Blog

  • Purpose of Being

    I guess the positive thinking thing worked. I have an interview next week, and it is a relief just to have that. As I stated before in the earlier post, I was beginning to get worried that there was something wrong with me. I’m not sure if this is the job for me, or even if I will be offered a job, but I’m glad that I have been scheduled for the interview, and let’s be honest, if they offer me a job, I will be taking it.

    Okay, so, what have I learned from this month of getting constant and consistent rejection?

    Besides that it sucks…

    I do need to feel productive and help contribute to my family. Right now, that feels like I have to have a job and bring money in. But I started to have a thought; what if I didn’t have to work? Such as, what if my wife brought in enough money that it wasn’t required for me to have an income?

    We have already been in the situation where she earned more money than me, and that didn’t threaten me in any way. I am confident that her earning all the money wouldn’t be an issue.

    I think that this situation would manifest itself into my need to have a purpose. As long as I had that, a goal, then I would be okay. If I was the house husband, supporting her career, and looking after the kid, while still having the time to write, that I would be okay with.

    Not that we’re are in that situation.

    I just need to get a job, and I am one step closer.

    And things don’t look so bad anymore…

  • Positive Thinking

    I just have been thrown off with not finding a job right away out here. I was told the California market was a good place, but I have been here a month, and still no job interview. I sort of thought, clearly incorrectly, that having experience in New York would at least allow me to get my foot in the door.

    Not so much.

    In my other career, I had hired a good number of people over the past seven years. I thought that this would have given me the ability to know how to work and handle presenting myself in the best possible way to employers. That logic hasn’t paid out, and I am a little confused.

    Part of my confusion also comes from the fact that the longer I look for work, the more I start to think that there is something wrong with me, and that I just might never get a job again!!! It’s a downward spiral, and the more I sit around looking for a job, the more I start to think that my situation is hopeless.

    And that is the real trick is life; staying positive in difficult situations. (Again, a skill I thought I had, but maybe not so much.) Maybe I was positive in an abstract sense, only about things that touched the periphery of my life. When things get bad, I say the positive thing, but harbor the negative thought in the back of my mind.

    But, as I have left my old life, and I am starting a new one, then I have the opportunity to lead a positive thinking life. (See how I did that?) And then that makes me think that positive thinking is actually faith and hope that things will be better.

    Rabbit hole here…

    I just need a job…

  • Stay Alive

    I had made a promise this weekend that I would start working out again come Monday morning, which by the way, is the worst morning to start working out. It’s a fact… or at least should be.

    Most people say that and make this promise and have written about getting started and all the motivation crap.

    For me, I lost my running shoes in the move. They were in New York, and I remember packing them up, or I think I do. When all of our stuff made it to California; no running shoes, and I also lost a pair of gray slip on Van’s that I loved.

    So, I had no running shoes, and honestly, not a big deal, right? Yeah, I don’t have a job, and I can’t justify spending money on shoes, when that should go to rent, and I also don’t want to add to our debt.

    That left me one option, that I’m not very proud of… a workout DVD. It’s more like a program as the thing has like 20 different DVDs for working on parts of your body. Look, I will admit that the shit works, provided that you stick to it, as the wife and I used it in the past. So, I’m not knocking the program.

    What makes me uncomfortable about the whole thing is the super positive attitude from the people in the workouts. I interpret their reactions as inauthentic, and that has everything to do with me and not them. I also understand that they are paid actors to be super-hyped about “gains” and crap.

    Exercising for me is just a necessary evil of getting older. I want to stay on the planet as long as possible (wife, kid, family, friends, things like that) so I have to get up and work out.

    I sort of wish there was a workout video that was like “Hey man, we get it. You just want to be healthy or look good with your shirt off. Whatever it is, we get it. So, let’s get this over with so we can move on to other things.”

    I don’t know how motivating that would be.

  • It’s the Debt, Stupid

    I like reading David Brooks. Today, I read his opinion piece about how it’s not about the economy anymore. That things seems to be going well with the economy; stock market is up, GDP is up, growth is booming… but somehow no one is happy. He points out the many ills in society right now, especially the report that showed that American life expectancy has decreased due to suicide and drug overdose. He draws his own conclusion on what we should do, but my gut tells me that what he prescribes is just old thinking for new problems; as he put it, policy makers will need to “…figure out how economic levers can have moral, communal and sociological effect.”

    So… Jobs won’t solve these problems, but jobs will solve the problem?

    I have heard that before. Polices have been made around that idea, and yet here we are. A job without dignity, both moral and economic, creates more problems than it solves.

    The thing is that if you don’t earn much money and if you get a minuscule raise, though statistically a significant increase, you still don’t have shit. And if shit keeps increasing in price, you never get ahead.

    Why do people under forty spend more money on “experiences” rather than homes, retirement, or even a savings account? Because that’s all they can afford.

    A dollar value-based society, whose capital is not easily accessed by any economic levels except the top, creates a debt culture, and in the end, will start to eat its tail to survive.

  • A Billionaire Has to Go to Jail

    I think I have written before on how I disagree with the common belief that when Ford pardoned Nixon, it was in the best interest of the country as a whole. That somehow, Nixon going on trial was a bridge too far for the American people to handle. The resignation and pardon where the period of that era in history, and we all decided to move on, and be Americans again, with never having to speak of Watergate again. I have heard this thought all through my schooling, and still it gets brought up whenever Watergate is mentioned. I agree that the pardon allowed people to move on, but there were unforeseen consequences.

    What I hold to is that Ford’s pardon of Nixon set a precedent for all Presidents; that they are above the law, and Presidents will protect their own. Clinton could have release information on Reagan over Iran/Contra but didn’t. W Bush could have released information on Clinton but didn’t. Obama could have released info on W but didn’t. And if one group is above the law, why not another group?

    This is now bleeding into the world of business, and as Bernie would say, the billionaire class. No one who orchestrated the Crash of 2008 went to jail. Obama and Holder can continue to tell me that banks paid a price for their misdeeds, but those CEO’s are still running those banks, and are creating a new bubble. Hell, even though journalists have been writing about Jeffery Epstein for some time, only now are people coming around to the realization that a billionaire is getting away with a crime that he should have been sentenced to life in prison for.

    The cure to this problem is simple; a billionaire has to go to jail. A President who breaks the law has to be put on trial. The rule of law has to be upheld.

    Kind’a simple.