Coming to You From Somewhere Between Where I Was and Where I Will Be...

I never thought I was a country girl. I don't listen to country music. I don't drive a pick-up. I don't own cowboy boots. I have no desire to do any of that. (well, maybe the boots... depending on where I end up.)

Hmm...maybe not!

For those of you who are new here, I recently relocated to the Midwest from the East Coast. I'm at my parents' house, and I know their world, but for the moment I'm in the thick of it.

This morning a neighbor arrived looking for someone to spot him while he cut limbs from trees that were dragging on his garage roof. That would be me. Magnum (my dad's amazing dog who taught me that I can love dogs) accompanied me. Two other neighborhood dogs showed up. I know their names. Does this happen anywhere but the country? Then I walked Magnum through the woods and around the pond before going home and getting going on my job search.

I've been here a week. My recent, long-awaited, meeting with Brett (click the link if you missed it) and a spontaneous follow-up day together on Cinco de Mayo. (Joy!) has overshadowed the fact that I am jobless for the moment.

I did connect last week with the few contacts I had out here about possible job opportunities, only to find that at this time there is nothing available, but I did get information on when these places would be hiring again...not soon enough.

Yeah, my resume made
this much sense.

I started working on updating my resume, only to find that the only copy I had with me was on PDF, so I had to print it out and re-do the whole thing. Not a bad idea, since it needed reformatting and ...minimizing (for lack of a better word).


This week, I am full-bore hunting down new leads and perfecting a beautiful, concise yet thorough resume. Let me try to take you through my day today:

I had decided that, before perfecting the resume, it would be a good idea to see exactly what kind of jobs I was going to be shooting for out here. The first, easiest thing was to check out the State jobs site. Yeah. State of Indiana a) has nothing available in my field, and b) pays less than the State of Delaware. I really don't want to have two jobs again!

There is a city in the region that has been sticking in my head as the area for me to be - to be near enough for a quick visit to my parents without being up their nose all the time. So my next, easiest thing, was to check out that city's website and see what they might have. Yeah. Nothing.

Have you ever been spelunking? Or not even spelunking, but just in a cave...like as a tourist or something. They seem to be massive tunnels that you follow deeper and deeper, with occasional openings into big open areas.


Cathedral Caverns. It's big, dudes!

Well, suddenly I was struck by a sense that I was in a big cave, but I couldn't find the opening, because it was like being in the middle of the cavern...far from any wall that could lead me to the way out. It was kind of a dark sensation for the middle of the day. See, this is weird for me. I've never been completely out of work. (Well okay, for about a week and a half once. Hey...huh...I've just reached that. Too bad I didn't think of that this morning when I was in the cave!)

I googled "Yoda and Luke Skywalker".
Google, this is a FAIL! BIG-TIME!

Did I mention that I had on Empire Strikes Back as background while online? Yeah. I'm in the country, and it was a beautiful day and the birds were singing in so many languages it was actually distracting. I know ESB so well that it can fade into the background. So I let it.

And then it got to that scene where Luke is training with Yoda and he can't do what's requested so being the pouty snot he is he says "You want the impossible!" to Yoda, who says right back, "Always with you it cannot be done."

Well, that Star Wars dose of reality really helped. "Try not! Do, or do not: there is no try!" Amen, Yoda. Amen. In that same vein I decided that all the "no"s I was coming across were like a Jedi mind trick: "These aren't the jobs you're looking for." I know. I'm such a nerd. But it helped!

I spent the rest of the afternoon finishing what I hope is the final version of my resume. GEEZ! Sometimes I think I'm a perfectionist. Hopefully it's perfect for whatever job I find.