The Job Hunt Jungle

I’ve been “home” for a few weeks now. Home at the moment being my hometown area, staying with parents. My current job is to surf the web for jobs, and fill out online applications complete with uploaded documents. What happened to driving around asking for job applications and handing out resumes? It fit my ADHD personality much better.

Nowadays, job hunting means staring at a computer screen all day. Job hunting can be depressing on it’s own, but now it makes my eyes glazed over. I try to get out every so often, but I’m usually exhausted after filling out one application (which usually takes me a couple hours by the time I get done filling out my crazy job history and education and references, answering their questions, and writing the required cover letter). But I figure with being able to search online and send applications in directly and not driving around, I’m probably getting more done than I would have before. So that makes me hopeful.

Searching for jobs online is it’s own daunting task, though. It’s like a jungle. So thick with vegetation that you can’t see the path. It’s overwhelming how many jobs you find, and then narrowing them down to the ones I’m actually qualified for (which is part of the depressing part). I’m really not qualified to do much. So I’m branching out to things I wouldn’t have thought of before. Which is its own adventure. I’ve applied for some random jobs and some good ones in random places. We’ll see what happens!

The job hunt can have its share of ups and downs. Especially since there’s nothing specific to look forward to or to feel purposeful about. So now I’m looking at a couple things to keep me going. One is volunteering. I’m not sure where or what I’ll go for, but I think giving back to the community will help immensely. The other is joining NaNoWriMo. This is where wannabe novelist go crazy for the month of November (unless they were already crazy before) and try to write a novel in only that amount of time. I think that will give me something to look forward to. I wanted to do it the past two years, but was in grad school then. So what better time than when I have no job? Hopefully I’ll have a job by then, and can settle into it quickly so I can spend my free time writing.

So here I go. The next phase of my career journey. A random job (hopefully soon!) and a mad dash for a finished novel. Wish me luck! And let me know if you need a volunteer!

p.s. One of these days I’ll give some final thoughts on my time in China. And hopefully that promised post all about food! With pics, of course!