Mike Needs a Life Blog Reposts – Part 04
August 29, 2008
Today Was Lame
UG, today I had no mental or physical energy. I did nothing but sit at the computer all day, in fact I’m still sitting at the computer, but then you probably guessed that.
I didn’t really accomplish anything at all, I looked at a few job posts on the various sites out there. Some sparked my interest, one in particular even though it was entry level gfx position. It’s out at Full Sail. I’ve always thought that place was pretty damned cool, and have always thought it would be a fun place to work. I know what entry level means though, 20k a year, and that’s hard to live on. It would be great to get a foot in the door though, maybe I’ll just go drop off a resume and portfolio for kicks. We’ll see.
I didn’t get around to writing the ‘after the first Monday without work’ post like I had intended. I just couldn’t muster the energy to re-live that week in my mind so I could write it down. I may just skip it, I don’t want to bore anyone with too many details.. let’s just suffice by saying there was lots of alcohol being consumed through the week. Dave came by and helped me drown my sorrows a couple afternoons, that was nice. I guess we’re both probably feeling separation anxiety.. haha.
One thing of note that I can’t leave out from last week. We seriously talked about picking up and hightailing it to Key West, and spent a couple days crunching numbers and trying to figure out if we could do it or not. We went as far as searching online for jobs down there. I actually found one I was pretty excited about located right on Duvall St. It was a photographer who needed a photoshop expert to color correct his digital photos for him.. right up my alley.* We had reservations at the state park in key west, and were going to go down for a week, and apartment and job search. Well, we eventually came to the conclusion that we wouldn’t be able to rent out the house up here for enough to cover the mortgage payments.. so our plan to survive on working a couple cheap and easy jobs just wasn’t gonna cut it, I’d for sure need to get a much higher paying job to make up for the difference. More than I was willing to be worrying about while trying to disappear into the Caribbean.
SO, we put that plan on hold for 5 years, and when Connor turns 18, and I no longer have to pay child support we’ll seriously re-evaluate that plan. Key west in 5 years would be a great stepping stone to the final phase of the 10-year plan.. to be living on a sailboat in the Virgin Islands. More on that whole dream in some other post..
Anyways, back to today. Christina has been home for the last two days because her temp job she was supposed to be working at ‘indefinitely’ went tits-up. Apparently MVCI (where she was temping) has gone into cost-containment mode and let go all the temps they had in the company. Sucks to be in the Time-Share business too I guess. Well as you could guess she’s at her wits end with being laid off. (Sylvan laid her off a few months back when corporate sold her center to private owners). Luckily though, she’s another interview lined up tomorrow morning at a company right downtown for a temp job that will (supposedly) last through the end of the year. I’m crossing my fingers. I do love her to death, but I think if we have to both be in the house all day every day together, we’re going to be at each other’s throats by the middle of next week!
My friend Jeff Blossey was kind enough to send me a sample of his resume and his portfolio today so I could see what the real graphics people do with their resume and stuff. All I can say is woah, I feel like a child next to him when it comes to graphics, looking at his stuff makes me want to change careers, I can’t keep up with that kind of work. I think I’m just gonna go be a bartender.
Well I’m afraid that’s all I’ve in me tonight. I feel like I haven’t gotten a single real thing done all day, and I just don’t care. Well I do, but not enough to do anything about it now. HAHA. I think I’m just so tired of worrying about things, and feeling like I gotta GO GO GO, that I just need a day or two of total brain shut-down. I’ll probably guilt myself into doing more tomorrow..
* 2010 UPDATE: In an odd twist of serendipity, that job posting for Photoshop expert that I saw the week I wrote this is currently the job I have… I replaced the person who took it when I first saw it.. a year later.
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Mike Needs a Life Blog Reposts – Part 03
August 28, 2008
The First Unemployed Monday
So let me back up a couple of weeks to the first ‘work day’ without work. I got up at my normal time because not getting up at my normal time would be like acknowledging to myself that something had changed.. this ain’t no vacation! I took a shower, changed my clothes, ate a bowl of multi-grain Cheerios. Then it hit me.. what do I do now?
I knew that I needed to put together a resume, it’d been 17 years almost since I’d put one together, and I’d not kept up with it over the years at the office. Crap. I sat down at the computer and opened Word. I got as far as my name and address before the blockage set in. What the eff do I know how to do? Who cares anyway? Everything I wrote sounded like total bullshit even if it was completely true. Is this really what people want to see? How do I take what I do and make it sound interesting to someone I’ve never met, especially since that someone is most likely not even a someone, but a software program scanning for keywords. Even if that someone is a real person, it’s some god-forsaken HR soul-sucker who’s only purpose at their work is to screen out ‘undesirables’. I’ll write more on my understanding of the soul-sucking abilities of HR personnel in another post.
Frustration set in and I decided to switch to something my mind could more easily deal with. Updating and merging my contacts from my outlook account to my new .live email account. WOW, who’d have thought it would be such a freaking nightmare. Without boring anyone with the details, it took me the better part of the day to do it. I worked through lunch. I think I left my chair a total of 4 times during the day. This is how freaked out I was. I was numb, and I totally had myself convinced that if I didn’t get all this stuff done RIGHT NOW, I was going to… well I don’t know what I thought. The JobFaeiries would pass me right by or piss on my cereal or something. God knows. Five o’clock came and I poured myself a really stiff vodka and tonic. I think more to make me feel like there was some sort of transition away from my desk in the third bedroom and into the ‘home’ part of my day, than any real desire to get hammered. But as fate would have it, I had a few more before the night came to a close. Alcohol makes all the bad things go away right?
I went to bed that night reading ‘what color is your parachute’. I read for a couple hours before I started nodding off at about midnight. Ahhhh, sleep. Take me away – NOT. I laid in that damned bed, mind racing, heart beating.. anxiety nipping at my heels for about two hours before I just said fuck it, and got back out of bed and sat right back down at the computer. I fired up World of Warcraft which is always a great tool to clear the mind of any thoughts. It didn’t work, I shut it off in disgust after about half an hour.
What was I going to do with myself? How was I going to pay my credit card bills? Child support? Glatting had given me a generous 3 month severance package so I wasn’t going to be in the poorhouse overnight, but that thought didn’t relieve any anxiety at all. I thought about all the other planning firms locally, they were laying people off left and right too, not much chance of landing a Job with any of them.
I thought about other possible careers I could be good at with the skills I have. Graphic artist at a marketing firm? Um, no.. too cutthroat for me, and god knows I’d want to strangle each one of those hip hop pants wearing emo freaks who seem to be the only type of person doing ‘graphics’ these days. I’m too old to fit in with that young of a generation and smile about it for too long. Maybe I could work at a small printshop doing business cards and pet-fair fliers or something. Nope again, I’m sure that job won’t pay my bills.
I had a realization right then, and while at the time it made me feel better, it probably made my search for the answer a little more difficult. The realization was a simple enough one, that the thought of working at a small company really appealed to me, made me happy, gave me hope. Where could I go with that? I didn’t know, but I had a small glimmer of direction for the first time in days, and it felt good. At about 4:00 in the morning I laid back down with a bit more of a positive outlook on things (however small), and I was able to relax enough to go to sleep.
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Mike Needs a Life Blog Reposts – Part 02
August 28, 2008
What Happened
OK, so some of you may not know what happened. Simply put, I got ‘right-sized’ out of my job of 16 years about two weeks ago. Seems the real estate market is seriously taking it’s toll on our economy, and espscially on planning firms that make thier money planning development and re-development. No one developing = no one needs planning. Simple enough. I had it pretty good there, I guess there are perks from staying at one place so long.. decent pay, you know all the right people so you know who to bitch to, you can come in a little late and take long lunches, etc… But like all good things, it had to come to an end.
I don’t want to spend alot of time dwelling on the past, and I’m certainly not bitter about getting laid off, instead I feel almost as if I’ve been given a chance to figure out what I really want to do with my life. I probably should have left that job 10 years ago when the first signs of corporate nazi-ism were bubbling to the surface, but it paid well, and I have alot of credit cards to pay off, as well as child support payments, so I maintained.. and slowly rotted from the inside out.
At any rate, I’m free, and freaked, and bored, and going slowly broke, and….. you name it. I’m going to try to write interesting stuff here to read, but I can’t make any promises.. sometimes what I think is funny or cool is actually pretty dumb. But you know what, it’s my blog! I can write what I want!
WEEEEEEE!
Mike
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Mike Needs a Life Blog Reposts – Part 01
August 27, 2008
Let me Explain
I have a wonderful group of friends. I love them all. They worry about me and are always asking me what’s new in my job search, do I have any leads, do I see any end to this jobless life I have? Am I really moving to the keys? Am I really looking for a non-corporate job? Am I bitter? you get the idea. I have like most people these days, Instant Messinging software on my computer, so I spend most mornings with 4 or 5 IM windows open answering questions. Now, I love that I have all these great friends who worry about me, but there’s a limit to my ability to say the same thing to 5 different people every day without freaking out. I certainly don’t want to be rude and say ‘listen, I can’t get any job searching done if you’re IM’ing me all day’, because, well.. that’s probably not true, but it is a little distracting. Mostly I think it’ bothers me because there really just isnt much new to tell from day to day, and well, I can be a bit of a grump at times when I feel like I’m in the spotlight.
So, here it is. My Mike Needs a Life Blog. I promise to write all the juicy details of my day-to-day experience here, so all of you guys can get the updates without running the risk of me biting your head off because I’ve answered that question a hundred times today already. Don’t take this as a personal fuck you (can I swear in these things?), it’s most certainly not, and I enjoy and need contact from the outside world to keep me sane. This is more of a way to chronicle (for me and you) the joys of being unemployed and a little out of my mind. Maybe in 5 years I can look back on all of this and laugh, probably I’ll just have forgotten about it by then.
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