First Month of Unemployment

I’ve currently been unemployed now for nearly a month. I may get into the details in another post, but basically the evil empire that bought my division away from Pearson decided to clean house. It feels better that it wasn’t just me and that it was clearly a cost-cutting measure, but after 15 years of loyal service, it stings hard.

Here’s a little something to keep me from wallowing in self pity and the downward spiral that is Job Search.

Morning Pages

I am about 25 days in to a daily practice of Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages and I have become suitably superstitious that the world will collapse if a morning slips without having done them. There are benefits to the mind in doing these pages which I am not sure I have yet felt. By her estimate, that doesn’t really kick in before eight weeks or so.

I pretty much hit the ground running with these the day after I was laid off, so I am taking the crisitunity to change my brain. According to new research into Long COVID, all of our rains have been dealt a severe blow and may have even shrunk, so I need all the help I can get as I round the bend to 53 years of age.

Job Search

…is not going great. EP and I have been chatting about resume formatting in the age of AI candidate vetting and there does seem to be a way to get human eyeballs on yours. ATS (applicant tracking system) is a sort of “SEO for resumes” which is a game I will attempt to play.

I haven’t applied to nearly the number of jobs I probably should have at this point, but in what has become a numbers game, who can say that they have?

WordPress Training

I bought a 40-something hour WP Dev training course on Udemy yesterday and fired up the first two lessons. I’m set up with a local environment for development called Flywheel which is really, REALLY cool.

I am hoping to fill some gaps in my knowledge and discovering a free local environment in which to play and break things has already justified the $15 I paid. I’m super rusty at CSS and JavaScript, so it will be great to flex those muscles.

Brewing

I brewed second batches of two ingredient kits this week. The first is the Duchess clone I brewed and de-glutenized for Jeanna. It needs three days to kettle sour on Lacto before I finish the Boil and ferment. Then I’ll blend it with a gallon I pulled off the first batch to age on wood in the hopes of bringing something resembling the traditional manner in which this Flanders Red is brewed.

The second is a lower ABV wood-aged porter. I did the first batch as a Rye version and a Bourbon version and they turned out amazing. Not sure which direction I’ll go with this batch, but I think the Bourbon was the better of the two.

Since both of these beers required some extra time, I opted to prioritize them over the other two for which I have ingredients. Then I’m pretty much out of supplies and that will set me up for Spring time foraged beers.

Tribe

I need a tribe.

This has plagued me for a while now. As a Scanner Personality it’s tough to “hitch my wagon” to anything for extended periods of time. I just get pulled in too many directions. That’s why I like brewing because it requires a lot of time away. You simply can’t brew all day, every day unless it’s your job.

That said, I have found that when I am entrenched with others around a common hobby or interest, I really push the envelope on what I attempt and pursue. This is further complicated by being a Scanner in that I don’t feel like I am good enough in any one particular thing to justify joining “a club”. Imposter Syndrome has absolutely held me back from joining a Homebrewing club, for example.

As a side note, the job search has really brought a spotlight onto the trouble of being a jack-of-all-trades. Unless my thwarting of the resume gatekeeping system works, my resume triggers no “hooks”. Even LinkedIn is like, “Add some skills if you want this job, yo.”

I was going back and forth with JH about starting a self-hosted social network and even installed one but we hadn’t invited anyone to kick the tires with us. Maybe something like this is the way to go since I will soon be a WP guru. A social network isn’t necessarily the solution, but at least a network of familiar people will allow me to make better connections in certain areas over what complete strangers bring to the table. These two ideas may be completely separate goals.

Blogging

Not sure if I will keep this up, but brain dumping outside of the Morning Pages is helpful too. I’m no Cory Doctorow, but then again who is?