Unemployment

Today marks the one-month anniversary of my unemployment. I’m still angry about that, but am working diligently to rectify the problem.

Each day I spend a few hours online, searching the jobsites and sending out applications to anything that looks promising. To date, I’ve contacted 36 companies – some of them had positions listed on the job boards, but most I just contacted “cold”.

Occasionally, I get an actual interview out of the contact. Four companies have had me come in to talk with them so far. Three of them ended up saying that I just wasn’t what they were looking for; I’m holding out hope for the last one, though. The job I applied to sounds perfect for me, and the people giving the interview looked like they were impressed with me.

It is a part-time position, however. That’s not exactly what I want, but I think I can work with it. The zoo has a part-time position available also (as a Naturalist, which is what I do anyway – might as well get paid for it) so I could juggle the two jobs simultaneously and make ends meet that way. Once the zoo job ends in September, I could perhaps convince the other part-time job to switch over to full-time, or could search for another part-time one elsewhere.

I’ve had a lot of help from friends and family. Evelyn, a former coworker from KPB, invited me to attend a NAWIC meeting (National Association of Women in Construction) which resulted in several leads and even an interview. Brian, another former coworker from KPB, tried very hard to get me in to the company he now works for – and I’m still holding on to a shred of hope that it might actually happen. Mother scours the papers for me each day, forwarding any promising leads she finds and giving me lots of options to think about.

Thankfully I am still eligible for unemployment money from the government, and also thankfully that amount has been raised since the last time I was on it. That will cover all my living expenses, with the mortgage being taken care of by the severance pay from Nvision.

I’m still thinking about the possibility of getting a roommate, although my first choice fell through. The zoo hired a new zookeeper who moved in from Arizona. She had thought she would rent from me, but decided that her dog would not enjoy sharing a house with two cats.

Now I’m looking in to perhaps getting the summer interns as roommates. I’ve even been asked if I’d consider letting two of them stay here. I could get bunk beds in my spare room, I suppose. Since they’d be summer interns, I would only have to deal with them for 3-4 months. Time enough to get on my own two feet by then…