Daddy taught me to hunt
Aug. 1st, 2012 04:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
susandennisI was raised in the south. Daddy taught me to hunt was in no way an unusual sentence or an unusual happening. Only my Daddy was in no way an outdoor person or a gun person. He liked his meat to come the way I do, on a nice slab of styrofoam wrapped in plastic.
My daddy taught me how to *job* hunt. Job hunting, to him, was a science and and art and a puzzle to solve and fun. I feel just that way still to this day.
My first real hunt was about 3 years after college. I'd been working as a newspaper reporter and not only did I not like it, I pretty much sucked at it. So, it was time to start over.
Mother and Daddy lived in tinytown at the foot of the North Carolina mountains. I moved in with them for a six week boot camp of job hunting. It was amazingly fun and interesting and full of adventure and travel (to job interviews) at the end of six weeks, I started my bright shiny new job at IBM.
Daddy and I would sit at the dining room table and he would talk to me - adult to adult.
"You need to put yourself in the shoes of the guy who's hiring you. You need to understand how miserable things are for him trying to do his job and the job he's trying to fill and wading though all the job candidates who are clueless."
"If you are the perfect candidate, all his worries and stress disappear. So make him happy and be that perfect candidate."
"So what if there aren't a bundle of job openings, you only need one."
"Looking for a job is the first rung up the ladder. It is a job in itself. If you can't do the looking for the job job well, then who wants to hire you anyway??"
Etc, etc. He was full of it. And he passed it on to me.
I've had a few big, good hunts in my past and a lot of little good ones, two.
But the hunt when you will otherwise starve is a lot different than the hunt for a job when you are not even sure you want a job.
Last night I started looking around at various places - craig's list, a digital support email list I'm on, and a few websites here and there. First of all I was astonished at the wide variety and massive number of openings. I found several interesting openings right in this neighborhood on Craig's list alone! None were of the drop-everything-and-get-to-work-getting-this-job category but some amazingly interesting stuff. I didn't really expect to find anything that I had the skills/interest in. Wrong.
But I'm not ready for the hunt.
As I was thinking through the opportunities last night I realized that maybe I'm not so interested in giving up this new found freedom or even my former freedom. I need to protect my pool time and make sure I'm not doing anything too taxing. It would be truly stupid to give this up for a stress bucket job. Plus, down the block isn't nearly as good as in my living room and I only found a couple of those that looked legit.
Maybe in a couple of weeks I'll feel differently but right now, I think I'm going to make enough contacts to fulfill my obligation to the state and sit on the rest. For now.
My daddy taught me how to *job* hunt. Job hunting, to him, was a science and and art and a puzzle to solve and fun. I feel just that way still to this day.
My first real hunt was about 3 years after college. I'd been working as a newspaper reporter and not only did I not like it, I pretty much sucked at it. So, it was time to start over.
Mother and Daddy lived in tinytown at the foot of the North Carolina mountains. I moved in with them for a six week boot camp of job hunting. It was amazingly fun and interesting and full of adventure and travel (to job interviews) at the end of six weeks, I started my bright shiny new job at IBM.
Daddy and I would sit at the dining room table and he would talk to me - adult to adult.
"You need to put yourself in the shoes of the guy who's hiring you. You need to understand how miserable things are for him trying to do his job and the job he's trying to fill and wading though all the job candidates who are clueless."
"If you are the perfect candidate, all his worries and stress disappear. So make him happy and be that perfect candidate."
"So what if there aren't a bundle of job openings, you only need one."
"Looking for a job is the first rung up the ladder. It is a job in itself. If you can't do the looking for the job job well, then who wants to hire you anyway??"
Etc, etc. He was full of it. And he passed it on to me.
I've had a few big, good hunts in my past and a lot of little good ones, two.
But the hunt when you will otherwise starve is a lot different than the hunt for a job when you are not even sure you want a job.
Last night I started looking around at various places - craig's list, a digital support email list I'm on, and a few websites here and there. First of all I was astonished at the wide variety and massive number of openings. I found several interesting openings right in this neighborhood on Craig's list alone! None were of the drop-everything-and-get-to-work-getting-this-job category but some amazingly interesting stuff. I didn't really expect to find anything that I had the skills/interest in. Wrong.
But I'm not ready for the hunt.
As I was thinking through the opportunities last night I realized that maybe I'm not so interested in giving up this new found freedom or even my former freedom. I need to protect my pool time and make sure I'm not doing anything too taxing. It would be truly stupid to give this up for a stress bucket job. Plus, down the block isn't nearly as good as in my living room and I only found a couple of those that looked legit.
Maybe in a couple of weeks I'll feel differently but right now, I think I'm going to make enough contacts to fulfill my obligation to the state and sit on the rest. For now.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-08-02 12:08 pm (UTC)I've been in both situations, especially during times in the theater. What I'm doing right now is looking at how I can cut expenses and downsize, get rid of debt.