I'm unique

I haven't talked much about it here.

I'm not working anywhere. You know. For money.

I didn't talk about my job much when I had one, so I'm not going to talk much about not having one, either. This is my own private forum where I get to talk about what I want to talk about...you know, decide what it is and define just a little bit who I am.

I'm generally impressed very little by the person who defines themselves by their jobs. I'm trying to separate the working part of my life as much as possible from the other part of my life, even while unemployed. You know...work to live, not live to work.

However, I have mentioned a couple of times before that I'm currently not employed. I've stopped short of using the phrases "out of work" and "unemployed," if only to asuage my own ego. If I say I'm not employed, I can pretend it's of my own volition.

And it was. I left my previous employer a couple of months ago. I wasn't impressed with the direction of the company, the decisions of management, and (most of all) how I'd been treated over the previous 3 to 6 month period. I worked for a non-profit organization dedicated to helping a certain group of people, and as I saw it, we weren't doing everything we could have been toward our goal, nor had we been for a long time. When I spoke up about it, I was branded a troublemaker.

Let me say this and make no mistake about it: I'm still quite happy that I no longer work there. The amount of gratification I got from my job, emotional and monitary, nowhere nearly equalled the amount of bullshit I was subjected to or the amount of stress and irritation I was taking home with me on a daily basis.

Toward the end of my time there, I was dreaming about my job. I'd go in, work for eight, nine, even ten and eleven hours. And then I'd sleep, and dream the whole night about sorting or about one of the guys I was supervising.

So, I think it was a good thing to get out when I did.

That said, I'm really quite irritated now about something entirely different. This damned lack of a damned income due to this damned lack of a damned job.

Here's my point about being unique.

See, I got told today that basically, I'm overqualified for a position, but they'll keep my name on file.

This on the heels of being underqualified for another position I tried for recently.

Of the jobs that have actually spoken to me and told me that I've not gotten the job, I've either been under or overqualified for just about everything. I've not been keeping score, but I believe it's running just about even.

That's why I think I'm unique.

There's one group of jobs out there. And then there's the other.

And I'm in the singular position of being overqualified for the first group and underqualified for the second. I'm all liminal and shit. Belonging truly to neither group.

Actually, I know that I'm not all that unique. I'm having the same problem that all the other unemployed out there are.

I've got my name in with a couple of Temp Services, now. I bugged one of them this afternoon, and was informed that I have to I understand I'm pretty far down the line right now. I understood that, I said, but that doesn't make it any easier to stomach.

I should mention that I got a nice offer of help from a regular reader who said my site was "funny as shit." And I don't know that I ever thanked him properly. Thanks for all your help, Robert. As a one legged man once told me: You're a good dude, and good things will happen to you.

The trick, so they say, is to not get discouraged and keep plugging.

Alright. I won't get discouranged and I'll keep trying.

But tonight, I needed a little extra stress relief over the whole thing.

So I stood on the corner of Greenland and Tennessee yelling things at cars as they passed by tonight. You know. Things like "Punk Ass!" and "Dumb Ass!" and even "Spurious Cur!" I even beat up a guy in a clown suit. And I held up the Mexican Restaurant at gunpoint.

No. That's not true. But I did call a driver a shithead when it went by too fast on the road during my walk and sent spray from its tires up onto me.

Things are looking up. I've got my prospects. And I just have to remember that the job does not define the man.