Month: November 2005

Unemployment Diary, Day 28

Today I had the second half of my career seminar. Fully half the people there said that health insurance was their major concern in finding a new job.

I’d expected I’d have more free time when I was unemployed, but this week has been nonstop so far. Tomorrow I have my first job interview since the summer of 1999, and I haven’t even had time to think of five examples of times I overcame obstacles in the past, and how they relate to ways I can solve problems in my new employer. Nor have I printed up business cards for my new, independent self. Nor have I read Blink or The Tipping Point, both of which seem to be required reading for job-seekers this year. The rest of my to-do list is now in Mozilla Sunbird, which seems great so far.

New Resume Version

Today I went to a job-search-process seminar, in which I learned many things. For example, the average unemployed person spends five hours a week looking for a new job. The people who are most successful finding a new job they like, however, spend thirty-five hours a week looking for work, and have at least thirty networking-oriented conversations a week. They have a plan to market themselves as a hot product, and they have a ranked chart of where they want to work and who they know at those companies.

The seminar also forced me to look at my resume with new eyes. By the time it ended, I wanted to rush home and fix it immediately. I forced myself to go to the gym and run a couple miles first, but when I got home, the first thing I did was fire up OpenOffice.org and fix the problems I’d only noticed when I printed it out.

The new version has more concrete detail about my accomplishments and publications, but it may be too long. I’m sure I’ll learn later on this week when I get to the one-on-one resume counseling.

An attempt at travel writing: Charlottesville, VA Night Life

Charlottesville, VA is a small city with a small town feel. That small town friendliness shows up most on the Downtown Mall, the ten or twelve blocks of Main St. that are blocked off for pedestrians only, and where you can go into almost any restaurant and see locals running into people they know. It also shows up in the nightlife, particularly at Club 216, which is both the town’s only after-hours club and the only gay/lesbian bar within seventy miles. Whether you’re gay or straight, whether your musical taste runs to disco, hip-hop, or disco remixes of hip-hop songs, you’ll fit right in as long as you’re thin, up late, and willing to pay the $13 cover charge. (Club216.com, 218 Water St, Charlottesville. Fri/Sat 10PM-5AM.)

Family holiday rituals

In my family, no celebratory dinner is complete without at least a token argument about Palestine. Tonight’s was mercifully short: as soon as it surfaced, I began to take the dessert dishes away. That diverted the conversation to how delicious the coffee had been, and from there to my brother’s efforts on the USAID collaboration with the Bolivian Specialty Coffee Growers Association (ACEB). The word is, great Bolivian coffee is getting increasing recognition these days– high-end techniques applied to heirloom bean varieties and high altitude have led to smaller, more intensely flavored beans and quite a good crop in the past few years.

But really, my grandmother says that if you really want to understand The Situation Over In Palestine, you should read One Palestine, Complete, a history of Palestine under the British Mandate.

Eat What You Kill

I have been offered one job so far in my search: a three-week gig updating and rewriting a technical manual at IBM, for which I would not be paid, but would be reimbursed for expenses. The job would have required me to buy a laptop and register myself as a business, which together would have amounted to paying several thousand dollars to cut my Thanksgiving short. I declined, partly because it was a bad deal financially, and partly because I just couldn’t muster enthusiasm for the subject that week.

I am now in the process of applying for a position of grant-writer. This company has a slightly more generous compensation plan: a percentage of every grant you bring in, also known as “eat what you kill.” The subject is genuinely fascinating, though, so I’ll probably give it a try if they’ll let me.

Nightstand

On the plane, I read The Areas of My Expertise, which was funny, but not really meant to be read straight through. It’s more of a fictional version of Schott’s Miscellany. Which is to say, it’s a fictional reference book that one would never use as a reference anyway.

Because I got my brother a copy of the Complete Calvin and Hobbes book (see also Calvin and Hobbes: The Last Great Comic Strip), which took up more than half my suitcase with its 22-lb, three-volume majesty, I wasn’t able to bring anything else to read. Instead, last night, I rummaged through the nightstand in my parents’ spare bedroom.

They call it the insomnia room, because it’s where my mom sleeps in when my dad is snoring too loudly, and where my dad stays awake if he can’t sleep and wants to let my mom get some rest. So it’s got a neat little pile of soporific reading right next to the bed: one copy each of Gourmet, Martha Stewart Living, Cell, Science, PC Magazine, Architectural Digest, and the Virginia Quarterly Review, all at least six months old. The Architectural Digest is from some time in the last century.

There are also books on cancer and stress management and literary/economic theory, and a short novel about the sole remaining resident of a decrepit rural town in northern Spain. The nearby bookshelves are stuffed with overflow cookbooks, Spanish poetry, and obscure literary theory in roughly equal volume, plus a few children’s books that I think were bought for the now-grown offspring of various friends, but never actually wrapped and given.

I read the article on vintage swizzle sticks from last July’s Martha Stewart and it put me right to sleep.

What have you got to show for it all?

This evening I’m going to Cambridge to see Haruki Murakami read, and get M’s copy of Kafka on the Shore signed.

Tomorrow I go home. I am nervous about going home, although I’m not entirely sure why. It feels like I’m going back as a failure after six years on my own, even though I don’t really think I’ve failed. But what do I have to show for the past six years, years in which relationships have come and gone, in which friends have died and given birth, married and divorced, broken down and reassembled themselves? What do we have to show for all of it? A portfolio and a resume and a little bit of money saved up, I guess. Experiences. I suppose there isn’t really much you can have to show.

Things I’ve Been Meaning to Do

I’m finally getting around to things I’ve been meaning to do for awhile: removing myself from the mailing list of every catalog that comes to my door, pruning the shrubs that have begun to grow on my shoulders, reading the blogs of old high-school friends. But the world has an uncanny way of filling up my time.

For example, today I got a letter forwarded from my parents. It was a result, indirectly, of the first time I ever visited Boston.

I think it was 1997 or 1998, but I do know it was very cold and snowy, and that I got a ride up with my friend Cheryl, and that my girlfriend at the time was incredibly jealous. She didn’t need to be: I got a horrible case of strep throat and ended up spending a snowy evening in the ER, and the rest of the time on my friend’s couch watching bad movies and drinking tea (admittedly, we’d have spent most of the time watching bad movies and drinking beer, not running out picking up girls, but whatever).

Nothing happened for a long time, until apparently in early October 2005, someone with a similar name, or perhaps a social security number close to mine, or even just giving my name or social security number, got some bloodwork done. A bill was mailed to the address on file: my parents’ house.

I called and talked to a nice lady who said she’d help me sort it out, and hoped it wasn’t an inconvenience. I said, oh no, I just lost my job, so I have all the time in the world. She paused. I know it’s rude to make people uncomfortable that way, but it’s funny to me.

And now, to vacuum.