Thursday, January 25, 2007

Help Wanted

Yesterday, for the very first time in 34 months, I looked at the employment classifieds.

This morning, for the very first time in 34 months, I dug out my resume. I updated the easy parts (address, dates) and stared at it for a very long time.

This weekend, for the very first time in 34 months, I will compose a series of cover letters, update the not-so-easy parts of my resume and decide, again, for the umpteenth time what it is I really want to be when I grow up.

Secretly, I hope that it will result something that makes the negotiations I have to undertake work-wise a bit easier. I need some leverage. If worse comes to worse, however, it might end up that, for the first time in 34 months - four months shy of my all-time "length of time employed at one employer" record - I end up signing up to work for someone else.

It's days like this when I wish I had a degree in something more straightforward - something like a nurse, a teacher, a lawyer. I could put down my title and bam! Everyone knows (more or less) what you're certified/qualified to do. I put down my title now and it takes me pages to describe what I do - even if someone already knows what it is I supposedly do.

It's enough to make one's head hurt. On top of that, my dishwasher died today. I had to come home, at 9:30 p.m. and stand in front of the sink for an hour to wash all the dirty dishes and then dry and put them away. Sometime before I go to bed, I have to find my bed beneath the clean laundry. Tomorrow, I am going to spend all day driving around my least favorite suburb, with a smile plastered on my face, because I love my job, I just hate what I'm doing.

Remind me again why I wanted to be an adult?

4 comments:

foculbrown said...

Julie:
You WANTED to be an adult? I thought we were all just chronologically forced into this.

Oliver said...

I often wonder the same thing: why did I leave the world of being a software developer to go to something as vague and all-encompasing as product management. I think in the end I did it because I wanted a role that allows me to work on a lot of different things, not just one thing. Could you imagine life as a tax lawyer? Nothing but tax code for the next 30 years of your life?

But it does make the job hunt royally suck.

foculbrown said...

34 months? That's not too bad. I would have to pull my resume out and figure it out, but 34 months sounds like what I have averaged in all of my jobs. I do have the habit of getting laid-off right before my company disappears. I joke that my resume is written in invisible ink.

There is a point where enough is enough. When you hit that point, you have to make a change. Let us know what we can do to help. :D

Sara said...

I fortunately, have a great ally (sp) at work - a VP (not from my division) who somehow figures out all my secrets (am I that transparent?!) and he is working on helping me with the "need a challenge" end.

We'll see what happens. Thing is, I don't want to do what I'm qualified to do. AAARRGGH! :)