One More Cup of Coffee

In the best of my estimation, the last time I looked for a job was 1996 or 1997-- at that time I was doing temp work, and one of my temp jobs turned permanent-- and I worked in this pleasant library of a law firm for three years. Following that I moved to Milwaukee and worked for 0tv and Bluemark Productions for nearly eight years. At any rate, it's been over ten years since I've looked for a job.

I pretty much feel like a person who has followed a long career with a brief retirement, and deciding to get back into the job market has found that it resembles nothing he remembers. After all, the last time I looked for a job it was by using the newspaper classifieds and the yellow pages. Only computer geeks used email, and no one had heard of Google, much less Craig's List. I am now in an ever more competitive job market with people who were TEN YEARS OLD the last time I was looking. They are full of energy and self-confidence, have grown up with computers, know more about popular culture than I care to, and a lot of them are in the position of being able to work for free, as interns. I don't FEEL old, not at all, but I'm sure I'm perceived as old by much of my prospective employers. Maybe I can impress some young boss with how I saw pre-Henry Rollins Black Flag and countless other examples of having lived in their pre-history, but those bits of esoteric folklore are interesting to a very limited group of people and probably won't get me very far.

I can think about this a million different ways, but it comes down to me needing money, and needing money soon. Some things never change-- while at the same time are completely different. It's a Tuesday morning in the job hunting world, so what am I going to do today? First, anyway, I'm going to have a second cup of coffee.