Wednesday, April 22, 2015

The Resume

I debated for a long time about how I wanted to start this post given that despite this being my own personal forum, I still vacillate between the sharing my true thoughts and providing a more watered-down and socially palatable version of my truth.  Since by now (if you have been following along), everyone is well aware of our situation dealing with long-term unemployment--and the fact that I am not in a particular good mood today--I figured I would put my filter aside and tell it like it is for me today.  Unemployment stinks and dealing with it over the course of months and years is truly unbearable.  It permeates each and everything I do each day. While I want to believe that there is more to life than money,  it is important and necessary and not only for the big things like keeping a roof over our heads, but also for the small things, the things others take for granted like getting frozen yogurt for the children or going to the movies or, dare I say it, taking a vacation (a thing we have not done since 2006).  Finding a job is so all-encompassing that we live, eat, sleep (I don't but my husband and the children do) and breathe job search. All day, every day.  So, I have come up with the top three reasons why my husband needs to find a job sooner rather than later...

1. If he asks me to edit his resume one more time, I will most definitely scream.  Not one of those little girly screams, mind you, but a full on, blood curdling scream, the likes of which horror movies are made of.  Talk about 're-arranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic.' How many different revisions can one make on a single resume?  I think we are on #255,  but I might be off. It could be higher.  Do I know what is missing from his resume that he is not getting interviews?  Nope, because trust me, if I did, I would have added it already in revision #2.

2. My children need to feel 'normal' again meaning that they need a dad who goes out to work in the morning and comes home at night and complains about how hard he is working and what he had for lunch and all those good things.  They need to know where they are going to be living and that we can plan to do something fun in the near future and that they do not have to hear we need to 'wait until Daddy gets a job' anymore (because if I say that phrase again, I will scream the same scream I described in #1).

3. Selfishly speaking,  I. Am. Done. I am exhausted from cheerleading and revising that resume.  I have had enough 'transition-speak' to last an entire lifetime and well into the after-life. Networking?  Don't even get me started on that topic because my husband has networked with more people than a politician and still here we sit unemployed.  I don't honestly know how to try harder or what to do differently or what we are doing wrong.  What I do know is that it has gone on for far too long and it has taken my sense of humor and my patience along with it.

I would love to conclude by saying that I am hopeful things will change soon, but since I decided to 'tell it like it is' today, doing so would be a lie.  At this point, the snapshot of my life finds me frustrated, agitated and cranky and the only cure for my ills is for my husband to be employed.  How I wish there was a prescription for that.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

The Joke Is On Me

April Fools!  I honestly don't get the fun of trying to trick someone into believing something or pulling some other type of prank on this day.  I suppose it might stem from my Type A+ personality that craves control and hates being surprised because that means I would need to be out of control for a moment. Of course in recent years, my distaste for today stems more logically from my distaste for April 6th, which we affectionately refer to in our family as the day of the Boston Debacle.  For those new to this blog, the Reader's Digest version of the events leading up to that day go something like this--husband out of work for two years, gets job allowing us to move back to the east coast (my dream), put house on the market, drive to Boston to have our children test into schools and to look at houses, return home and on April 6th (which just happened to be Good Friday that year) get a call from my husband saying that due to corporate restructuring, he was let go--again.  The grand total of time he had worked for the company was 5 weeks.  Yes, 5 weeks, and, yes, I am still bitter.

I would love to say that the Boston Debacle marked the end of our seemingly never ending bout of unemployment, but I can't which is why I have not been blogging. We have been through two more jobs since then and are currently in the same position we were three years ago--unemployed-- which is the same position we were in two years prior to that.  So what's the deal?  What have we done wrong that we has landed in this uncomfortable and frustrating position so many times?  Lack of effort?  I certainly don't think that is the case as we have networked ourselves to a point where people don't want to talk to us anymore.  We should place our own ad to the tune of  'currently seeking networking friends who will help us land meetings with elusive hiring managers.' Maybe my husband's resume is the issue.  That said, it is in its 569th revision but perhaps that just isn't enough these days.  Lets face it, we cannot change his age, education or background, but since we are willing to work with just about any opportunity that arises including underemployment to relocating, I was hoping that he would be perceived as a 'steal' to anyone who might consider hiring him.

So, there you have it, the reason why I am have off the grid with this blog is because I really have nothing new to say.  Hopefully soon, I will be back to sharing and sometimes even making you laugh, but for now, I have lost my mojo and my sense of humor, too. Apparently, the biggest April Fool's joke is on me.