The Times, They Are A Changin'... and so is this blog.

NOTE: The text of this article was originally set to publish September 30^th, but I couldn't publicly announce a few things until after a phone call I had just last night. I've changed some dates and updated a few events to reflect the change in publication date, but this is the article that should have gone here. The last few weeks have been incredibly busy for me, but I've managed to keep to my rigorous 5-day a week publication schedule here. This past weekend, I took the Foreign Service Officer Test, and next week I recertify to return to work with troubled kids in a therapeutic day school. I will be shortly rejoining the workforce, while I go through the process of trying to get a government job. This would normally be the place where I announce that this blog will be shuttering its doors and joining the many, many sites that don't make it a full year once life gets in the way. I promised way back here that I wouldn't be doing that, and I meant it. My studies and responsibilities have limited my time to read and comment on other blogs, and for that, I'd like to apologize to longtime supporters and faithful readers. I hope to make some time real soon, but things are going to get worse before they get better.

My XBox Live Avatar, inpiration for this site's FavIcon.

I have to make a few changes. For one, I'll be swapping to a different template for the blog to make it look a little different. Bloggers who have played with the new "Dynamic Views" have a pretty good idea of what this page will look like in the near future. The title "Unemployed Geek" will be kind of inaccurate by next week, so I'll be keeping "What's Next?" but changing the rest shortly, and I'm open to suggestions, though I'll muddle through if I don't get anything that really grabs me. I also will have to adjust my self-imposed publication schedule, as five days a week while holding down a day job and preparing to transition to a new career isn't realistic. I've had a few articles where I felt I kind of "phoned it in," and I don't want that dip in quality to become the new norm. I'll be shooting for Monday-Wednesday-Friday as of 10/10 and will see how that works, and if I absolutely have to, I'll move instead to Tuesday/Thursday, but I'd like to avoid that if I can.

I started this blog on a very personal note, nearly all text, before I figured out that pictures break up walls of words nicely and that my writing was at its best when it was about a subject with wider appeal than...well, me. In the last seven months I've had two guest posters, 165 articles and almost 100,000 pageviews, and I learned a lot from working on a project that was originally something I thought no one would read. I started it to, as the URL says, "Get my head on straight" and maintain some sort of schedule and preserve my sanity while figuring out what to do next. This post feels like a goodbye, and in a way, it is. I've figured out what I want to do, I've started doing it, and this blog has to change along with me if I intend to make good on my promise to keep doing it. I've also recently started putting up shorter articles as a writer over at Technorati.com (my first published one is here,) but writing for another site doesn't affect this blog in any significant way. Eventually, I plan to add a custom domain address, but continue to host and publish through Blogger.

I imagine the site will look something like this sometime next week.

Starting over this coming weekend, October 8-9, I'll start rolling out visual changes to the blog. (Safety Tip, this site looks weird in a few of the dynamic views, but I think it looks AWESOME in "Magazine".) I may not officially change the title until I go in for my first day of gainful employment to give myself the longest possible time to get it right. I also will likely do something I haven't done at all since starting this site back in February. I may take a week off. Then, content-wise, we're back to business as usual with tabletop roleplaying, board games, video gaming, fantasy novels, comic book, tech and science fiction/fantasy/horror TV and film reviews all turning up, just a few less times per week. To not risk offending anyone by leaving them out, I won't be too specific in my thanks, but I'd like to thank everyone who has turned up to read this blog since the start, and hope you'll bear with me as things shake up a bit.

Sincerely,

Josh "Docstout" Brown – The Unemployed Geek, October 2011.

The current "classic" layout for the site, for posterity. Let me know if you prefer this to the
slick site redesign. It may not change anything, but I'd like to know.

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From the Trenches: The Unemployment Office and Finding Direction.

Getting a letter from the Department of Employment Security is never fun. They don't write you ever to tell you “Everything's going fine, just checking in,” or “Surprise! You have a job now!” Usually, every envelope from that office contains a week's worth of stress and anxiety. Frequently, the letters themselves are sufficiently panic-inducing, as they seem to be cobbled together automatically by a computer cut and pasting various sections that seem relevant onto a single page, even if the various sections contradict one another. If you need information, the letters direct you to call your local office for more information. This is a bad joke told by someone with a particularly dark sense of humor. For my local office, at least, you'll navigate an automated menu, sit on hold for 15 minutes, hear the phone ring, and then get a voicemail box after 5 rings. This is, of course, assuming the system doesn't just hang up on you mid-call.

I think I'd be happier waiting in lines like this if there were coffee and donuts, and if men still wore cool hats.

Recently, I got one of these letters. It was filled with scary sounding words and cryptic phrases. I'm the sort of person who can puzzle out most legal documents, I've had to decipher written communication from people with terrible penmanship, a limited grasp of language, even mental and cognitive deficiencies which make effective written communication difficult. I pride myself on being able to discern the meaning of all these esoteric and confusing pages of text. The letter I got made no sense. In one sentence it states that it has been found that I haven't worked since August of last year. Further down, it shows my earnings from wages for 4^th Quarter 2010 and 1^st Quarter 2011. It tells me I am not eligible for benefits, further down it says that a new benefit claim has been automatically filed on my behalf, and yet further it tells me how much I can receive, but only if I contact the local office RIGHT AWAY.

Any hope of assistance online or via phone is foolishness, so I have to prepare to physically go down to the local office. I've been down there once before when a clerical error told the State that I'd never worked at my last job, so I was dreading the process. The office is crowded, dirty, filled with people who are stressed out, worried and confused. Not a single person in that building, staff included, seems pleased to be there. The atmosphere is one of desperation, shame, sadness, a resignation to the idea that things are bad and don't seem to be improving any time soon. I was prepared for a long wait, a confusing time explaining what is going on without really understanding it myself, and possibly wondering where any money is coming from in a few weeks. I looked around the office, saw all the other people there, many seemed vaguely uncomfortable, as though they felt guilty at anyone, even someone else going through a rough patch, seeing them there.

Not a fun door. Even less fun than the DMV, but it beats starving.

I am pleased to report that this particular story had a good resolution for me. The wait was shorter than I'd feared (meaning I overpaid for parking) and I explained my situation to one of the most competent and friendly people I've ever met dealing with this agency. Several moments on the computer, and I was told: “You're all set.” My eyes bulged from their sockets in surprise. “There will be a wait week where no benefits will be paid, but after that, you'll receive more.” Turns out, the cryptic letter was based on something called a benefits year, where the government has to recalculate benefits based on a more recent period of wages. If you made more in the more recent period (as I had,) you've paid more into the system, so they have to pay more out to match. I left the office with the weight of the world lifted from my shoulders.

In the time I've been out of work, I've applied for hundreds of positions. I've tried every field I've had experience in, every related field I could think of, and had friends and family keeping an eye out and an ear to the ground. I've tried to get in to new fields such as private investigation, process serving and warrants. I've written in for jobs I knew I wasn't qualified for, and others I knew I was overqualified for. The only up-side to the complete lack of response has been that I haven't had to waste a ton of expensive fuel to run the car out and about. My diverse set of experiences and skills in some cases works against me, and I've been searching for that one position that uses all of them and I think I may have found it, but getting this job will be the most difficult thing I've ever attempted.

With a background in improvisational acting, convention management, employee supervision and training and crisis intervention, it seems like there isn't a single job that could possibly use all those skills. I've also taken between one and three years training in the following languages: Spanish, Japanese, German, French and Russian. I can barely speak a word of any of them having not used them in nearly a decade, but I pick up foreign tongues quickly. I wish I'd thought of this sooner. Yesterday, I registered for the exam for the US State Department's Foreign Service Office – Public Diplomacy Division. I am going to start the process to become a diplomat for the United States. I've read a lot about the qualities they look for in a candidate, and they describe me nearly to the letter.

I don't think I can count decades playing this game as "relevant experience,"
but damned if I won't use skills practiced whilst playing.

I have no illusions about how difficult this will be. This is going to be the ultimate test of everything I think I'm good at, and that is scary. I will not be surprised if even after weeks of preparation that I find that I'm not ready. Jobs in the Foreign Service tend to attract a lot of people just like me, well-read in a lot of areas, fairly bright and personable, with a wide range of skills and talents. The competition for a spot isn't against a pack of directionless young folks looking for their first job, some of the people I'll be up against will have degrees in political science, sociology or economics. I fully expect to be smeared on my limited proficiency with the languages I've studied. I need to brush up on US policy, economics, current events, terms and practices concerning media... I've read some sample test questions and tips on surviving essays and oral interviews, and what I've seen terrifies me.

However, even if I don't make it the first time around, this is what I want to do. This might answer a part of the question I've posed to myself from the first day I started this blog back in February. “What do I want to be?” "What's Next?"  It took me almost six months to figure it out, now I have just under two more to prepare for my first opportunity to make the cut. If I could coast through completely on by verbal and written communication skills (which are decent,) it wouldn't be so scary. That's not enough. I have to review all my training materials for Verbal Judo, which is the program that got me through working with troubled kids and generating voluntary compliance with words. I have a LOT of reading and studying to do. Best get to it.

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A Ship In Search of a Rudder

One of the reasons I started this project was to document my search for a new direction. I've become increasingly disillusioned with what most people have resigned themselves to accept as "things the way they are." Getting up and going through a pointless routine 5 days a week to make someone else a pile of money, and the bulk of your day is spent (even if you have a necessary and fulfilling job) doing small tasks that are completely meaningless, aside from the fact that if they are not accomplished, you cannot prove that you have done your job.

I know. That's the way the system works. (If it works.) The idea is, you participate in society, follow its rules and jump through its hoops and are rewarded with a stable place in that society. Thing is, as jobs get outsourced or digitized, that "stable place"... isn't.

I'm not saying that I'm going to subscribe to the unrealistic notion of "breaking the chains of wage slavery" or anything like it. Maybe I just need my next career to be interesting enough that I don't think about it so much.

I tried performing, both in garage bands and (as mentioned in earlier posts) as an actor and comedian. To be brutally honest with myself though, I probably enjoyed more success than my level of effort warranted, and stopped trying when any notions of a career weren't moving as fast as I'd hoped. I guess maybe it is time to give it another shot, not looking for fame and fortune, but just hoping to become a working actor.

That dream, of actually making a living as a performer, sounds like something different from the daily grind. I've contemplated other careers, but escaping that feeling of "I do this because if I stop, my family suffers, even though I've grown to resent it," is vital.

Maybe a few auditions here and there while looking for whatever else there might be out there that fits the bill.

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Blog Gadgets

Once More, From the Top

Getting my head on straight was harder than I thought it'd be.

When I was called into the office, it was a surprise. I had no idea that it was even a possibility, but when I saw my boss's boss... his very friendly but somehow sad demeanor, almost apologetic, and then the woman from HR, I knew.

The last time I'd been in this situation, I put up a very good, very professional front, but I was devastated inside. Thirty-four years old, a married man, choking back tears. But not this time. The same two people, same office, same reason. I was getting laid off. Not because my performance wasn't exemplary. (It was.) Not because I wasn't well liked or respected for how I did my job. (I was.) I was getting laid off for the second time in six months because three year's senority wasn't enough, and cuts needed to be made. I congratulated myself on how well I was handling it this time. I wasn't upset, just listened and asked appropriate questions and calmly discussed my options, resolving to call once I'd made a decision. The two sympathetic people in the office thanked me again for my astounding professionalism and service, given the circumstances, and I collected my belongings and left.

I was pretty sure that I wouldn't be coming back.

This is where it started, and I don't know where it is going. I write about a situation that a lot of people have found themselves in lately. At a crossroads, trying to figure out "What the hell do I do with my life from here on out?" "How do I keep from feeling worthless?" "Can I really balance the desire to not take another job I'll hate just because it is there against the possibility of becoming unemployable?"

I've been thinking a lot about those questions and others. I'm going to write a little bit about where this is all taking me. It won't be all gloom and doom. It won't be all sunshine and roses, either.

It'll be me, writing even if no one is reading, about a 34 year old man, suddenly unemployed and dealing with it. Maybe writing about it will help me get my head on straight.

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