Friday, October 08, 2004
Where's the sugar?
Practical difficulties that have interfered with looking for work include transportation and communication. Since I'm still on foot, there is a limited range of places I can get to without taking the bus, which is likely to cost money I don't have. I also need to be able to make local phone calls without plugging 50 cents into the pay phone for each one.
I've made a little progress: I can get bus tokens to go to Job Service, and I've made it out there to register, and I can now make local calls in the daytime, but it's not convenient. Now that I've been to Job service, there is another agency I can try for help with other aspects of looking for work.
A rather bigger obstacle is that I simply hate the process of looking for work. It's discouraging and depressing. A couple of my readers have suggested that I simply Just Do It. I'm willing to admit that's the best suggestion I've seen, but it still goes down like cod liver oil (reputedly nasty tasting stuff in the first place) that's gone rancid. Mary Poppins had a nice idea (a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down), but I'm not finding ANY elements of fun in reviewing the low ratio of jobs I can qualify for to advertised openings, repeatedly presenting my dismal employment record (once for each potential employer), fix my barely legible scrawl (again, once for each application), or trying to work up enthusiasm for what look like the same kinds of jobs I've hated in the past. If I could just go to work and skip the whole process of trying to persuade skeptical strangers that I'm the best of several applicants for the same job, I'd do it. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work that way.
I've made a little progress: I can get bus tokens to go to Job Service, and I've made it out there to register, and I can now make local calls in the daytime, but it's not convenient. Now that I've been to Job service, there is another agency I can try for help with other aspects of looking for work.
A rather bigger obstacle is that I simply hate the process of looking for work. It's discouraging and depressing. A couple of my readers have suggested that I simply Just Do It. I'm willing to admit that's the best suggestion I've seen, but it still goes down like cod liver oil (reputedly nasty tasting stuff in the first place) that's gone rancid. Mary Poppins had a nice idea (a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down), but I'm not finding ANY elements of fun in reviewing the low ratio of jobs I can qualify for to advertised openings, repeatedly presenting my dismal employment record (once for each potential employer), fix my barely legible scrawl (again, once for each application), or trying to work up enthusiasm for what look like the same kinds of jobs I've hated in the past. If I could just go to work and skip the whole process of trying to persuade skeptical strangers that I'm the best of several applicants for the same job, I'd do it. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work that way.
