Employment Impossibilites Revisited

The Sunday Enquirer brings a new, and ever shorter, list of employment possibilities. The problem with job hunting through the Enquirer (once you move past the point that I am, apparently, qualified to do nothing) is the distance factor. Driving to the outskirts of the city suburbs is a 60 mile round trip. Four or five days a week times 60+ miles a day at 25 MPG times 2 bucks a gallon means multiplication is not my friend here.

I'm not sure I can afford to work. The age old problem of the unemployed has become a startling reality for me.

I keep looking though. A few more things have cropped up locally, although with a newly created 8000 employee pool in the area (see http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/22/60minutes/main4747832.shtml for a recent 60 Minutes story on our little town) I am not likely to be a forerunner for most positions.

What I suspected for years is proving to be true. Nurturing someone's kids for 10 or 12 hours a day is not considered real work experience. Nevermind that a good number of those kids were the product of a dual working family where at least one person worked simply because they found it too overwhelming to be at home full time with their kids. The same people who hired me 15 years ago to raise kids they found too wearing to raise on their own now thinks I don't have any real life work experience.

It's no wonder we're a nation in crisis. On many fronts.

I remembered today that I moved here a year ago anticipating I would be job hunting at some future point when Kevin was out of treatment. At the time I cast a skeptical look on many of the obvious local employment possibilities. It's not that I thought I could land a job with ease; I've always known the value, or lack thereof, that would be granted to my former self employed life.

But I did imagine I had some marketable skills and could avoid having to consider certain jobs. In this new reality of no marketable skills, a tanked economy and Kevin's salary cut, I may have to revisit the impossible.

Check out this blog post from early last year:
http://whatdayisittoday-ls.blogspot.com/2008/01/another-day-another-box.html My big concern now is not that this might be the only job I'm qualified for, it's that there's a very good chance I'm not.