Djcnor’s Weblog

There’s a definition of insanity I’ve been giving some thought to lately: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

That’s what job hunting has been like for a while now, and it’s high time I did something other than what I’m doing now if I’m to expect different results.

Mostly, lately, I’ve been keeping an eye on several websites for jobs to apply for, buying the local paper the two days  it has job sections and applying to appropriate jobs, being active on Linked-In (where there aren’t many folks from my area), and visiting the job centre website when there was nothing new on my usual places, and carrying a folder full of my assorted CVs (all ten or more of them) around town so as to be ready whenever I see a wanted sign in a window.

And as relief from that, I’ve been working on the workhouse costume (just finished hemming the skirt today), solving the hardest killer sudokus I can find, and keeping up wiht my blog and comments on other blogs. (I’ll be up to 400 hits per month this month.) These last things I will keep on doing , aside from the costume which will be done in two weeks and replaced with some other kind of making.

Now, if I had a good network here in the UK, I’d be using it like crazy, but I don’t. When we first got here, I put considerable effort into that sort of thing as best I could. But soon after we arrived, something happened that meant I had to take any job at all, so I temped, doing work I didn’t enjoy at all, which always leaves me feeling very tired and dull-minded at the end of the day. That, coupled with not having a car, having little money, and the local transit system, good as it is,  running once an hour after 6:30 in the evening pretty much curtailed much social activity. Then another thing happened, and for a long while, my husband needed all the support I could give him when I wasn’t at work.

One of the first things I did, when I quit my last job, another of those necessary but dulling jobs with an added push from my employer, was to join Toastmasters, but even that’s a strain on our present budget. I like doing it, and have told several other toastmaster folks that I’m looking, but it shows no real prospects of improving my job prospects. And as long as  the water company exercise program continues,….

https://djcnor.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/the-water-company-exercise-program/

I’ll be short on energy available to use for socializing and approaching prospective employers directly, since every time I leave the house, it’s a 15 minute walk to the bus stop and I’ve got to save enough energy for the same 15 minute walk, uphill this time, when I come back.

So….what can I do that’s different and that’s within the restrictions of budget and energy I have to work with? As the King said, “‘T’is a puzzlement.” Simply writing all this down makes me feel tired, but I know I’ll feel more energetic after a night’s sleep, and I have pledged myself to not stay in the house tomorrow, to go to an open house for yet another phone-bank type job (yes, I know, doing more of the same, just out of the house, but I promised), to do some investigation of prospects for setting up a clothing repair and alteration service, to mail the three applications I finished Friday, and anything different and free and involving social contact I can think of. I’d consider taking along pastels and doing some artwork sitting along a well-traveled path if I thought anyone would stop and talk to me about it.

Please post any and all ideas as comments.