Fear and Loathing on Main Street

It’s no secret that I’ve been search­ing for a job (or a con­tract, I’m not picky at the moment) for a while now. I’ve had lots of first inter­views, nearly as many sec­ond inter­views, and even a few third inter­views. Noth­ing has con­nected yet. For one rea­son or another, the oppor­tu­nity has not borne fruit.  Up until now, I was expect­ing it to be just a mat­ter of time, patience and per­se­ver­ance. This morn­ing, I’m not so sure.

Up until now, I thought that the dis­as­trous down­ward mar­ket spi­ral in the US (and now in Asia and Europe) wouldn’t have a direct impact on us, at least not for a while, and that we would be able to get to safety before the shock wave hit the Cana­dian econ­omy. How­ever, this morn­ing I got an email from a com­pany I was sup­posed to be inter­view­ing with this after­noon. They are US-based com­pany, so that should be a clue. They can­celed the inter­view, and the rea­son is that they are sus­pend­ing all new con­tracts until fur­ther notice.  So it’s been a rough day, as Pam also got word that she didn’t get a con­tract that she was bid­ding on.

While I’m try­ing not to dwell on doom and gloom sce­nar­ios, I have to admit that I’m get­ting pretty ner­vous, not want­ing to be pound­ing the pave­ment for job in a reces­sion with high unem­ploy­ment after hav­ing been out of work for sev­eral months already.  As some­one who always tries to antic­i­pate the worst (Hey, we left the US partly because I saw a melt-down like this on the hori­zon), I’m deter­mined to be real­is­tic and always look ahead, but some­times real­ism and pes­simism look awfully similar.

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By David Drucker | Filed in Life | October 8, 2008 1:52 pm

5 Comments to “Fear and Loathing on Main Street”

  1. AvatarRaul
    Posted: Oct 8th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
    1

    Stay pos­i­tive, David. As some­one who is also look­ing for work, I know well how you feel. Fin­gers crossed! :)

  2. AvatarJonathon Narvey
    Posted: Oct 8th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
    2

    You will get through this. Notwith­stand­ing that Canada is feel­ing the effects of the melt­down to our south, I still believe your oppor­tu­ni­ties are bet­ter here for now.

    I just real­ized, I’m call­ing Canada the land of oppor­tu­nity, com­pared to the USA. Wow. Times have changed. Hope­fully, Obama can do SOMETHING about this trainwreck.
  3. AvatarMonica Hamburg
    Posted: Oct 8th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
    3

    Would you feel it tacky if we tried to do some social media cam­paign­ing for you — if OK, is there a page with your resume that we can link to and tweet/facebook post that our bril­liant charm­ing friend is look­ing for work?

    P.S. It sucks and is ABSURD that some­one with your expe­ri­ence and per­son­al­ity should be hav­ing a dif­fi­cult time find­ing work.
  4. AvatarDavid Drucker
    Posted: Oct 8th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
    4
    Author Comment

    Thanks, guys (I’d say ‘my friends’, but that sounds too much like John McCain these days).

    Mon­ica, I have to admit that your idea does have a cer­tain chutz­pah attrac­tion to it. Maybe we can talk about this in terms of an ad cam­paign. I’m kind of amazed myself that it’s taken this long for me to con­nect with some­thing, but maybe it will take more than a resume and tra­di­tional net­work­ing to make this happen.
  5. AvatarMonica Hamburg
    Posted: Oct 8th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
    5

    I’ve seen peo­ple spon­sor the http://www.helpareporter.com/ email newslet­ter “Bob Bob­son is spon­sor­ing this edi­tion. Bob Bob­son is a Media Spe­cial­ist with exper­tise in…” Now that’s chutz­pah. You don’t nec­es­sar­ily have to do that. Per­haps we can just Tweet etc. :)

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