So for those wanting the update on my life in Funemployment, I went back and did the math: last year I sent my resume out to 110 places (not including the resume “blasting” sites and networking and job fairs) and received only two interviews (one of which was a complete debacle on the part of the would be employer). You have to keep in mind, for the last twenty years, the lab job I had was the only place in the state that did what it did, so it’s not like there were a bunch of places to choose from. Plus, it was like spending twenty years in suspended animation: my how the lab tech landscape has changed in my absence. Which is fine, because I wanted to get away from science anyway as it wasn’t where my heart was to begin with.
Still, prolonged unemployment can lead to moments of worthlessness as so many of us are vested in what we do rather than who we are. For one thing, it can lead to “dark nights of the soul” as you wonder whether or not you have anything of value to offer anyone. For another, our work is where many people find their identity. My lab job wasn’t who I was, nor did it especially match my skillsets and inclinations. It did, however, pay the bills of my life and provided stability and security and that’s all many of us can ask for.
So as I’ve been plotting my future course, I’ve been walking a tension between being choosey and being pragmatic. It’s not like I don’t know that work is meant to be hard and often sucks, I just live in the hope that it doesn’t have to be draining. So it’s not so much being picky as much as tired of living in empty ways. It shouldn’t be too much to ask for to want to do something that makes a difference and matches my calling and gifts.
I am also quite cognizant of the fact that I have the luxury of using my free time to pursue being a full time writer. That’s the only way I’ve been able to knock out so many projects in the past year. But all freelance writers have “that date” where they can no longer sustain doing what they’re doing (that is, when the last job has come in, with none on the horizon, and bills threatening to overwhelm). I’ve also been setting up a non-profit organization that would come alongside other non-profit groups who work with at risk kids to expose them to the arts and help them find their creative voice/ways of expressing themselves.
That’s pretty much how I fill my days between turns at Scrabble, plus connecting with folks from our church community – which, I won’t lie, we’re all kind of spoiled on. With “that date” quickly approaching, I’m trying to wrap up as many projects as I can. Because I’m not too proud to start wearing a paper hat and asking “do you want fries with that?”
Hello again, dear Maurice! Just checking to make sure you’re OK and pass on my news! Well you may have wondered why I’ve gone a bit quiet of late: though I’ve been tweeting and retweeting quite animatedly (tip: if unsure if I am still alive, look at my Twitter: I’m addicted now and it’s the only blog I’ve ever kept up regularly; that is to say tweets at least every couple of days: more so retweets: really I use it as social bookmarking though I also use delicious and a couple of others.)
Well I can’t focus on too many things at once: and I’ve been too gripped by Tunisia, Egypt, then Wisconsin (!) and Libya to pay too much attention to fiction at the moment: tho my mythological and paranormal interests are still bubbling away! I’m following a lot of Arab bloggers and Twitterers at the moment: and Wisconsinites! And Michael Moore, who is finally seeing what he wants to see! Worms *do* turn if you bake them enough, in America and the world over!
Which leads me to ask – why aren’t you blogging about that?
Situation? Even in a general way: to paraphrase a Christian writer of note: no blogger is an island! Have you written something a few weeks ago I missed?!
I realise it may be difficult for “Reagan’s children/generation”, some of them, to realise: but America and the world over is starting on a great period of social change right now: after a period of relative quiescence, even degeneration. The next 30 years aren’t going to be the same as the last 30 years; just as they were different from the 30 before that; each third-century going in a different direction.
You can’t miss jumping on that bandwagon! And it has *lots* of religious significance: the poor and the downtrodden are turning against the rich and the proud, evil and corrupt: in the little-covered-by-the-West ongoing Egyptian revolt, they went to a place called Nasr City where there was some horrible Guantanamo-like, Abu-Ghraib-like police/prison complex and torture facility;the crowd stormed it and released quite a few prisoners and many more files!
“It’s our Mordor,” said at least one blogger, sandmonkey I think; or maybe it was @pakinamamer; these things get RTd a lot. Others were comparing it to the storming of the Bastille: I was busy RTing all weekend! You should follow the two I’ve mentioned + @3arabawy, who has a Twitter and a blog without the 3. Some of these citizens are building themselves up a worldwide reputation.
And of course it’s what all the world religions and their scriptures at heart have always been calling for, isn’t it?! Even – especially – the Abrahamic! Justice, social justice, equality for the poor! It’s in the Quran and the book of Isiah! The New Testament too: says lots about “justice for the widow and the fatherless” and “the first shall be last and the last shall be first”! Doesn’t say anything like: “verily, the rich shall get to keep all they have, pay no taxes and continue to leach from the rest and take State handouts for their businesses while attacking public sector workers” – I don’t remember that in the Bible!
No: it doesn’t say that the rich shall get to live forever in their palaces – or Senate houses – and that the poor shall be sent empty away! I remember something *quite* different! I also think that Americans underestimate/underemphasise how much the scriptures of their faiths call for social justice and in effect, social revolution. A medieval Englishman not to mention one of the 17thc. wouldn’t have been so blind!
Now: quick change of subject and more reference to the topic of the post. (Patience please: I have so much to tell you!) The job search: I sympathise. Now: have you tried a jobs site called http://www.hound.com ?? I had never heard of it before: stumbled across it by accident, liked the concept and regretted it was US-only. Read the owner’s bio: by his own (believable) account he’s some kind of working-class genius! Give it a go if you haven’t already.
Yes. This middle-class-unemployment, skilled-people-going-begging phenomenon. This is one of the reasons I truly hate modern society.
All this technological advancement: and yet they still can’t figure out how to spread the wealth properly; nor how to ensure even that the well-educated and qualified – not rich – can have secure and good-paying employment. *That’s* what’s really changed since I was at school; it really only started once Thatcher got in in my first year of secondary school. Teachers at my primary school assumed: 1) everybody would have a job 2) The ones who did well at school would get good jobs. (The 70s were really a very hopeful, positive era: as I was saying to s. on Twitter a couple of weeks ago. Not so much climate change paranoia: more concern being pushed on schoolkids that the fossil fuels would “run out”: but plenty of technological optimism and even a degree of social Utopianism: to every problem there was a solution and plenty of proto-green tech around: none of which ultimately got funded by the (Tory) govt because it was far more interested in promoting nuclear fuel and nuclear bombs: naturally I was a teenage..
..member of CND. Yes: the 70s were a very optimistic, Utopian period; my childhood consciousness was filled with school science projects like futuristic cities in all sorts of unlikely places – reminiscent of “I’ve been to the year 3000″!; plus TV screens packed with eccentric scientists and ecologists and documentary-makers; everyone from David Bellamy to Magnus Pyke to James Burke; a fascinating era. Science really was relevant then: it was only the perfidious 80s that made it not so and replaced it with junk like celebrities. The 80s might have had Princess Di, The Eurhythmics, Bronski Beat and Culture Club; it still sucked.)
BTW: if you’re not sure who James Burke is, look up the website KnowledgeWeb Project; I lost sight of him for years until he popped up on Wikipedia a few years ago; seems he’s done even better in the US with his shows than in GB! He’s one of the top science historians now,something of a philosopher;he started as a TV reporter and his degree (from Oxford:helps) was in Middle English!
I know you’re in the e-building: you were yesterday: r u gonna leave a reply comment?
In the meantime, I’ll continue my “guest post” – uninvited, for you never invite me! You’re not very good at “taking risks” I’ve noticed: something you might like to factor into the job hunt!
Well one reason I mentioned some of the scientist-artist-presenters above is that I felt really that that was work *you* could do; pity your experiences seem to have put you off science altogether! It’s a marvellously exciting field, you know, biology: my top picks for interestingness would be epigenetics (Lamarckianism rides again!) and the way human development is affected in the womb and by early upbringing and experiences. What did you used to do to those poor fish that was so boring and irrelevant?!
Oh I think you could be some kind of science journalist or editor: use your specialist knowledge/training! Of course, like I said, it helps to have gone to Oxford, bcos that’s where the BBC gets its “serious” presenters from, then..
..and now. But it’s just that in the post-war decades, people from relatively modest backgrounds (grammar school in UK) could make a place for themselves in the intelligentsia of their nation: don’t think that’s the case now; hope for those times and better to come again! But, well; you’re kinda debonair; there are a few debonair black presenters on British TV and radio: there must be more in America! Covering serious subjects I mean.
Oh my mind is diverting all over the place! Was your job description really “lab tech”? You know, every time I see those words my mind immediately goes: “Batman villain, Batman villain!” (No – don’t go for THAT job!) Did you ever want to rob the joint, though? Was there anything to steal?? Was it called Monarch and did it have a vat? Did just looking at those fish inspire you to hitherto-unconfessed thoughts of anarchy?!
No – don’t answer any of those naughty bizzareries! But – I do like pulp fiction!
Like I was saying, I’m sure there’s lots of things you’d be good at..
(Besides Batman villain. Mind you, lovey, it’s always the quiet ones.. that end up doing sth: my chirpy kind of joker is really all talk alas!)
I think you might have to kinda sidestep a little bit: think outside the box! Rather than go for the same job you had before: which you’ve admitted isn’t that common. Were you let go bcos of budget cuts? Was it a public or private sector job? You never even told us if you got any redundancy money! Even Yanks must know what that is: bet you don’t get much. You know, in GB, if you’d worked anywhere for twenty years, they’d have to pay you *tens of thousands of £££ redundancy*: ie it’s like a divorce: *it’s not costless for the employer and it shouldn’t be either*! That’s what I’ve been wanting to ask/point out to you for months!
Talking of comics/unemployment: I found a great independent graphic novel on that note a few weeks ago, published last year. Wanted to send you link, but was afraid you’d think I was taking mick! Will send anyway: hope you review it!
You and I do have some similarities of shared experience though, in a general way. Could you describe your debacle interview, making it funny and artfully disguising the company??
My biggest debacle was in the earlier 1990s. It was when I went for an interview – or rather a group assessment – with a biggish firm by rural standards, on an industrial estate in Falmouth. The job I was after that had been advertised was simple data entry: but weeks later I was phoned back about an interview for an accounting job! I explained to the young chap that I hadn’t even applied for accounting and in any case was not qualified in it: he seemed quite insistent: I got cross in the end and declined the interview as I knew I wouldn’t get the job and in any case couldn’t accept one I had no capacity to do.
I wasn’t at all impressed by the firm anyway; it was American, interestingly enough! And so was their “assessor” or whatever might she be called who gives you the typing test! An aggressive, unattractive woman who talked..
..incessantly about resumes and didn’t even have the grace to master British English! Anyway: it was the same firm that had bigged itself up in the local press the previous year as having been “attracted” to Cornwall to provide jobs locally: for which it had consequently been paid a little under a million pounds by the county council from some kind of “development fund”; some months after my application I read again in the papers about it; how it had gone bust after about 18 months! Corporate welfare never pays off for communities. It was a crap firm and must have been an embezzling fiddle from the start; they were a startup business and yet the PCs they used were so old and knackered all the key letters had worn off – after they were granted a million pounds?! Come to think of it, I dislike American employers, period; I worked for another one in London and they all seem to think they’re God’s gift; maybe that’s what your culture teaches them to think.
The “not too proud” saying/attitude: I’ve gone through that too! Though being brought up and schooled as strictly “white collar”. The irony being, of course, that just because you’re “not too proud” to do sth: you won’t necessarily get it! The further irony being for me that when I was young and fit enough to do what might be classed as “summer casual” or student work – round my way in the day it was really impossible to get such jobs if you had any qualifications at all, even A Levels or studying for them! Shop jobs they wouldn’t touch you for, not even working part time in Woolworths when you were 17. One of my classmates *did* land such a job – and she told me to shut up when I was talking to her – because apparently she’d told them she’d left school! Even in London it was hard to find work because our caste society then wasn’t geared to the idea of student workers. It is now: but there are millions more foreigners to compete with too: hence youth unemployment.
I didn’t land my first summer job till I was 18. You or your parents had to “know someone”. My mother was at last introduced to the right someone who owned several local businesses. I applied for jobs at more than one. The first I applied for was as staff at his burger bar; not because I wanted grease in my hair, but because it was the best paid! And I thought I could easily work in food, though in truth I would have preferred a cafe or a deli. But for some reason – “lack of experience”? – I just didn’t get that job and had to settle for the lesser-paid if cleaner post of cashier at his amusement arcade. I never understood why he wouldn’t give me the food job; I was easily fit enough to do it and I wasn’t very overweight: no uniform problems! Maybe he thought I was just too presentable cos the fast food workers looked skanky!
Anyway: I *never* got the job I really wanted. Even if fit enough I wouldn’t try for it again though: it’s a young person’s game, and although McDonald’s etc make provisions for student
workers, these days all I see behind the fast food counters of my town are (young) foreigners.
You couldn’t accept a job like that anyway Maurice; seriously I know that in your country it would be ill-advised to do that: because it doesn’t pay medical benefits!
I tell you what would be a far better system than our present inefficient one. The government should guarantee everybody jobs through a greatly expanded public sector. People should be given jobs commensurate with their intelligence, abilities, capacities (which would include the capability to be trained on-the-job as something) and intellectual attainment. The latter should not be primarily assessed by expensive bits of paper which now generally cost more to attain than they’re worth. But by methods such as exhaustive intelligence tests and examinations modelled on the present civil service exams: open to all who can read, write, count and I daresay, use a computer! These tests should be administered by government not private bodies.
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