Well hello there.
It's been a while, huh?
Yeah...I know. I should have checked in more often. But I have a good excuse! Not that I like to make excuses for things, mind you, I just got busy.
Doing what, you say? Well, for the past several months I've been job hunting for a full-time job. I have been working, but it's been part-time and Mrs. GameMelodies isn't working anymore.
What about the blog? Well I enjoy you, blog. I started you to help me be productive and write about something that I enjoy. But money? Nah man, I don't make any money from this. I put it on hold while I was job hunting. I guess I thought that I would be able to find something pretty quickly and then be able to work my blogging back in. I never thought I'd leave you hanging for THIS long.
Truth is, it's tough out there. I know we hear all the time about what a tough job market it is and all, but I guess I never really believed it until I was stuck in it myself. Part of my problem, I think, is that I've always put more faith into my college degree than I should have. I grew up with the belief that a college degree equaled good times! Plenty of cash, nice house, and a great job were all just a piece of paper away. While I suppose that kind of future does happen for some folks, my Liberal Arts degree from a small state-funded school just isn't sharp enough to cut through the piles of other resumes.
It's taken a while for me to realize the error of my thinking and come out of my denial of the reality of life. Let me recount for you my first post-college job experience. I graduated with a degree in Radio/TV and had managed to score an interview about a month before graduation with the top news station in my home town, which was an ABC affiliate about an hour and a half away from where I was going to college. Anyway, the interview went very well and the fellow who was spending time with me offered me a job running camera and performing other production-related duties. It was all I could do to stuff down my exuberance. Then we came to the hours/salary portion of the interview and he says, "The hours for this job are about 25 per week and we'll pay you $6.50 per hour." I was floored. Disappointment has never known a vessel so deep and limitless as the one it inhabited that moment. Here I was, nearly a COLLEGE GRADUATE, and he's offering me minimum wage? ($6.50 was minimum wage at that time, I believe) I asked him if I could discuss it with my wife and I would call him back. He said that was fine. I left. I remember this fondly because it was like being slapped in the face for the first time. You never forget that feeling, I guess.
Looking back now, I can clearly see the error of my thinking. I should have taken the job, even if they were offering to pay my in Monopoly money, worked hard, proven myself, and then moved up to a more respectable (and more profitable) position. But at the time, I was stunned. I had a wife and a kid and I was supposed to move my family, find a place to live, and all that for $160 a week? It was definitely hard to swallow, but it was an opportunity. Something I'm finding is increasingly hard to come by these days.
Opportunity. What does that word mean now? Does it still define a chance to have a rewarding career, or has it morphed into something else? Are our expectations being driven that low? Is an opportunity these days merely a chance to not be homeless? That is what I fear has happened. Or maybe I've just been sullied by my own lack of success. But I think my real fear is that I feel like I am at the mercy of an environment that is increasingly nameless and faceless. All the old job-hunting techniques you used to be able to use, i.e. calling the HR rep, paying the local office a visit in your professional clothes, doesn't work anymore. At least not on any level above the small businesses in your town. The hiring process is carried out somewhere else. It doesn't matter where you live, the person making the decision to interview you lives two states away. You're a name on a piece of paper. Identical to the 500 other applicants you're competing against, and you have no way to distinguish yourself outside of your work history and experience, which rarely tells the whole story about a person. I've been turned down for jobs that I'm more than qualified for, and I'll never know why. There's that pesky college degree again...
So what does a person do when they are met with constant rejection and disappointment? You don't lose hope. You dig deep inside and begin a process of self-discovery that can change your life if you allow it. I've been through so many depressing moments lately that it would be easy for me to never get out of bed. To mope through life as nothing more than an anchor to my family and friends (which I have to fight off more than I am comfortable with). Instead, I inspect everything I've ever done to see who I am and how I can change. We are saddled with different burdens in life, all of us. How we respond to carrying that weight is part of what defines our lives. I've had to get over things that have kept me from having other people as a part of my life. Relationships and communication have always been difficult for me. This makes it hard to have people there for you when times get rough. To have a network of friends when you need help, or a job maybe. I've had to face those issues and try to change them, because if I don't, if I continue to bow down to the same master that has beat me down for so long, I continue to circle the same path, and get the same results.
All that is well and good, and helps me to fix the things that have hampered me in the past. Finding a job, a good job, remains a challenge. Waiting is so hard. I've been waiting to hear back about a particular job, for a couple of weeks now, but it feels like it's been FOREVER. This is a job that I could make a career out of, not toil away for minimum wage and slowly die inside. What happens from here remains to be seen. It is out of my hands now, and hopefully it works out in my favor. I know at some point I'll find a decent gig, and I wait in eager anticipation of that day. Until then I just push ahead, one day at a time, and try to do something to make myself better.
