Whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on.
My last two job prospects fell through. It’s fitting that I start over, with a clean slate.
I have a short list of a half dozen prospective employers that I want to check with on a weekly basis. I have a longer list of a couple dozen that I can visit on a one-time basis or, at any rate, less often. And then there is a whole new field to explore.
Two supporters have committed to me that if I get a job, any job at all, I need no longer concern myself with shelter. They have exhorted me to tell every prospective employer that I am available 24/7. On the one hand, this opens lots of doors, as I’ll expand on below. On the other hand, I need to pow-wow with them some: the shelter where I’ve been staying does not only supply shelter itself, but also meals, clothing, laundry. If I leave there, arrangements must be made for those things also. My needs are minimal.
If I am to be available 24/7, then on the one hand, I can work any shift. On the other hand, I may as well start looking for real, full-time jobs — such as aren’t normally available in retail. Specifically, I can start looking for secretarial work, especially at law firms or any of the several large local hospitals.
Given my skill set, in the secretarial world I’m likely to make $15.00/hour. With an income of $30K/year, I will be able to afford an apartment at $600/month — a nice little studio or efficiency (Emphasize “nice.”) in a nice neighborhood. I don’t want any more than that. I may no longer qualify for Medical Assistance, but I will be able to pay for other insurance. Likewise, I will probably no longer qualify for food stamps, but will be able to buy my own food.
I have to overhaul my record-keeping system. The appearances may not have been all that fancy, but the HTML involved in the approach I used up till now, for the sake of my reports here, was so complicated as to inhibit checking with each of those half-dozen places in any weekly rotation.
Plan:
I have 1½–2½ hours available daily for job search.
Each Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, I will visit one place on the short list (weekly rotation) and one place on the long list (one-time or occasional rotation).
Tuesdays I will visit Target and Enoch Pratt Free Library; for reason that I am normally at the library on Tuesdays, and these two employers’ websites require a more current browser than is available to me at church.
Fridays I will look for “real” secretarial or full-time jobs using Craig’s List and/or Indeed. I have found in the past that other job boards, namely Monster and CareerBuilder, post mainly jobs that are, frankly, out of my league. Indeed seems to be where I’ll most likely find positions suitable for me.
Using jobs boards in the past entailed a lot of unhappiness. I had search agents that would scour them for listings suitable for me, which they would e-mail me weekly. There would normally be hundreds each week. I’d copy them from the e-mails into Word, and then go through and weed out all the ones I found unsuitable. I’d be left with a dozen or two dozen listings to apply to. In the remaining available time, I couldn’t possibly apply to them all, and thus faced a terrifying uncertainty: at the time, I still believed in “God’s plan.” Which ones should I apply to first? Which one, if any, is “the right job,” “the job God wants for me?”
And this process consumed all my available time, every week.
Two changes henceforth:
(1) I no longer believe in “God’s plan.” The right job is the job I get. (2) Accordingly, I will no longer seek to find every single listing that might be suitable for me. Each week, each time, I will attend to the first five listings that appeal to me; period.
Wish me luck!
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