EXCELlent....

It has been a busy week.

Somehow I have found my way into taking not one but two MS Office classes. One in Word and the other in Excel. And, getting my ducks in a row has been something of a challenge. And an education. The campus at Trade Tech community college feels like a very serious place where there is no room for frills. No public art. No fountains. No trendy cafes. The students are serious...or not. I found the people working in admissions and the cashier, really helpful and friendly. Now if can get my copy of Office 2003, stop gasping having to pay a hundred bucks each for my texts...and if I fix a glitch at my class sign up-----I will be ready to put in the hours a week to become some what competent at what ever it is I am supposed to be doing.

Toastmasters. I liked it. I shall return.

Have gotten a little involved in the doings regarding this scandal of the Motion Picture Country Home dumping their most profoundly vulnerable residents. I don't get shocked, but this one was beyond appalling, and all the jerks behind this awful, awful move was breathtaking in its horribleness. WHAT THE HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE THINKING?

(provided pithy lines for their signage at demonstration before the Oscars. I was too tuckered out to go into Bev Hills. I usually need hours of psyching myself to go anywhere west of Highland.)

The future isn't looking too bleak today. Just pale and murky.

One Positive thing I can do today....

is avoid posting how I am really feeling on this blog.

Awaiting email from Trade Tech so I can sign up for Excel class.

It is raining. California is imploding. What a great time to be looking for job!

Hurrah.

Presidents's Day

It is raining. It is a holiday.

But I gotta do one thing to towards my goal of getting a job.


Hmmm.

I got it. I am visualizing my resume. I am choosing the font and layout. I am thinking about my cover letter.

I am trying like crazy to figure out a way to capsulize thirty years of old career into something less interesting.

Maybe I can teach other people how to dumb down a resume.

And come up with strategies on how to avoid the stink of desperation while balancing that with pointers on how not to appear too cocky. I got it.

You have appear to be very, very interested in listening to what the interviewer is saying and mirror back what they asking. Hey......just like grant writing.

This is fun. I am getting the hang of it already.

How to Make a Plan

I have never been much of a believer in plans.

But they do serve a purpose and they do keep you busy. And they allow one to think in ways where one doesn't go from zero to full panic mode when sorting out what to do next. (while waiting for something to turn up. Wilkins Micawber is my co-pilot.)

List making is a good way to begin. I have decided I will come up with one good idea a day and put it on a list. I called a friend of mine, and she mentioned Toastmasters. All at once, that struck me as an excellent idea. Public speaking has always been a major fear of mine. So I resolved to go to an open meeting up the street from me next Wednesday. EXCELLENT.

Then someone else mentioned it might be a good idea to take class in Excel.

Absolutely! My spreadsheet skills are really modest. And having some kind of certification with Excel would look swell on my modest new resume.

And then if I regularly post on my blog that might give the feeling of moving forward, right?


The entire point of this is that in the past it has been my experience that good ideas come from spitballing all kinds of weird stuff. And maybe being stuck in obsessing on my disastrous first steps, I can focus on packaging and marketing myself in a way where I set my goals a little bit higher.

So. If what I am doing isn't a plan. It is a preplan. Which a very important part of planning. Which sounds like a plan.

Songs for the New Depression

I have always lived on the vanguard of the latest trends. And now as I enter the era of decrepitude, I find myself living the challenges and adventures of survival in New Depression (no really! It is going to be fun, you wait and see!)

Like many of my generation, I pioneered being a contract worker, a working mother, a self employed writer, had my credit go neutron bomb on me, faced and survived foreclosure, divorce and bankruptcy....and just when I thought I had enough to get by before going quietly into that good night...

my nest egg is smashed in the Bush Era Marketplace meltdown. How trendy of me.

I am really not bitter. I am just so excited to live in a constant suspense of insecurity waiting for yet another shoe to drop. And so I will use this humble little blog to chronicle my efforts to find inner peace and contentment in an effort to survive until I can collect social security.

In short: find a job. And maybe if I put enough appropriate tags on my posts, people googling---who are in the same position as I---will find my humble little blog, and participate in my NOT-A-PITY Party. We are looking for solutions here, but we are also entering unexplored territory.

And, at long last, we are on our own.


I was going to be very cool and embed Mother's Little Helper but a quick trip to YouTube found nothing from the Stones, and all the other covers suck.

So let me go out with this introductory posting by saying...

WHAT A DRAG IT IS, GETTING OLD.