Mike Needs a Life Blog Reposts – Part 06
September 4, 2008
Week Three Closes In
Well, as week three comes to a close, I feel as if I’ve wasted all the time I can relaxing and letting my brain melt back down into my skull. I think I’ve screwed with my resume as much as I can screw with it. At this point it’s a crap shoot, either the receiver likes it or doesn’t. I came to the conclusion that I needed to make it something that I myself liked, and if it got me an interview, then that’s one step closer to me liking the job because they chose me based on my resume. Well it makes sense in my head even if it doesn’t when I write it out.
I can’t even remember if I took a shower this morning.. my God, what’s happening to me.
I’m almost done building my ‘portfolio’ website, I think it’s pretty cool, I’ll be sure and link it here when it’s done. I think I’ve been dragging my feet on those two things (resume and portfolio) because I know that when they’re done, there are no more excuses.. time to start applying for jobs. Trouble is I don’t LIKE any of the job opportunities I’ve see so far for graphic artists. I’m really beginning to wonder if I should even be a graphic artist, I have so much contempt for the field. But career change is even more difficult to imagine. The only thing I have to go on is that I’d like to work at a small company. Shit, that could be anything.
I had lunch with an ex-colleague of mine last week. He and I worked pretty closely at GJ to build the graphics department, and now he’s in a similar situation at his current office. He’s trying to pull together a centralized graphics department, and we talked about the possibility of me coming to work with him if he gets approval for his plan from the big cheeses. I’m sure some of you reading this know who I’m talking about, others won’t, but that’s OK, for now let’s call him MR X.
I hesitate to mention this here because I am a bit superstitious sometimes, and fear that I may jinx a good opportunity by talking about it. Well fuck it. It’s interesting. Mr X’s firm has about 1200 employees, and they do community planning-type stuff just like GJ does. They’re based out of Canada, but have many local offices, and if I were to get this gig, I’d be working out of their Maitland branch. Essentially it’d be like going back in time for me to the spot in my life at GJ that I was still happy. Happy I think because I was building something.. not the books, and diagrams.. that stuff is crap.. but building a department, a style, laying down the gauntlet. This is the type of thing I can really get excited about. I told Mr X that I had decided that I wanted to work at a small company and maybe give up graphics altogether, but that I would seriously consider taking the job if offered because I would be able to work with him again, and that was something I think we both really enjoyed back in the heyday. Anyway, no news yet on that situation, I guess he’s still working with his bosses to figure out the details.
Categories: Mike Needs a Life Archive Tags: Mike Needs a Life
Mike Needs a Life Blog Reposts – Part 05
September 3, 2008
The Weekend
Well, let’s see. We pretty much just spent the entirety of the weekend working in the back yard. Friday was pretty much a wash as far as any sort of job-hunting goes for me. Christina had her interview with CB Richard Ellis, some big real estate management company, for a temp job that would take her to the end of the year. The lady she interviewed with told her that she was the one for that job, and that if christina liked the position, there was a good chance it could become permanent in January, and they would train her in corporate real estate management! I don’t think she’s ever thought of that as a career tack, but I hear if you’re going to be in real estate, corporate real estate is where the money is. Who knows.. it’s better than temping at some lame company that doesnt have any work for you to do.
Anyways – WOO HOO! We went to lunch and splurged on sweet tomatoes to celebrate. On the way home from lunch she got a call from the temp agency saying that the lady Christina had met with had interviewed another candidate after meeting with Christina who’d worked in real estate before so they thought she was better qualified, and they were going to give the job to her (WTF, can you even DO that?). She said that they were so impressed with Christina though, that they had some other work they’d like her to come in and do for a couple weeks. Not as nice as the other scenario, but at least it gets her out of the house. I was pissed off, but Christina took it like a champ. Needless to say that put a bit of a damper on the rest of the afternoon (at least for me).
We went to the grocery store after that and bought food for the week. Christina’s been really enjoying making a weekly menu so we can budget food better than we typically do. Usually I’d be at the grocery store 3 times a week buying everything that cought my eye.. this has been my pattern of food gathering for many, many years.. and you can probably guess that it’s not exactly the most efficient way to buy groceries. I love cooking, and I love cooking large.. with wine.. so typically I’d spend close to 200 dollars a week easy at the grocery store.. sometimes more if we had dinner parties or something on the weekends. She’s got us down to 125 a week now, and I have to say it takes a little getting used to, I think mostly because cooking used to be something that took up alot of my time, and now with simpler dinner menus I find myself with more time on my hands in the evenings. Add to that the lack of cable TV (I had that shut off two weeks ago), and I have LOTS of time to sit at the computer in the evenings and do mindless things like play Warcraft. Well to be fair I never did watch much TV, but I know Christina misses it. I feel like I should be trying to finish my novel, or writing in this blog, or searching for jobs.. but I just need a diversion from the reality of my situation, at least in the evenings. I’m going to try to focus more on doing constructive things a little bit. I always complained that I never had the time to focus on writing my book, but I guess now I don’t have much of an excuse.
We had Gary and Karen over Monday for some burgers on the grill, Alex was over too. We had a good time (as usual), although I think in the future I’m going to try to not invite Gary and Alex over at the same time.. lol.. they seem to get on one another’s last nerves. Other than that, fun was had by all. Gary brought up that we should start planning our next camping trip, it’s almost that time of year when we can go and be comfortable sleeping in tents. We tenatively set a date for the first weekend of October. I love camping, it’s a nice getaway, and best of all it doesn’t cost alot. Nothing like fire and wine in the great outdoors (or at least the great state-campground-version-of-outdoors) to set your mind back on track.
Monday Christina started her new temp job at CB Richard-Ellis. The girl they liked over her never showed up, so lo and behold, Christina is there to save the day, and she winds up getting that position after all. Corporate america boggles my mind. I wonder if anyone really has any clue what the hell is going on.
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