It was a dark and stormy night.

Actually no, it was a sunny and illuminous day here, with the weather dipping to the low 70s and the skies dancing with the billowing remnant clouds of Tropical Storm Danny. What a great way to end August and unofficially, the end of summer.

This was my week to leave the office for what we call THE RUN. Basically it involves stopping at a slew of government offices for pickups and dropoffs, and while I’m usually not crazy about this part of my job, I definitely welcomed the opportunity today. If you’re quick about it, The Run usually takes about an hour and 45 minutes to do, so naturally it takes me about 3 hours. It also gave me a chance to enjoy the weather and get away from the office’s resident hens, who cannot help but talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, and talk talk talky talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk…

So I’m driving around far and away from the mindless, white noises of the office, and I’m thinking about things. I had been so desperate to move out on my own that I hadn’t really thought about another possibility: What if I could move out of state for real?

I was ready to give up on the idea that I would ever get another job or move out of state, and in that frame of mind I was looking around for any kind of apartment I could find simply to get away from my parents, resigning myself to the reality that my job now was the only job I’d ever have, and while I was lucky to have it, in another sense it was a blackhole too. There’s no promotional path, no training seminars, no chance to expand my skill set at all. In 9 years, I have learned nothing new. And because of it I was pretty much unemployable as far as the private sector goes.

But the public sector… well now, they actually EXPECT you not to have any skills whatsoever.

It also occurred to me that I was in the most ideal place you could ask to be in if your objective was to make a life altering, dramatic move and career change. I have no wife and kids, no debt, no property that I owned, not even furniture. I could up and leave a moment’s notice, literally. And while I’ve been building up my nest egg in preparation to move out, I wonder now if I should stick around for the time being and invest in something even bigger, not simply just to move out and find my own place, but move out of my job and my state altogether.

I always thought the Feds would be my ultimate destiny, mostly because since I graduated it had been my dream to work as a special agent for a law enforcement agency, whether it was the FBI or somebody else, a dream I had to give up on partly because of my disability, and partly because I’m, well, pretty much an idiot.

But now there’s no better time than the present to shoot for the stars again, and maybe even if I couldn’t work as a sworn agent, I could still serve in a civilian capacity somewhere. I have the luxury now of being able to apply and go to any job in the country (except New Jersey, cuz, ewwww). I could also take a salary hit without feeling the squeeze now that all my debts have been taken care of as well.

I think I owe it to myself to at least give it a try before accepting the sentence of life imprisonment in New York. Maybe there is a faux log cabin and a bonnie lass waiting for me in Colorado after all.

Tags: apartment, career, debts, destiny, dream, government, job, law enforcement, life, new york, parents, public sector, weather, white noise
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
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With all the news about the economy being in the toilet and people left and right losing their jobs (and unable to find new ones), I’m reminded of the personal recession I once experienced shortly after I graduated college, waaaaaay back in ‘98.

I had just wrapped up my undergraduate “career” and finished with a degree in computer science, all during a time when the IT industry was BOOM-ING, BABY, OW! You couldn’t so much as turn without smacking right into an IT/computer related job. I had made the right choice for a degree, patted my back for a job well done, and at 21 years of age I was ready to take on the world and start on my way to becoming a buff, studly FBI hacker who would single-handedly capture Russian bad dudes with nary a few taps on the keyboard. The world was my oyster, baby!

Well…

One job interview went by. Then another. Then another, and yet no one got back to me. Soon I started getting rejection letters, and it wasn’t long before my post-college bravado gave way to concern, and then outright fear. I was going to job fairs, handing out resumes like candy, responding to newspaper ads, emailing companies, literally knocking door to door, and all I was beginning to show for it was a growing stack of rejection letters (which I still have by the way.)

What was I doing wrong? The industry was booming, I had picked the right field, the demand was high, and yet no one wanted to hire me?

One month became two, then six, then before I knew it a whole year had gone by and I was still gainfully unemployed. My relationship with my parents was really taking a turn for the worse too. At some point things got so bad between us that they eventually became convinced that I wasn’t serious about finding work, that the only thing I was really doing all day was playing games on the internet. So as punishment they took my speedy 28.8 dialup modem away.

There’s probably nothing more demoralizing to a 22 year old college graduate than to have not only his modem taken away, but access to a car as well (since my parents both worked during the day.) So there I was, with no access to the internet and no access to a car, and yet I was still expected to somehow find a job.

Their suspicion that I would only spend the day playing Battlezone 2 or surfing Usenet groups to argue with stupid Christians was totally unfounded too. Ok… MOSTLY unfounded. It said nothing of the fact that I was desperate, DESPERATE to get the holy FRICK away from my parents and get my own place so I could live my own life. You think they’d understand that ALONE was more than enough incentive for me. I wasn’t gaming all day long on the internet. I was trying to network, research and brainstorm ways I could find a job. Then when I needed a break, I’d play a round or two of Wolfenstein. What else could I do, really?

But still they locked up my 28.8 dialup modem in their bedroom before leaving for work every day, and my only means of transportation then was a 20 year old woman’s bicycle (with a flowery basket in front) that we kept on the porch. Thank God YouTubers weren’t around then to capture the comical display of me riding around in a suit on a girlie bike with a stack of resumes crammed in my basket. I never would have lived it down.

Most of the time when I wasn’t out riding into town and feeling really stupid about myself, I was left to twiddle my thumbs while I stared blankly at the wall, wondering why God hated me so much.

I think the first low point then was when I managed to get a part time job delivering flowers, only to get fired a week later when I asked to come in later than usual so I could go to a job interview. When they realized I had graduated college and was spending time going to interviews they figured I wouldn’t be around long term and fired me. My parents blamed me for it because I shouldn’t have said anything about a job interview, but I wasn’t street smart enough to know about these things. Their harsh criticism and the embarrassment of being fired from a florist delivery job made me hate myself more than anything. I thought I was the most worthless idiot on the planet. Everyone else was landing jobs left and right and here I couldn’t even hold on to flowers.

Eventually after some more time passed, I had an idea. My modem was still being locked away safe and sound in their bedroom, but one evening I had to go to the supermarket to get some groceries for my parents and borrowed the car. When I went to get the keys, I realized one of them was the key to the bedroom.

Hmmmmm….

I had a bunch of extra quarters saved up in a can somewhere, so I grabbed those up, got in the car and stopped by the hardware store.

“Yeah I’d like to get an extra copy of this key?”

“Sure, be a few minutes.”

I watched him as he forged a magical key that would unlock the mysteries of the kingdom. I dropped a bunch of quarters on the counter while he threw a quizzical look at me, as if to say “Are you so cheap you can’t even pay in bills?” but thankfully took them anyway and gave me change.

YES!

The next morning I cheerfully waved my parents off as they went to work, then waited a few minutes to make sure neither of them came back in case they had forgotten something, and raced to their bedroom door.

*click*

You could hear the angels singing as I unlocked the door and the light from outside shone into the room. I started looking around and quickly found my beloved dialup modem. I was in the game again!

The thrill of sneaking around like that breathed some new life into me, and I would spend the next few weeks making the rounds of unlocking the bedroom door, grabbing my modem and then going through my daily routine of job hunting, networking and whatnot before I ended with a fast game of Battlezone, then quickly returning the modem back into the bedroom and locking the door again when the timer I set for myself buzzed, signaling the time I needed to get off so I wouldn’t get caught redhanded.

Once my internet time was up, I would break out the Ragu pizza sauce I kept hidden in my room and use the bread machine we had to make pizza. We had the same equipment restaurants used to make brick oven pizza, and with it all I was turning pizza-making into an art form, even learning how to toss it up to spread the dough. It was truly my source of comfort and joy. I would take a few hot slices, head over into the living room and watch General Hospital so I could catch a glimpse of my dream girl at the time, Rebecca Herbst. The fantasies of getting snuggly wubsy woos from her and the exquisite tastes of my homemade pizza helped get me through some very dark times then.

You could have had my pizza anytime, baby....

I’m not sure if my parents ever figured out I had been able to get into their bedroom, but they must have been suspicious. One day when I was going through the usual morning routine of unlocking their bedroom, I stepped in and suddenly saw an empty seltzer bottle rolling around on the floor.

Hmmmmmmm… where did that come from?

When I picked it up and tried to get a read on where it had been before, I realized it must have been right behind the door. There was no way to avoid knocking it down when you opened the door either, and that’s when it occurred to me that it was placed that way on purpose. My parents had set up a primitive boobytrap to see if I was indeed invading their bedroom while they were away at work. If it hadn’t rolled around in my view the way it did, I might have never noticed it, and it would have made for a very awkward conversation that day.

Ah well.

I took the bottle and placed it upright again behind the door before leaving and locking the room.

And so it went, week after week, unlocking their bedroom, knocking the bottle down, and then putting the modem back and setting the bottle upright just before I locked the room up again. I felt like James Bond. Fitting that they would use an empty bottle for this too. They always did see the glass half empty. *sound of corny 007 music playing*

I think after a while my parents finally started to mellow out and realize I was indeed going through a hard time here. After about 18 months of job searching, I hit my lowest point when I was even turned down for a job as a cashier, but not before enduring three humiliating interviews where they put me through a psych test, a counting test, and a few other tests to determine my knowledge of all things cashier related. I got the rejection letter 2 weeks later.

That last rejection had me throwing up my hands in defeat and ready to jump off a bridge somewhere, but shortly afterwards a recruiter found one of my resumes in a databank, at long last leading me to my first full time job, 19 months after I graduated college. Finally, my recession had come to an end.

Of course I would soon be laid off 5 months later, but that’s another story.

Tags: car, career, college, computer, economy, graduate, internet, job, jobs, life, networking, parents, part time, pizza, recession, rejection, work
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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You know, I seriously hate my job.

But before going any further, let’s run through the gamut of why I should be so grateful to have a job first, just to give the dweeb monkeys out there the satisfaction before they start berating me over why I should kiss the sky for still being gainfully employed in this craptastic economy, and if my job is something less than ideal then too bad, I should just shut the flip up and be grateful anyway.

Are we done?  Good.

You know, I seriously hate my job.

How did I end up in a career where the most critical assignment I’ve been tasked with is to shuffle papers and stare at the wall all day?  My job didn’t even require a college degree, which is why you’ll usually see me on the floor convulsing in spastic fits every I make my usual monthly payment towards my school loan.

Sigh, I remember what it was like when I was still in school and had a dream.  I was going to work for the FBI and specialize in solving computer crimes, or something.  I tailored my education toward that end too, and started networking with people already in the field to learn as much as I  could about this growing industry.  It was an industry that was in strong demand, and I knew I was in good shape to land on my feet once school ended.

And then I graduated.

There are times I wish could go back to that 19 year old boy I once was and beat the living snot out of him for coming up with the most ass backwards, uninformed career ambitions ever. I mean, really.

And now here I am, in a recession-proof job with plenty of good perks, great dental plan, decent pay….. and I’m completely miserable. It is bar none one of the most unfulfilling jobs I could have ever ended up in, with no promotional path at all and no room to maneuver. I just marked my 9th anniversary yesterday, and my title is exactly the same as it was my first day on the job.

9 years…. gees, where did it all go??

And now of course, I’m completely lost. I don’t know what I want to do anymore, except maybe win the lottery. I’d love to make a living blogging maybe, but it will never happen. Everything I tried to bring more traffic to this site failed miserably. And while I enjoy writing, but I’m not as prolific a writer as I’d like to be, especially when my muse abandons me like a cheap ho and I’m left to stare at the empty screen on my monitor because I have no idea what the flippo dinks I want to write about.

Maybe thing swill get better once I finally pay off my school loan. With that much more breathing room I’ll have more freedom to enjoy life, travel and do…. something. Anything. Put myself out there and see if I can’t finally find what I’ve been looking for.

Maybe that’s all I need.

Tags: ambitions, anniversary, blogging, career, college, dream, economy, education, fulfillment, job, life, living, work, working
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
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MOVE YOURSELF!
You always live your life,
Never thinking of the future…

PROVE YOURSELF!
You are the move you make,
Take your chances winner/loser…

I was planning to blog a short series of posts given the unusual lineup of Friday the 13th being followed by Valentine’s Day this year.  Ironically enough both days have significant meanings to me.  One of the worst days of my life happened on Valentine’s Day, while my career plans to attend law school effectively ended on a Friday the 13th.

Instead I got caught up staring at my server logs all day long because my blog kept going down in flames during heavy traffic spikes, and I couldn’t figure out why.  It got to the point that I was ready to quit blogging once and for all.  That’s how upset I was.

In a way I feel like this is it, the last option I have in weaving a career and a life that I could be happy with.  And given the times we live in today, I don’t think I could have picked anything as monumentally stupid to stake my future on than this.  But I felt like I had no choice.  God had closed every other door I tried, to the point that it seems like my destiny will amount to nothing more than working a deadend job and living with Mommy dearest until I die of a brain tumor.

And just to make sure I absolutely know what a miserable failure I am, let’s have a blogging success story that I can only dream about thrown in my face the very same day I spend hours crying and tearing my hair out over my own malfunctioning blog.  Yes, let’s do that, because God knows my batter and bruised esteem simply hasn’t been stomped on enough throughout the years.

Why does that happen anyway?  Am I imagining this?  Because it seems like whenever I’m at a pivotal point where I endure a major setback or failure, right at my lowest moment I get bashed over the head by the prosperity and success of others close to me.  What the hell, dude.

It seems like the entire universe is conspiring together to either drive me to suicide or a catatonic state where I spend the rest of my days staring at the wall of a padded room at the Sunshine and Happy Happy Home.  I don’t get it.  I don’t get why all of life is determined to crush whatever hope is left in me, and that it actually seems to step up its efforts to do so on Valentine’s Day.

SEE YOURSELF!
You are the steps you take,
You and you – and that’s the only way…

SHAKE -  SHAKE YOURSELF!
You’re every move you make,
So the story goes…

There does come a point where I have to shake the hurt off and move on though.  And I guess this year is going to be all about accomplishing just that.  I can either move forward and push just as hard as life keeps pushing me until I finally prevail, or I can lay down and die, both spiritual and physically.  But no matter how beaten down I’ve been, that hope that’s still flickering somewhere inside me continues to survive, and as long as it’s there, I don’t think I’ll ever truly give up.  I may despair and cry and whine and wail at times (ok, a lot of times), but though I am cast down, I am not defeated, and my heart may be lonely, but it isn’t broken yet.

So go blow it out your ying yang Valentine’s Day, and whatever dark forces that keep conspiring to put an end to me, because I am not going to go silently into that good night.  Bring on the noise. 

WATCH IT NOW – the eagle in the sky,
How he dancin’ one and only…

YOU – lose yourself,
No not for pity’s sake,
There’s no real reason to be lonely…

BE YOURSELF -  give your free will a chance,
You’ve got to work to succeed!

Tags: blog, blogging, career, career plan, conspiracy, destiny, failure, fight, friday the 13th, future, God, job, law school, life, lonely, meaning, server, success, Valentine
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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I only have one thing going for me right now: a steady plan to get myself completely out of debt by July 4th, 2009.  After that I’ll have a lot of wiggle room to move around and start searching for another job so I can move out of New York once and for all.

That is, if I can muster up the energy to do so, because right now it’s all I can do to even stay awake these days.  As much as I try to hope and believe a better future awaits me, I plunge so deeply in despair that I sometimes ask God to end my life.  I’m already past my prime and getting older, and with that there’s no prospect of finding a better career after having been in a dead end job for so many years.  Little to no chance of finding the girl of my dreams either, and healthwise I continue to get worse and worse.  I wonder if I don’t already have a cancer somewhere in my inwards that will soon put me out of my misery anyway.  Maybe that’s why I won’t see a doctor, so I can give it a chance to finish the job.  And of course with the coming economic holocaust and a government about to veer to the left of Stalin, it’s hard to find reasons to even stay alive anymore.

I can’t even blog because there is just nothing going on in my life right now, and the news just depresses me even more.  I guess I’m just in a really bad way right now, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get out of it.  Sigh.

Tags: career, debt, depression, despair, dream, dreams, future, God, job, life, misery
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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