We've had three family deaths in the last month - none of them related to each other, strangely enough. (Technically, not related to me either except by marriage.)
Two of them were elderly people who died last Saturday. Both of their services were yesterday (fortunately not at the same time). Damn, that was a long day.
Weirdly enough, at both wakes people wanted to talk to me about my unemployment, especially at the second one, because nobody liked the guy.
At some point, my newly-widowed aunt asked my dead uncle's nephew (REALLY not related to me) to find me a job. The guy kind of reminds me of a gangster. He said he'd talk to his buddy for me. That's when I found out that his buddy is the former mayor of my city.
Great. The only letter to the editor that any newspaper has ever published from me was the one where I urged my fellow citizens not to re-elect my uncle's nephew's buddy in 2006. (The buddy lost, and we've been better off without him.) Hopefully the guy doesn't keep a list of his dangerous letter-writing foes!
It would be a long shot at best, so I'm not getting my hopes up. It would be nice to have a local job, though.
The other thing that's going on is that I'm hanging around an office in East Providence in my paltry free time. They're giving me free training on for some skills I want that should really improve my resume. They also give me free lunch every day when I'm there (it's a three-person office at most, they're all siblings, so they eat together). In exchange, I do miscellaneous writing tasks for them. So far, in a month, that's consisted of helping to write a short blurb for a website, and helping design a flier.
I'm supposed to give training on some software in a few weeks, but it will be for only one person, so it's not going to pay much - I don't know how much. It'll just be a one-time thing, but then I can add training to my resume too, if I want to (not sure if I do).
Meanwhile, the job listings are getting crazier. More companies are looking for combo writer/programmers and so forth. And I'm also seeing companies advertising specifically for recent graduates with less than one year of experience.
So, it's not all bad - I'm learning stuff, and once in a while I meet clients of the company that I'm training with, any of whom might suddenly need a writer in a hurry (doubtful, but please don't burst my bubble). Plus, my relative's gangsterlike newphew's buddy might have something. There's still hope - it's just not easy to keep my spirits up all the time. I just try to take it easy on the days when I feel really bad, and then make up the difference when I'm feeling better.
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Why is it that stuff seems to happen all at once?
ReplyDeleteGood luck on the job front :)
Sorry about all of the deaths :(
Ugh...that's rough. My condolences for your losses and I hope you find a decent job soon...even if it is via the mafia guy.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the uncle's nephew's buddy!! Perhaps he keeps clippings of the letters of his enemies and will admire your fine writing style. :-)
ReplyDeleteI'm sure a writer/programmer is just great at both. :-( Obviously the advertisements you're seeing are hiring for cheapness and not quality. Hang in there. There must be people out there looking for quality, and I think you're doing the right thing at your "not job," because you're meeting people and you're getting the training and even a little work. I always found in college that the more I did, the more was offered to me. Of course, being a college student I was cheap or free and just appreciated the opportunities for experience. But that has value, which is of course why you contacted the company in the first place.
My condolences on the deaths.
Thanks, everybody.
ReplyDeleteI really do like my not-job, maybe because they ask so little of me and don't care when I show up. :-) (I usually show up after 10, but at the end of the day they often have to kick me out.) The new skills I'm learning are actually pretty easy, but I probably would never have learned them through an employer.
Oh, and I've got another editing gig. I've discovered that I HATE freelance editing, but hey, it's money, so, yay!