Beginning in earnest

When people say they're looking for a job, they really mean one of two things:

1) They are unemployed and content but open to the idea of a job should one fall into their lap

2) They are (pro)actively seeking employment

By-and-large, I'm going to say most of the unemployed people we know (guilty as charged!) fall into the former of the two categories.

I think I've pretty much hit the unemployment wall however, where waking up everyday with nothing to do has finally gotten a little boring. It's been three-and-a-half months, so this makes a lot of sense to me, as any further weeks where accomplishing my P90x goals are the highlight of each day would pretty much cause me to throw myself in front of a subway.

So this week, I started the "actually looking for a job" phase of my extended break, posting resumes on all the job search sites and checking websites and applying for multiple jobs a day with the goal of at least 10-15 a week.

Step two will be to finally canvas friends and family to see if anyone can help out at all with a hook up.

I am in general a rather kind human being, and although I don't have an awful lot of wealth and power, I find over the years I have been able to build up a fair amount of good will, connections and mutual respect. In general, these things are pretty meaningless when all I want is to pay off my credit card bill, but here's hoping that being the good guy pays off for once. I'm cashing in my pay-it-forwards!

Cold calls started coming in today, surprisingly quickly considering I only put up my resume two days ago. Sketchy companies abound, but I'm open to most interviews just for the experience. Rejecting people is something I must learn in facets of life.

I think the toughest thing is just deciding what I want to do. Obviously I'm seeking a journalism job, but frankly the market it... horrible. My list of what I want out of a job are also not necessarily isolated to journalism positions:

- work for a good cause

- opportunity to write and express creativity

- challenging projects that demand learning some new skills

- enjoy the company of my peers

- decent pay

That's it, really. I'm debating whether to take unrelated positions in companies where I'm interested in that field. Is getting a foot in the door -- albeit not in the capacity you'd like -- worth the investment in time both short and long term? Would it be detrimental down the road to say, work in administration for a creative company when eventually you want to get into the creative aspect?

Questions questions questions...