My feelings of general illness subsided this afternoon (finally), only to be replaced with hotness and sweatiness. It reached 88 here today. It's currently 64 (at 4AM), but it's still 84.2 in my Man Cave upstairs. I ran the house fan for a while to circulate a bit of air, but it's still pretty stuffy and muggy.
I was awake, however, after getting some coffee in me, and decided to make the most of that opportunity -- I reopened and overhauled my Monster.com profile, and I set up (at my friend April's urging) a LinkedIn profile. Whatever that is. It looks like a Facebook for professionals, or something. I haven't messed with it a lot yet.
What I can tell you is that I applied for several new teaching positions this afternoon -- two in Florida and a third in California.
Do I want to live in Florida or California? Not really. But there's no teaching jobs listed within two hundred miles of the Omaha area, where Daisy is. None. Not a one. That in itself is really fucking discouraging, but whatever. I have to apply places where there are jobs available and where I would be able to survive on a teaching salary. The best I can do to keep looking would be to keep revising my search parameters, and to possibly dive in a little deeper. I also have to keep in mind that none of these places I've applied for will probably call me back or want an interview with me anyhow, so it's not like I can say "well, I applied for like seven teaching jobs, let's just sit back and watch the job offers come in." No, that's not how it works. If it were, life would be much simpler.
"Sounds like you've had a really productive day, baby," Daisy told me earlier.
"Well, yeah, I suppose," I replied. "For me, anyway."
Daisy works full time, night shifts, and when she's not working she has a moderately active social life with her friends and family. While I do have a Master's degree now (something which she does not), I am basically unemployed, I don't shower for three days at a time, and I think applying for several jobs and updating my Monster.com profile is "productive." It's not. Not compared to what she does on a daily basis. I don't even dress myself or leave the house if I can avoid it -- my fiancee, on the other hand, is a professional businesswoman with a job that's important to her company and to her company's clients. I've never been in this sort of relationship dynamic before. But, suffice to say, she's a lot more productive on a daily basis than I am.
After she went to work this evening, I got back to work again myself. I did more searching, and applied for two more positions -- one around the Boston area and the other around the Pittsburgh area. The latter took more than half an hour to fill out, and it was very in-depth, asking me for references who weren't related to me and who weren't my employers (well, that narrows it down to friends, really, since I don't really have any professional connections); I listed Parker, Suri, and my friend Brian -- it's not like any of them will get called anyhow. In all of the jobs I've applied for over the years, not one of my references has ever been called. And, similarly, when friends have listed me as a reference, nobody has ever called me. Ever. Never ever, not once, never. And I have applied for a lot of jobs over the years, as have my friends. I think listing "references" these days is little more than a formality. Even if I get no callbacks, interviews, or even emails about these positions I've been applying for, at least it feels like I'm moving forward and am trying to find something, because I am. There's just not a lot out there, unfortunately. I mentioned above that there's nothing (nothing listed, anyhow) within two hundred miles of the Omaha area, which is a huge base of operations for many schools and other educational avenues, and that's the truth. Not only are there no teaching jobs open, but there's nothing listed in educational fields period, and nothing listed in writing/editing/etc either. It appears that if I want to find a position in the Omaha area, I may have to start making personal inquiries of colleges and universities there, as well as possibly branch out into other fields that aren't in the little bubble of writing and teaching.
I'm not necessarily worried, though. Really, I'm not. If I find something up there tomorrow, it would take me a maximum of three weeks to have everything packed up, cleaned up, and moved out of this house -- with help from Daisy on her days off and a large, rented moving truck, of course. It wouldn't be fun, but it would be manageable and do-able. Daisy has already done some preliminary research on houses for us in the Omaha area, and she knows the area better than I do -- I trust her on these sorts of things.
Then again, I keep reminding myself that there's only a "rush" of sorts in finding a teaching position for the fall -- anything/everything else doesn't really have a time limit on it, and I can search for those jobs at a more leisurely pace. This is why I've been focused primarily on teaching positions right now. That time limit will basically run out around this time next month, if not beforehand, as not only will teaching positions be filled by then, but there will be no time for relocation/training/etc for wherever I may have applied by then. And, of course, I'm still waiting to hear what the university says about the budget issues for the Engineering English program as well as whether or not I'll be adjuncting in the fall. Though it is possible (read: probable) that all of this stuff may "fall through," for the moment I have to focus on finding teaching positions while I still have the time to do so. Which is what I've been doing, and I think I'm slowly making progress. I may be wrong, but time will tell.
Daisy told me tonight that she appreciates what I'm doing, and that it's a lot of work.
"It's really not," I told her a short while ago. "I only applied for two more jobs."
"That's still a lot," she said. "Job searching is a bitch, but, you're doing it."
She knows this firsthand -- when she was laid off of her last job, she was unemployed for about four months, as you may recall.
"I have to," I said. "I'm doing it for us. You need me to be a provider as well; I just can't mooch off you my whole life."
Successfully or otherwise, I must keep pressing forward. If I can find five or six positions a day to apply for, that's me doing something good, that's me doing something productive. I need to keep feeling productive in the sense that when I wake up for the day -- whenever that may be -- I have a job to do, and that job is finding another set of positions to apply for. That's always my number one priority, and it has to be at least until that "teaching jobs" window closes. After that? Who knows.
Again, there are other things I must do in that time as well -- I still have to do my student loans "exit interview" thing (which I'll probably do today once I get up again) and I do still have to make a short shopping trip to Walmart (which I'll probably do tonight during the overnight hours). I've got my car insurance to pay sometime soon as well -- it expires on the 30th. The temperatures are supposed to be sweltering this week, as I've mentioned in previous posts here. Today's high is supposed to be 94; tomorrow, 97. This is going to make a lot of work in the upstairs of the house fairly difficult. I'm still trying to see how long I can go without turning on the air conditioner, as well, but if it gets terrible this afternoon/evening when I get back up, I'm guessing I'll run it for at least a little while to see if it makes a difference.
That's all for now, though; it's time for me to go to bed, and try to get some sleep while it's still cool enough to do so.
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