Frustration

I've been avoiding writing here lately.  I've been avoiding it because there's just so much I can say about a boy-o who suddenly loves school and is still excited to go and is truly beginning to participate and keeps getting good reports from his teacher.

I've mostly been avoiding writing here lately because, well, other than school going well for a boy and having a hubs that loves me through the ups and downs of life, I have nothing positive to say.

I'm feeling so burned out, bummed out and just plain depressed over this whole job search thing.  I'm either vastly over paid and over qualified for jobs that will actually talk to me, or under qualified (on paper at any rate) for the jobs I want and will actually pay me close to what I need to be making.

Until this week I hadn't had traction in anything I'd put in for.  Barely even a reply back of "you're not qualified, sorry" or any other acknowledgement of my existence, even with trying to follow up.  (And trust me, trying to follow up on these jobs is a real bitch!  You apply online through a job search board and get no contact information or anything other than a company name, not even an email address to follow up with and you've got to dig and search and hope you find some kind of human, which rarely happens.)

I didn't say this publicly, but my old job actually had someone else leave voluntarily and another friend is out on bed rest before her second daughter's birth in November and they created two postings.  So, I applied.  And I didn't hear word one back from corporate after "we're forwarding on your resume to the hiring manager".  So, this week I followed up with my former manager's manager, the one in charge of all service.  He was polite, but they've filled the one position, and the other position is network support /PC builds which we both know I'm not really qualified for.  But, he did give me the name of one of the consultants I used to work with all the time and told me he's looking for someone.  So, I've sent him an email and my resume, but he's out until Wednesday on vacation.

That's the good news, and it's not really all that good.  The other news is that I did get a call back about a job I applied for.  It's down in Horsham, or about a 50 mile round trip.  It would be a call center environment working with corporate network support.  Yeah, not my strong suit but I did a Gram and BS'd my way through the screening.  Then, they told me it was going to pay $15.50 an hour, oh, and I could end up on a 2 - 10 pm shift.  Doing some quick math, including things like gas, extra daycare and the fact that I'd be paying for insurance for three people out of this, I quickly realized that I'd probably end up loosing money if I actually got this job.  Yep, it would almost cost me more to take this job.  It would be an almost 50% pay cut from my last job.  I know I'll have to take a pay cut between my experience and the job market, but I can't afford to loose half my pay check.  I mean, that's what I've been working with on UI and the savings are dwindling quickly.  And there's no way that it would jump $5 an hour in 6 months or less.  So, I cried.  And I wrote an email back saying it wasn't economically feasible for me to take the job.

So, right about now you're not hearing from me because all I have is negative things to say about myself, my lack of apparent hirablility (which isn't a word, or at least I can't get spell check to like it) and overall direction.  Here I am just shy of six (yes, 6) months into this and I have no more clue or direction of where to go or how to get there than I did back in February when Monty told me a layoff was a possibility.  And now I've even had the slim crack of the possibility of going back to my old job slammed in my face without the courtesy of a "no thanks".

Thankfully, I'm going away this weekend with three friends from college.  It's only over night, but still, it's away.  And they told me I was going if I could pay for the hotel or not.  So, I'll try and bury any negative self thoughts and thoughts about the miserable job search until Sunday night.  I'll enjoy the company of three friends who actually want to spend time with me.

And then it'll be back to the grind.

Peace to all and may your lives be full of positive things and happy thoughts.