Job Search Hiatus

Funny how the allure of a perfect job takes the wind out of one's job searching sails. I've been becalmed for two weeks after interviewing for an assistant marketing position with a small consulting firm made of various flavors of geologists. It is a half-time gig close to home; bonus points for the fact that I would get to blow raspberries at my former workplace on my way to the office.

I really like working with geologists. I wanted to be a geologist when I was little, shortly before I announced to my mother that I wanted to be in public relations so I could manipulate people. True story. I have no idea where that idea came from although my Aunt Carol was the president of the Ad Women of New York at that time. In defense of my young self, I used "manipulate" in its unadorned, value-neutral sense. I still like rocks - from those I pick up along a trail to the over-heated, over-pressurized chips of pure carbon that are diamonds.

Geologists, not surprisingly, tend to take the long view about things. They look at the world in a different way, too, seeing the upheaval of great mountains and their subsequent erosion to the sea as both inevitable and nuanced. No, "Wow, that's a pretty hill," from a geologist. No siree. Who knew, as another example, that groundwater can and does flow up hill sometimes? I didn't until a geologist at work swept away my insistence that we use, "down hill," instead of, "downgradient,"explaining how in California, a far geological cry from, say, Nebraska, regional hydrogeologic pressure forces groundwater through the fractured substrata in such a way that the water beneath the ground increases in subsurface altitude. Or depth. Something like that, anyway.

For some reason, I've found that geologists like to explain things to normal mortals. So unlike engineers who, when asked what engineering is, think deeply, grow misty-eyed, and say, "Design." Nothing more. They seem awash in the intense emotion about, "Design." Most varieties of scientist will explain how and why things work but with an air of one resigned to consorting with the lesser classes. 

You'd better have time if you ask a geologist to explain something. It helps to know your epochs, too. "Remind me, did the Cenozoic come before or after the Mesozoic? And when did dinosaurs roam the earth?" Geologists with whom I worked relished the idea of explaining to me how their world view looked. They'd haul out the topographic maps, tell me again how to read them, flip through voluminous regulatory submissions to find the graph that gave me a visual understanding of what kind of dirt and rocks lie below the surface (down hundreds of feet, mind you, and sporting such fasionable names as alluvial deposits), and genuinely enjoy my sometimes feeble attempts to construct a reasonably accurate simile or metaphor to be able to translate their multisyllabic explanations. In short, they are a fun bunch who regularly inspired me to become reanimated in my role as the translator of all things technical.

Small wonder, then, that I preferred basking in the possibility of working again with geologists to the mind-numbing, grueling task of culling endless job application possibilities. The HR woman who sat in on the interview told me they expected to make a decision in a week. That week and another went by with not a word from them. I finally steeled myself to inquire and learned that higher business priorities had prevailed for the moment. So relieved I was that I decided to delete all the job listing emails again. Still hoping, hoping, hoping.

Where Have All the Fun Jobs Gone?

(note: title is meant to be read in the tune of Paula Cole's "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPegaBQyemo
Woe is me! Maybe it's Arizona, maybe it's my search criteria, perhaps it's a severe lack of connections, but I seem to be incapable of finding any employment opportunities that entail the slightest trace of enjoyment.  I've always averred that "jobs don't have to be fun; you work so you can enjoy your time not working", but I'm beginning to disagree with my oh-so-wise self.  To be fair, this was brought about by a recent discussion with one of my many acquaintances currently residing abroad.  My former roommate/partner in crime is seeking employment in China, and one of the positions he's currently pursuing is "Video Game Tester".  Upon recovering from the ecstatic shock that the movie "Grandma's Boy" could potentially be based on (or one day become) a true story, I was filled with envy.  Doing something you love for a living? Unheard of!

I was born without the hand-eye coordination skills required by video games of any sort (a birth defect I've learned to accept) so video game testing would actually incite quite a bit of stress and frustration for the likes of yours truly, but conceptually this was quite the eye-opener for me. Maybe jobs/careers I won't completely detest do exist! When is Will Shortz retiring?  Is Marlboro hiring?  Who needs a new beverage consultant?  I wiiiish. But the fact remains, there's hope.  I've now shifted gears, and rather than mindlessly hitting "apply" and filling out the same tedious information for any job within 25 miles that seems remotely doable, I've decided to be more selective.  It's extraordinarily disheartening, and I may need to broaden my interests in order to meet the new criteria, but at least there's some life behind the never-ending search for employment.

I will not do sales.

If anybody working in the alcohol industry is reading this, I was not joking about the beverage consultant thing.

That's Odd

Having attended school in the days when one couldn't take a slide rule into a math test because it was too much help, imagine my surprise when my emailed application and resume was rejected. Why? Because the organization only accepts them in submitted in person or delivered to its doorstep by the U.S. Postal Service. If only I could afford a little drone.

Dad gave me this bit of swag from his associates at The Boeing Company; SRAM is short-range attack missile, for those not in the know. Nuclear-tipped, thank you very much. On getting this obviously prized gift (since I still have it), I am quite sure I was appropriately in awe and grateful. I don't think I ever fully confessed to either of my parents that I couldn't figure out how to use a straight slide rule, let alone a circular one.

Wikipedia tells us that the slide rule began in the 17th century and went on until the 1970s as the primary tool for making scientific and engineering calculations. I was in college in the mid-1970s when Hewlett Packard (HPQ) and Texas Instruments (TNX) introduced their first pocket scientific calculators. I remember being impressed by my biology major roomie's TI and equally grateful that my philosophy and cultural anthropology classes required no such academic accessories.

Nowadays, I'm even more impressed that, on July 20, 1969 - seven years before the advent of scientific calculators - Apollo 11 landed on the moon, with our heroic astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin aboard, and returned those men with Command Module Pilot Michael Collins to Earth on July 24 (specifically, to the Pacific Ocean, 210 nautical miles from the storied NBC [nuclear, biological, chemical] weapons test and storage Johnston Atoll, and 13 nautical miles from the recovery ship, USS Hornet, also known for evacuating the last Americans out of South Vietnam). Despite my 15-year-old moodiness and superiority, I watched the news coverage with intent interest with my brother as my mother tied a red thread around a piece of the braided rug she was making. I still have the rug, too.

My parents were born the year that the car radio was invented, four years before stations could broadcast in FM. They likely didn't notice the inventions of nylon, synthetic rubber, the Slinky and Frisbee, and LSD because they were young and living through the economic devastation of the Great Depression. They and their generation saw The War to End All Wars, and the Second World War introduce means by which the globe could be swallowed in a nuclear winter. They watched as war - armed conflict between nation states - morphed into conflicts in Korea and Vietnam dragged on far longer, and with as dire and acute consequences as wars.

My mother died five years before the notion of war changed irrevocably and, in my opinion, permanently. But still, as it always has, war begets technologies, perhaps most noticeably these days, the drone. Envisioned and employed as a killing machine that separates the killer from the killed by many miles and tens of thousands of feet in altitude, we could soon have it deliver our books (how retro is that?) and, for that matter, our pizzas. 

I've reread this post several times as I've written, wondering to myself where it was going, never mind how I might get it there. So much rereading, in fact, that I'm tempted to rewrite and expand (lest anyone come away from this thinking the Frisbee started out as an instrument of war). All of this wandering and musing because I find it unfathomable that an organization doesn't accept email job applications. Well, it is a government agency so maybe not so unbelievable. 

At risk of rambling further, I'll just leave it at that. I need to head out to the post office to mail something.

Dressing Like an Adult

Or, as my mother used to say when I was on my way out the door on a high school date, "Be a lady." God. Another ruined date.

I've had the, "Dressing like an adult," discussion with women coworkers, especially when traveling for business. On a normal work day, we all just showed up. Never dressed the way we were the day before, of course, and usually sporting different earrings. But somehow looking the same, each of us adopting our professional persona, acquired over the years as we, and fashion, evolved. When traveling, we either shared rooms because the state was too cheap to put us in reasonable accommodations alone or met at each others' rooms before the costume was fully donned; and so it was we saw each other in our more genuine states.

That conversation typically contrasted our reality to that of men who not only get away with wearing the same pair of slacks for the whole week but whom we suspected never appraised themselves in mirrors before leaving for work. We'd sigh, take the last look to be sure the mascara hadn't dribbled onto our cheeks and that no errant eyebrow hairs were evident, then come in to full character to walk down the motel hallway to our first meeting of the day, touching our coifs to be sure the closing door hadn't mussed them.

I gave up on makeup when I retired. I wear cleanish jeans and T-shirts, maybe a polo shirt if we go out into the world (i.e., other than Safeway, Pet Food Express, or the hardware store). A bra? Only when common decency demands it - that or my own sense of decorum. I've never been one to go to a women's music festival for the pleasure of walking around without a shirt on.

Leaving aside any further feminist critical thinking about all of this, I faced a decision on Monday. I went to a business to continue talking with people (all women so far, as it turns out) about how I might fit in their business and how it might work for me. The meeting was over lunch, giving the situation an air of informality, but I had to enter the workplace to meet my contact.

After much thought and reflection on 38 years of dressing like an adult, I concluded that I am - kinda sorta - ready to approach future employment on my own terms. That is, I will not be a persona, I will be me. That immediately took care of the makeup decision... Not. I'm not a slob and I do still respect most social mores, though, so jeans (for this kind of work, anyway) were out. I'll never wear a skirt again because the psoriasis on my legs might make people fear I am a leper, so that left slacks. Add a simple shirt, and earrings and the Movado watch, and I was done. I like earrings. In fact, I like gemstones. So girly of me but there you have it.

I enjoyed the meeting and the Chilean empanada was wonderful. Our discussion wandered far and wide, and we left it at the, "stay in touch," place, which is what I'd hoped for. The happy, relaxed me feels better on me every day.

This is my favorite picture of me, captured by our friend Vicky Semones as we started off to hike the falls at Mt. Shasta. I'm going with this look.

Distractions, v2

There I was, happily engaging in my usual morning distractions when I saw an email from my cousin Pam (to whom I refer to as Pee-AHM-uh-la, in deference - or not - to her distinct New York accent). Pam, a sworn member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and, perhaps surprisingly, one of the only true Democrats in Sharon Springs, N.Y., near Troy, is the family genealogist. 

Side note about family genealogy here. I am only into it as often as Pam calls to tell me about another breakthrough, or snail mails me mountains of supporting documentation about our family trees that she's unearthed through various means, up to and including cemetery visits, augmented by the likes of Ancestry.com. I, on the other hand, seem to have no real notion of having any more than my nuclear family, diminished as it is, aunts (mother's sisters), cousins (of one of the Finn sisters), and my great aunt and uncle who we visited in Colorado almost ever summer while Ed and I were young.

That Pam writes Christmas cards by the hundreds, once accused me of being Omar the Tent Maker because my changes of address wore an erasure hole through her address book, and communicates with me only by phone (other than aforementioned cards and letters, with the occasional text in times of great stress). So getting an email from her was a shock.

Pam wrote that she'd discovered great aunts, sisters to our maternal grandfather, who not even she knew about, despite the fact that we were alive when they still lived. She is a year older than I am. She forwarded with her email a note from her to her third cousin (!) spelling out some of the familial ties and asking if the cousin knew of some family feud possibly dating back to the 30s or 40s. 

I couldn't make heads or tails of what she wrote until I dredged from memory of kinship classes that were part of my cultural anthropology major at Colorado State University. Finding drawing the family tree not satisfying enough, I turned it into a graph that clearly (to me) depicts the timelines of these particular ancestors.

(ASIDE:  It is 11:12 a.m., I am still in my bathrobe, having become immersed in my distraction. Why? Why did the neighbor have to come over today, of all days, and now, of all times, to borrow allen wrenches to fix the tandem bike she's taking her young niece on a ride with today. She called them hex wrenches and, after a brief stop with the wrong tool set, I gave her what I have, gathered neatly in a plastic sandwich bag. Now that I'm a bit embarrassed about being the dowdy retired lady next door, I'm off to shower and get on with the day, if not pursuing job opportunities.)

Between Patching and Painting

The past few days haven't revealed to me any particularly interesting new job opportunities. I spent a few hours researching one possibility but, other than that, have only pursued a couple of Elance freelance writing projects. I heard back from one but can't get my hands on a presentation I did so I'm figuring out where to go from here with that one.

My current obsession with patching wall cracks and painting continues unabated. At least it doesn't require using a sharp knife, so I'm pretty safe. Other than going up and down the steep, narrow basement stairs repeatedly for forgotten items.

There was a big hole in that wall.

I don't even need to climb a ladder; the original owners created the "basement" when the wife insisted that her husband get his model train sets out of the living room. I looked at original building permits some time ago and discovered that our garage initially had a 14 vertical foot clearance. They split that baby in half to create the train room. I've never measured the ceiling height down there but know that our seven-foot bookshelves didn't fit when we moved in.  I'm only painting a couple of walls, so I'm taping the ceiling without having to be on tippy-toes.

A horizontal crack ran across that wall, a vertical one from top to bottom by the light switch.

I like painting the walls because they are easier and faster than the detail I encountered painting the bathroom.  How could I make it complicated enough to entertain myself? Find more cracks to fix!

We've long ignored the basement. We refer to it as, "The Dead People's Room," a probably insensitive as hell acknowledgement that it contains, besides a quarter room of electronic waste, items and boxes retrieved after the deaths of my mother and Maureen's sister. It is hard going through that stuff and many boxes sit largely unopened. There are  boxes and file cabinet drawers full of old work paperwork. That's just flat out boring to sort through to see what needs to be shredded. So there it all sits.

Maureen's old La-Z-Boy and chair from her dining room set, with my personal book collection in the background. I built the bookshelf in the shop at Malmstrom AFB, Montana. Way long ago.

Then there's the downstairs bathroom. We paid good money to get the sink and toilet working after years of our disuse. The house was built in 1968 and we think the downstairs not long thereafter. It means that parts for such things as plumbing are hard to come by. It is a dinky thing, the bathroom, that still needs a lot of work, including probably replacing the shower door.

The plumber said the toilet is probably one of the original silent flush models; same with the pedestal sink.

We know the shower leaks but, hey, it has a full-flow shower head. The wall next to the show had pulled away so I patched that. The shifting that accompanies this winter's storms (keeping fingers crossed on that account) will show whether that patch holds. 

Not easy putting sheet rock mud in that narrow corner.

Oh. Replacing six burned out fluorescent tubes made the whole room brighten up. Funny how that works.

Nat Update

She got a job! Nat got a job in Arizona, where she's staying for now. I'm very happy for her. It is marketing and sales for an optic fiber company, and her orientation starts on Monday. That's about all I know, other than she continues to pursue a career path in other states, having found AZ not at all to her liking.

Me? Cursory job hunting this week. My normal reclusive state has been upended by numerous social engagements. Monday, we went with our traveling companions and good friends to see The Hundred-Foot Journey, starring Helen Mirren. Maureen and our friends loved it. I liked it. What's not to like about Mirren and Dreamworks? One critic called it, "Food porn," and I liked that part but it inspired me to not cook when we got home.

A Diablo Valley German Shepherd Dog Club meeting Tuesday night saw that day consumed by shopping, and making a black bean, jicama and tomato salad for the annual potluck in the park. Besides the Wednesday lunch with a dear friend to hear about her all-American Chinook puppy Ravi, I spent a couple of hours updating the dog club website and trying to decipher obtuse emails in response to my straightforward questions about content.

Ravi the Chinook at 3 months.

What could top a puppy? Thursday was nose work training followed by a play date for Merlin with his girlfriend Heidi. It is always such a joy to watch the two of them play.

Then Friday in Marin County having lunch and enjoying a ferry port walk with my pal Barbara. We both suffered the same fate at the hands of one particular director (CEA is supposed to mean Career Executive Assignment to a senior staff position; what it really means is Career Ends Abruptly when a new director prefers to surround herself with sycophants - not that I'm bitter). She went on to continue to serve the People of the State of California, at least those of us in the Bay Area, protecting us all from the nasty particulate matter coming out of people's fireplaces, among other heroics. Now both of us have retired and we compared notes about finding work. We've both run up against the so far intractable problem of having to be heavily insured to perform consulting work.

I've looked at job listings, albeit half-heartedly. I did find a response to an Elance proposal for blog and website writing this morning. Following up on that inspired me to dig out my external drive backups to search for samples of previous work. What a trip back in time that was.  I far prefer the present.