Ahh Birthdays…

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Today is mine.

I have received some hilarious birthday cards & emails. Got a package from home with some regional delicacies.

Was in Palm Springs yesterday, saw some friends & had a nice meal. Other than that today is pretty much normal. In all, life is alright.

My custom for celebrating my birthday as an adult has to more often than not be alone and somewhat contemplative. I look at the previous year and recall what I liked, what I didn’t, and try to learn from the experiences.

When I was  younger I’d get maudlin about the whole affair because I’d be comparing my whole life against some crazy ideal. Fuck that! 

The ideals that I was raised with aren’t really achievable in this world anymore. How many of us are fortunate enough to be able to work to the same company let alone in the same career for all of our working lives?

I’d be really depressed if I was still making that “this is my life” comparison. 

Change with the times Man! My career is a mess, I see three choices in that regard. Change careers, retire early (way too early), or follow the jobs that are in my field out of state.

Option 2 is right out… Leaving Option 1 or Option 3. Which option is best for me? Dude, I have no fucking clue.

What I do know is that dwelling on it and beating my head against the wall isn’t cutting it for me. So I’m not doing it.

What’s been good in this past year? The trip out to Colorado.( I really do like road trips.) I’ve achieved some of the goals around the house. Haven’t spent too much money but probably will in the next couple of months. (Hey we’re talking Birthday to Birthday here not tax years…) I’ve tried things that I hadn’t ever tried before. Some successful and others complete failures, yet even the failures were worth the time I spent.

The bad… stuff like wasting my time trying to meet people via social media sites. I have learned that people prefer to maintain the anonymity of the internet and more power to them. I’m going to physically hang out in places where there are people that are into things that I’m interested in. Then hopefully, I can make some new friends.

It takes zero effort to “like” someone on Facebook and you can easily be guilted into that. It takes effort and work to actually be a friend. I’m far more interested in having friends and being a friend.

I’ve been disappointed in a couple of things. I’d wanted to finish my first book by now, but I haven’t. There is nothing and no-one to blame except myself. So I will be redoubling my efforts on that front. Even if the book never sells a large number of copies… at least I’ll have accomplished the goal. Who knows, perhaps the book will catapult me into a viable Option 1.

I’m another year older. My body reminds me that I’m not as young as I used to be but thankfully It’s mostly gentle reminders. I do wish I didn’t have quite as many aches as I do.

I can easily remember jumping out of bed feeling great. Well… Jumping out of bed today would probably end with me in a heap on the floor and the dogs wondering, “what the hell has he done NOW?”

Aging does have some perks.

The best of these is I just don’t give a damn as much as I did.

You don’t like me? My politics? My Sex life?

So what, Get lost and I won’t shed a single tear.

I used to live for people liking me. Now it’s nice if they do but not world ending if they don’t.

There have been a couple of people who’ve left comments on this blog that frankly were unbelievable. I welcome comments but there is a line. To those folks I’ve said “Thank you for your opinion, I’m not likely to change and you’re probably better off reading another blog.”

That’s a freedom that I didn’t have when I was younger and I’m learning to enjoy it.

To all the rest of the people that share this Birthday.

Happy Birthday!

Remember, we were probably conceived during our Fathers getting one of their Christmas presents. 

If my Dad was still around, I’d probably send him a condom and a card that said “If Only“… He’d laugh his ass off.

Here’s to Fathers everywhere and their Christmas presents.

I hope everyone has as good a day as I’m having.

Paraprosdokian Of the Week

A Friend sent me a list of these. I thought it would be fun to share them

Paraprosdokians are phrases or sentences that lead us down the garden path to an unexpected ending.

I didn’t say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

I figured it out

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I’ve mentioned in the past how frustrated I’ve become with the job search.

I’ve been puzzled as to why this task is so darn frustrating for me.

I finally figured it out.

It’s the difference between the Old and New way.

In the old days, back in the beginning of time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth we would look religiously through the newspapers each day or every other day.

We’d read small descriptions of the jobs being offered then dutifully write a cover letter. We’d stuff the cover letter and our resumes into an envelope then put a stamp on it and drop it in our local outbound mail box.

I’d sometimes send out 5 or 10 resumes a day. Sometimes I’d send to a company I knew of “Blind” because their HR would actually file a resume for 6 months or so, sometimes longer…

Often, these applications would generate nice little letters addressed to me.

Many times these letters would say in a nice way the position had been filled but that my resumes would be kept on file.

Other times the letter would be something like “Thank you for your interest in our company we have no openings but will call you if we do.”

The best day was when a company you applied to called you to schedule an interview. That was a WHOO HOOO DAY!

Now we apply online and each application requires MORE time to fill out than writing/mailing a simple cover letter & resume.

Dice

Monster

Cybercoders

Careerbliss

Careerfinder

All of them have their own method of accepting information. They all want you to have an account, and then you have to cut and paste your resume into their form. You’d think that would be that… once the information was in their format… You click apply and all that data would be sent to the hiring company HR and bing, bang, boom, you get called for an interview.

You’d BE WRONG!!!!

You log in, search for the job, click on apply, THEN you get to fill out a 20 minute survey about the job, followed by an essay exam “Tell us why you think you should be presented to our client.” “Make us believe that you are worthy of our attention.”

The problem is this, when I start talking about what I do 50% of the words don’t make sense to the average person. Those that actually understand the words still don’t understand what I do. So I’m faced with a conundrum… Do I write something simple enough that an average person will get it without bleeding from their eyes, or do I write something assuming that a hiring manager is going to see what I wrote and understand? 

I’ve tried both ways with little difference in result.

(I’ve noticed that the job application process gets a WHOLE lot easier with these people if there are a lot of jobs and very few applicants)

Where I could crank out a nicely customized cover letter  and have it and a resume in the mail, in about 15 minutes. NOW it takes closer to 45 minutes to apply for some of these positions.

There is ONE of the above headhunter sites that is awful in this regard.

Almost every single fucking application requires that you answer different questions and move little sliders around then enter the number of year experience you have. It’s maddening! Especially since all this information is already contained in my resume. And that same information is already contained in their specific forms that I filled out when I created my account.

I’ve actually gone back to sending a fax or mailing a cover letter & resume whenever possible!

Even that can be fraught with difficulties.

Since so many of these sites link to other sites which link to other sites it’s pretty easy to get messed up thinking you’re responding to an ad from one site when it’s really from someplace entirely different.

In general, I prefer to send something I wrote, and had control over from start to finish rather than turn my future over to a snot nosed idiot.

Back in the day… If you were going to use a professional placement agency… you’d contact someone that specialized in your industry and you’d work with a single agent.

That way you could actually build a relationship and that person could sell you because they knew you. It was an implicit recommendation.

Now, you never speak with the same agent twice and you’re damn lucky if they speak English.

So to all you job placement firms… Understand that some of us have little to no desire to spend our days filling out 4 job application forms online when we can type and stuff 8 or 10 of our cover letters and resumes into an envelope or fax machine in half the time.

Heck, I have a fax machine and a nifty little usb fax modem… I might as well get some use out of them!

Maybe I should get into the job placement gig. Perhaps it’s time for OLD SCHOOL standards to return.