Confessions from the Cursed Tongue

Unemployment: See Failure

You may have noticed that I haven't bothered filling in the "About Me" or you may be wondering about the "Description" of this blog. It's not that I'm lazy--although that would usually be the reason. It's the fact that I'm in a so-called period of self-examination. I'm hopped up on caffeine, daytime TV and a sinking sense of self-worthlessness. Unemployment does that to a person. What do I usually do? Well, before we moved here for my husband's job, I was an administrative assistant. Ok, I was a secretary. I wasn't paid enough, or appreciated enough--like many secretaries, I’m sure. And I didn't get much of a chance to do what I'm good at--or hope I'm good at, which is write. That isn’t the sad part. The sad part is that I stayed because it was convenient. Oh the shame! I went to work with my husband three days a week and the other two days I had time for household chores, and writing.

I'm not very proud of who I am at this point. Though my continued unemployment is not without reason. I'm not only trying to rethink things, but I have also been trying to find a suitable house in this psychotic market. Arizona's real-estate values have doubled from July 2004 to July 2005. Thanks, you money-grubbing investors, I hope your tenants attract roaches. My consolation is that rent in the area is not covering the mortgages. Teehee. Not everything is bright and beautiful in the world of Arizona real-estate investment. If there is a scary housing bubble anywhere, it's here. I just know it will burst as soon as we find a house that is appropriate and doesn't fall through. Negative equity, here we come!

See what I did there. Went off on a tangent, so I wasn't talking about myself anymore. Not that you were all waiting around to hear about my life. I decided a few weeks ago to do something about my miserable state-of-mind. I started this blog. And I put my resume up on-line. The job-finding service I use recommended that I use their format. Their format wants to put my most recent experience first. I decided to go along with that, not really knowing what it is I want to do with my life. So I look like an Administrative Assistant on-line. But I don't feel like one. In the four years I worked at my last job, I never got a raise, not because my work didn't deserve it. At least I was told that they couldn’t afford it. One day at work I was cleaning up after a particularly careless co-worker when my boss walked in. We had a discussion about how I wasn’t a maid. She then said, “You’re one overpaid maid.” Turns out that my fellows in the respectable cleaning industries made more than a quarter than I did on average, and that was working with data that was a good four years old. Of course, there’s no way to tell what my boss would have paid a maid if she had one.

Surprisingly, I’ve gotten some calls and many replies from my paltry, six-line, posted resume. One was for temp work, so far away that I’d have to work for an hour to pay for the fuel to commute, and the others are entreaties for me to join a sales force with a potential to earn up to $100,000. I’m so sure. The last response I got was from a company with some mysterious Tibetan miracle cure. I’m certain they had me purchasing the product in mind when they sent the e-mail, not a job opportunity. Now I realize I should try uploading my resume that I took hours agonizing over. But I can’t help feeling good about being wanted, even to do temp work and buy miracle cures. So pathetic!