Tag: #New York

  • Pretty Much Back

    So… It’s been close to three months that I have been off of the blog, which is a very sad shame on my part.

    I feel compelled to update:

    I had a job, then my wife got a job, and we discovered that it was psychologically damaging our daughter to have both of us working from home, and both of us half-ass trying to help keep up with the kid’s school work. Then I got laid off from my job (thank you, Coronavirus) and I have become the stay at home dad now. I got the kid through her classes, and she has been promoted to go to kindergarten, and I am trying very hard to keep her skills up by working on her reading, writing, and math over the summer. I also quit drinking over the month of June, and did not gain any helpful benefits from doing that, and in fact, I put on more weight. My unemployment claim was denied. People are moving out of New York City left and right, and the town feels like a husk of its former self, and pretty much every day, the world feels like it’s coming to an end, but we are protesting with the hope that up until the end, if we survive, we’ll have a better world to live in.

    Oh, and I don’t have health insurance, and I started a novel, but hey, I bet half of NYC can say the same thing right now.

    How are you?

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  • Coronavirus: Still At Home

    It has been a tough four days getting used to being home all the time. We don’t have a big apartment, and we are making the best that we can with our day. We do have a schedule that we are trying to stick to, and also trying to make time for both of us to work, watch the kid, and also, we are trying to find some personal alone time to decompress. Walks are helping, but we are all feeling the strain of this new normal.

    I have to limit my access to the news, as it does bring me down, and make me feel rather hopeless. I was in a good mood this morning, then I had a computer issue that affected my ability to work, and that started me down a spiral of thought that we are in an un-survivable situation; That nothing will work or help.

    And then I took a deep breath, and played “store” with my daughter, and I felt a little better. I talked it over with my wife, who is also being brave but is filled with anxiety as well, and both of us admitting that we are nervous did take the pressure off. We are in this together.

    The best I can equate this to, is like the Great Depression. When the people’s lives, across just about every spectrum, were affected in such a titanic manner. My grandparents got through that, and even were able to joke about it. So, I know it can be done.

  • 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…