Personally Speaking

It has come to my attention that this blog has been sorely lacking in entries of a personal nature. Scroll down and you can see I’ve been playing reporter for the last month or so, covering celebrity comings and goings, politics, local news, sports, movie and theatre reviews, but nothing having to do with things going on in my own life.

Well, there’s a reason for that. There ain’t a helluva lot going on in my life right now. Single, middle-aged, unemployed. This ain’t Sex and the City. I spend my days surfing the web for jobs and sending out resumes, taking occasional breaks to go to the gym, then coming home to make dinner, watch tv and websurf. That’s pretty much been it for weeks now. With the daylight savings time shift, it gets dark early and that makes things pretty gloomy. A very unglamorous life.

I’ve gotten to hang out with a couple of blogger friends who have visited from Atlanta recently (at separate times). Good people, both of them and great to see them face-to-face.

Yesterday, I was contracted to conduct a training for my former employer. It went well, I guess. If it didn’t I don’t really care. It’s over and now I just wait for the check to come. For the five years I was employed there, I trained staff of other agencies in a variety of topics, but the one I had to do yesterday was one I had not done before, so it required me to research and write a new curriculum just for this one time event. Frankly that was far more work than I cared to do and it was agony having to do it. I didn’t finish my outline until the night before although I had about two months to prepare. I just wasn’t feeling it.

Then, going back to the old shop I find things haven’t gotten any better. A new group of my former co-workers have been told they will be out of work at the end of February, and those who remain are wisely looking. What once was a great place to work is now a mere shell of its former self. Believe me when I tell you, this was the perfect job for me. It was good work that I was good at, a supportive environment, very accommodating hours—we NEVER worked evenings and weekends unless we wanted to—which allowed me free time to do all the other things I enjoy. A good salary and generous benefits too.

Then the asshole-in-chief launched the country into a totally unnecessary war in Iraq, and this social service agency which got 80% of it’s funding from the federal government, saw that money siphoned from the federal budget to support the ballooning war effort. Cuts, cuts, and more cuts. If there is any question as to the correlation between who is in office, federal spending priorities and their impact on real people at the grassroots level, look no further than this example. Its not about me being unemployed, it’s about the loss of services to our clients that was the end result.

Rant off. Thank you for letting me share.

I am so doubtful of finding a job like that ever again. I see lots of positions for which I am qualified, but then there’s the line “occasional evenings and weekends” or “some travel involved.” I think not. I really don’t care to work that hard. I am soooo not trying to be in somebody’s office until 8:00 doing paperwork every night.

My resume would suggest I should be management level. Been there, done that, don’t need to do it again. I don’t need a title or a big office or lots of responsibility. I am not the “driven” type when it comes to working for someone else. Forty hours a week, clock out at 5:00, save time to do my stuff. A good salary—I don’t need a lot—but comprehensive health benefits, so I can continue to see the battery of health specialists I used to keep on retainer. Such jobs are hard to find, unfortunately, but I keep looking.

I’ll be doing Thanksgiving back upstate with the family, as I always do. I don’t have to. I want to. Family, food and football, is what that holiday is all about, as far as I’m concerned. I suspect I’ll have some role in making dinner, although I don’t know to what extent, and will pack my knives and recipes for the trip.