[Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, find line 4. Write down what it says] “He wanted to log in everywhere but was limited to the phone numbers on his list.” Masters of Deception by Michelle Slatalla and Joshua Quittner
[Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What do you touch first?] Nothing but air there!
[What is the last thing you watched on TV?] Law and Order rerun.
[With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?] Birds singing outside the open window.
[When did you last step outside?] Around 4 pm to get the mail.
[Before you came to this website, what did you look at?] flaunt.net
[What are you wearing?] tee-shirt, sweats and socks.
[Did you dream last night?] If I did, I don’t remember any of it.
[When did you last laugh?] Earlier today at my wife who was being cute.
[What is on the walls of the room you are in?] Ugly wallpaper, a calendar of Thomas Kinkade paintings, and a digital thermometer.
[Seen anything weird lately?] No, not really.
[What do you think of this quiz?] I always like things that don’t require me to compose original content :)
[What is the last movie you saw?] My House in Umbra. (excellent, 4.5 out of 5)
[If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy first?] This house and our car.
[Tell me something about you that I don’t know:] I can juggle.
[If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?] I would eliminate all money and concepts of ownership.
[Do you like to dance?] Only when no one is watching. :)
[George Bush:] The scariest man in the world today.
[Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?] Amy Susan
[Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?] Daniel George
[Would you ever consider living abroad?] Absolutely. But only for a couple of years.
One of the hidden benefits of losing your job is the potential for losing your house as well. With no income the race between a new income source and the end of your savings account is underway. ( Since I was most recently independently employed, I am not eligible for unemployment compensation. )
We have enough on hand to last a “while”, and we can sell our stocks to generate a slight extension to that “while.” But our employment search must bear fruit soon or we’ll be in real trouble.
So last week we put an ad in the newspaper, and bought a couple of “For Sale” signs and a big black marker. One of the signs came with an info tube attachment. The flyer in the tube pointed us to a web site were we could create our own house listing for free. Once the listing was completed we could print brochures and stick them in the tube.
The newspaper ad has generated some calls, but none serious enough to schedule a showing. The brochures keep disappearing from tube ( 32 in 4 days ) and some calls are coming from them as well.
We have had one serious call, from a realtor, that has put us in a bit of a tailspin. You see we spent the morning talking about seriously searching for ways to stay here rather than sell the house and move. No sooner had we finished that conversation when the phone rang. Now we have to decide how to handle a showing and potential offer.
On the one hand we want to be able to sell our home if we need to move, but on the other hand we don’t want to have to deal with the showings and stress of trying to sell if we are going to stay. Having a realtor call with a potential buyer who wants a showing just brings home the fact that our lives are really in turmoil now.
Do we stay or do we go? Should I start my own business? Should that business be here or elsewhere? Should I take the first thing to come along, or wait for the “right” job? Do we sell the house ourselves or through a realtor? Do we move ourselves or hire it done? Is basing your future on winning the lottery as bad an idea as it sounds?
Life goes on and on.
04/04/04 at 4:04:04. How cool is this?
The family of web sites that I maintain have been updated with Jay Allen’s excellent MT-Blacklist plugin. While I haven’t suffered from the flood of comment spam other sites have dealt with, I am getting more and more junk in my blogs comments. Now I can spend my time on other things besides deleting spam from my comments.
I recently downloaded iTunes PlayStats. Maybe not the most significant piece of software inhabiting my PowerBook, but fun nonetheless.
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While this isn’t by any means scientific, I have been using the responses to my resume campaign as a way to measure the loss of civility in our society. Once upon a time, when you sent your resume to a company, you could expect to receive a letter in response. At the very least the human resources department would acknowledge receipt of your mail, and would indicate how long they would keep it on hand.
Oh, how times have changed. In the past two weeks I have sent roughly 50 resumes to companies across the country. Some of these were sent as e-mail attachments, others through job posting boards. All had an individualized cover letter tailored for the particular position in question. Other than a few automatically generated “we’ve received your mail, do not reply to this e-mail” responses, I’ve heard nothing back from any of the companies.
I understand that in these litigious times, companies take the path of least action so as to limit their legal exposure. But I think it is a sad statement indeed that fear of legal action should keep civility out of our society. I wish there was some pre-agreed upon way for me to indicate to them that I am responding to their offer of a job opening in good faith. That I am not playing legal roulette, hoping that they’ll blunder and leave themselves open to legal action.
As politicians use more and more wedge issues to separate us into smaller ( and therefore less influential ) blocks of people, and as the news media frightens us daily with fear based reporting, we have become less trusting of each other. Our lives are centered around “us versus them” thinking, and we dare not be friendly with “them.”
The loss of civility that comes with the fear of others is apparent every where in our society today. You see it on the highways, in supermarkets, and at little league games. We all feel trapped and helpless in some way or another, and we take those feelings out on strangers; because strangers have done it to us.
When did we become a nation of people obsessed with getting even? Why is it considered okay, expected even, to take out our frustrations on innocent bystanders? Until we as a society stop reacting to feeling afraid, feeling fear, with anger towards others, we will not regain any of the civility we’ve lost.
And without civility, we we lose that which we call civilization.
For the past two weeks I’ve been at home every day, and in the quiet of our house I have been more aware than ever before of my tinnitus. I’ve known for some time that I had ringing in my ears from time to time, but only when it is truly quiet around me, am I really aware of it.
It used to be that in the morning I’d get up and it would be there, but once I got to work the constant background noise of people and machines would drown it out. In fact in order to block out the background noise of the typical workplace I wore headphones and listened to music much of the work day.
So now in the quiet of my own home, situated on a semi-rural acre, I am painfully aware that this tone goes on all the time. The intensity changes, as does the apparent volume. I’ve discovered that clenching my neck muscles or my jaw can alter the pitch somewhat. I slowly getting used to this, ah, feature of my body.
Still it is odd to think that my ears generate a constant slightly piercing tone day in and day out.
Today I am feeling defeat. The dozens of resumes I’ve sent out in the past 11 days haven’t generated a single phone call or e-mail. The only places I’ve talked to were cold calls made to me based on my monster profile. Only one of those sounded promising, and it appears to have dried up.
All the while I have struggled to find the energy to get up every day. Struggled to find the will to keep going. I have had good moments, times when I think this will end for the better. Today is not one of those times.
In part I am recording these thoughts so that should I come out on the other side of this lesson I will be able to look back and remember. In part I am recording these thoughts because I am afraid they will be among my last.
I have worked so long and so hard to get to this station in my life, and all I can see stretched out before me is more work and more pain. All I see are more battles to fight, more losses, more hurt and confusion. And all I can think is why?
I know that I have a warrior soul. That I am attracted to battles, attracted to struggle. Maybe the point of this lifetime, of this lesson, is to walk off the battle field at a time and place of my choosing.
I am so tired of this all.
Today has been a long and, at times, difficult day. I started out feeling defeated and lost in the wilderness of unemployment. Being cut off from the structure and social framework that has been my job for over three years has been harder to deal with than I would have imagined. My wife, who would know, tells me I am suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome. I think that this morning’s feeling of defeat was another bit of that PTSD coming to the surface.
The past week and a half has been one wicked roller coaster ride of emotions. I’ve been up and buoyant one minute, and down and defeated the next. When I am up I can see that in the end this experience will be a good one. It will have freed me from a very destructive environment. We will get to move on to a new town.
However, when I am down all I can see is the struggle I face getting a new job. Toss in the emotional land mines, courtesy of the PTSD, and I get very depressed. Have the outlet of writing about it has helped in more ways than one. It has given me an outlet when I’ve needed one. Sharing my experience, rough emotions and all, has been good for me.
I’m not so tired tonight as I was this morning.
Today, for the most part has been a return to normalcy. We made a western omelet this morning that was delicious. This afternoon we baked a yellow cake and frosted it with homemade chocolate frosting. We watched favorite programs off the Tivo, and a slow movie called “Between Strangers.”
It was a day filled with normal Saturday things. For a few hours the reality of our situation was set aside and we got to live again. I’m hoping for a repeat tomorrow. We’re making a batch of our homemade spaghetti sauce.