a surprisingly fun day with Amelie, a fifteen-foot U-haul truck, and the assistance of several friends and family members.   Most amusingly, my Orlando digs turned out to be on the same street as my friend and fellow blogger Jenn.  The universe is full of very silly coincidences.

I’ll be spending time flipping between Orlando and Ft. Lauderdale throughout April and into May.  My Orlando residential address is a temporary situation- once I’m up there full time, I’ll be looking for a new place of my own.  There’s all kinds of great little apartments for rent near Lake Eola and downtown, and the rental rates are way lower than they are in South Florida.

As for the jobbyness,  Amelie and I are both hunting for new gigs in Orange County as my contract starts to wrap up.  Looking for something new before the month of April is sort of pointless for me, because the contract doesn’t end until May 30th.  Amelie could start something new much faster than me, but it would be pretty convenient if we’re starting new things at roughly the same time. In the interim, I’m trying to learn some new things and perhaps get a certification or two to make myself more appealing to employers.

So that’s what I’ve been up to…  how about you?  Whasaaaaaaaap?

A Fork in the Road

On By StevenIn Life At Home7 Comments

As we roll into day 30 of National Blog Posting Month and Nanopoblano, I find myself surprised to have completed the entire month.   When Rara asked me in late October to participate, I initially said that my life is too crazy-busy right now to do a blog post every day.  Nevertheless, on the first of November, I posted a thing.  On the second of November, I posted another thing.

One a day, every day, until we reached today.   I didn’t even write ahead and schedule posts to go up in the future until Thanksgiving- I wrote a new post each day, or had three-fourths of a post almost ready to go in the drafts folder, needing some polish.

The truth is that I’m kind of grateful to this little project, because it’s been a wonderful distraction.   I’ve mentioned only a few times in the blog that my employment is ending on the fifteenth of December, but I haven’t really shared just how terrified that makes me.   Writing something new every day has helped me to stay sane and to keep the stress at bay.  I didn’t know that my blog could do that-  I’ve never really used it that way before now.

I didn’t realize until just recently how much of my identity is tied up in what I do.   And I also wrote a while back about how my highly specialized product knowledge will be useless after this job ends.

This is a fear that I have-  I worry that my skills won’t transfer to a new job, or that even after more than fifteen years doing tech work, I won’t be any different than any other resume on some hiring manager’s desk.   I worry that I won’t stand out enough to get hired.  I worry that if I do get hired, I’ll hate the job and be stuck in a soul-crushing perdition from which I cannot escape.

I worry, also, that this might be the last time in my life that I can really choose a career path different from the one I’ve been on.  I’m two days from 44, and I still haven’t got the foggiest idea what I want to be when I grow up.

I don’t really know if I want to keep doing this kind of work.  I don’t really know where I want to live, although Orlando and Portland are both very appealing to me.  (And, frankly, Orlando is the more likely of the two because it’s right there and it has Disney!)

The image attached to this post is my laptop wallpaper right now, because I find myself  at a fork in the road.   For just this moment, I’m not attached to a lease.  I have, thanks to some creative application of time off, roughly six actual days left in the office before I’m unemployed.

And I don’t know what to do next.

Except to keep blogging,  I guess.   Probably not every day, though, because I have a feeling things are about to get a lot busier around here.

fork-in-the-road

What was your favorite post from my last thirty days of bloggery?

Editor’s Note:  I’m attempting to blog every day in November with CheerPeppers.  I don’t expect to succeed because life be crazy, but any blogging in excess of my previous post-free month is a win, right?

Kafka Style

On By StevenIn Life At Home4 Comments

This post is partially inspired by a recent WordPress Daily Post prompt using the word “transformation.”

Last night, I dreamed of work. This isn’t an unusual dream- I generally assume that a work dream just means that I need a vacation.    This is different though.  I’ll explain.

When people ask me “what do you do,” I usually scoff and say that my job isn’t who I am. I say that there are so many more interesting ways for them to get to know me than to ask about my employment.

I’m lying, though.

For so long, I’ve identified a large part of myself as who I am to my coworkers. They’re another family, really. And my particular experience with our European partners has made me “the guy” for any questions about that.   All of this is changing now.  I’ve begun the process of “knowledge transfer,” which basically means telling the guy taking over my stuff where I documented everything that I do.

Also, I have to burn off sick time that would not be payed out at the end.  This means that I’ll be sprinkling my remaining sick days throughout the next few weeks. Yesterday was the first of these self-enforced exiles, and it’s difficult for me to not work. I was home and working on other things, and the urge to check my work e-mail creeps in. “I’ll just work one tiny trouble ticket. Nobody will know.”  It’s insidious.

Amelie's resolve face. I see this whenever I'm doing something I shouldn't be doing.
Amelie’s resolve face.  I see this whenever I’m doing something I shouldn’t be doing.

This is part of the challenge ahead of me.  I have to get used to doing other things.  I have to stop checking in on my e-mail or the ticket queue when I’m not at work.  It’s gotten so bad that if I have my own command line stuff up on my computer, Amelie will give me a stern look and ask if I’m working.

This is the time that I have to become someone else, in a manner of speaking.  I must separate out the part of me that works even on vacation days so that I can re-purpose him for the next employer, the next adventure.

I’m still making decisions about where I want to be after this employment ends, but one thing I know for sure-  I won’t still be “the guy” for my current job responsibilities any more.   That guy only has about a month left to do his thing.

I wonder who I’ll be next.

Who are you at work?

Editor’s Note:  I’m attempting to blog every day in November with CheerPeppers.  I don’t expect to succeed because life be crazy, but any blogging in excess of my previous post-free month is a win, right?

National what day?

On By StevenIn Life At Home6 Comments

I brought my laptop with me to Panera Bread so that I could get on with the business of rewriting my resume to reflect modern times.  The last time I  really updated my resume was well over a decade ago, after all.

Once I had my lunch, I opened Firefox and it dutifully reloaded the last few tabs I had open.    Naturally, this included the great time sucker, Facebook.  Facebook told me in the trending bar on the right side that today is National Sandwich Day.

How fortuitous, then, that my Pick-2 includes a rather tasty turkey and avocado sandwich!

sammich

Today is also National Stress Awareness Day, which is hilarious to me-  I’m plenty aware of stress.  National Chocolate Day was a few days back, and it’s a travesty that I totally missed that one.

Today’s also National Candy Day, but I feel like that one really ought to be synchronized more with halloween.  National Pastry Day and National Brownie Day are one day apart, but I feel like they should be grouped together.

While my birthday has no truly fun National days, the 15th of December is National Cat Herders Day.  I quite like that one!  The good news here is that we all have plenty of time to prepare for National Pretend To Be A Time Traveler Day.  That one sounds like fun.

National Procrastination Day was January 4th this year,although the date of this one changes yearly for some reason. Maybe I should celebrate it officially today, because I really should be working on my resume.  That is why I brought my laptop here in the first place.  I’d better get on with it…  right after I figure out why today is National Chicken Lady Day!

What’s your favorite National ______ Day holiday?

Editor’s Note:  I’m attempting to blog every day in November with CheerPeppers.  I don’t expect to succeed because life be crazy, but any blogging in excess of my previous post-free month is a win, right?