Job Hunting - Where I am with it

JuneBug's Job Hunting and Photography Blog

Another entry on the same day! Actually, there's not much to report on the job search at the moment. After a strenous year, my husband underwent open heart surgery last month. Helping him with his recovery and working my stop-gap job to pay those bills has definitely put a crimp in my style in January and February. Although I did manage to get in one interview in January while Benny was in the hospital.

Ah, the advantages of being unemployed ... instead of rolling out of bed in the dark and barrelling down the highway with all the other commuters, one can enjoy a leisurely cup of coffee whilst sitting up in bed, watching the sun rise, reflecting on the gift of a new day, and imagining a better world ... it's kind of like making music with one's mind ...

Do any of you have to work outside of your field while searching for a job in your field and how do you handle that? Morale-wise, I mean. Right now I'm working for a sort of temp agency that supplies parts inspectors to local and regional factories. Seems to be the way the world is going these days. Even in my field I've noticed that many job opportunities are with agencies who supply their customer-companies with IT talent and expertise. The blessing is that many of these agencies do give you health insurance and 401k's after a 3 to 6 month break-in period. Mine does and I've been there long enough to qualify.

My temp job is not in my field. In my more positive moments, I've looked at this whole "being-out-of-a-job" experience as a sort of prolonged sabbatical - time away from your usual duties to learn new things and to refresh and re-energize for re-entry. Wouldn't it be wonderful if everybody got to do something really different once in a while - and got to see the world from a different perspective? More importantly, wouldn't it be nice if everyone could participate in the burden or contribute to the things we all deem necessary to our lives, where at all feasible? Things like restaurants and cars and roads and products and houses and health care and 24-hour Walmarts. Maybe if we all got to spend time making these things happen, pouring someone a cup of coffee, or making sure that a part going into someone's new car is all it should be, we might as a society and individuals be more wise in our consumption and more compassionate - we might ask ourselves what would the world look like without this product - what would people's lives be like? When we choose to have, say, 24-hour Walmarts or SUVs or Digital Cameras - what are we giving up and what are we gaining? Even in Progress, there's almost always a trade-off, isn't there? Most importantly maybe we'd begin to see choices where we didn't know there were any. And that's when we become truly free, for how can someone be free if they don't even know they have choices?

Well, enough deep thinking for the day. Another way I look at working outside my field is that now I'm actually getting paid for my exercise. That auto plant is huge - you can easily walk two miles a day or more! ;)

I've been so impressed with the few blogs of other people that I've had opportunity to visit thus far. So much talent in the world ... I found this WONDERFUL liturgy today in three different blogs - for people out of work in this postmodern world - it's called Who Am I ... Enjoy!

And happy job-hunting!

JuneBug