A-Hunting I Will Go

It’s official. I’m job-hunting.

Not that I haven’t been job-hunting prior to this announcement when in fact I have been job-hunting for quite some time now.

It’s not that I’m unhappy at my current job. I’m not. I love the work, I like the people I work with, and I love that I’m on a schedule that gives me Fridays off.

It’s just that, in the next two years, the company is going to shed between 700 and 1,000 people. It’s just that I’m a subcontractor, and the company has made it clear that unless subcontractors can poop golden eggs for the company, we’ll be the first to go, and without the little tinfoil handshake the company folks are getting.

Why are they laying people off? Some work is done, the contract is up in 2012 and they’re a business, not a social welfare agency. I understand that. I remain bitter (a bit) about the go-go attitude the company has whenever we have meetings – Hey! Everybody’s getting bonuses! Everyone’s getting safety money because of the safe way we’re doing our work safely! Except for subconctractors who, of course, contribute to the work and the overall safe safetyness but don’t get the bonuses because, well, you’re not really company employees are you? Yeah. I get the concept.

So if you know of anyone out there looking to hire a slightly cynical and pessimistic writer with ten years’ experience in journalism and five in technical writing, let me know. I’ve got a BA in journalism and mass communication and a MS in English with an emphasis on technical writing.

I am doing what I can, of course. Just signed a contract yesterday to teach a foundations English class at BYU-Idaho starting in January – providing they have enough takers and can fill my slot this time around. I’m also researching (slowly) grant opportunities for the local school district in the hopes of adding successful grant writing to my resume. And I’m signing up as a technical/creative writer at oDesk, to see if I can get into the freelance biz which is just as crowded as Homer Simpson made the jeans market out to be when Marge became a cop. And I’ve got that fantasy novel manuscript. I need to start writing and sending out some query letters. And the work at Uncharted continues unabated.

Incredibly as well I’m going to take on a positive attitude in all this. Layoffs don’t start until January, so we’ve got at least two months in which there are no real pressures. And we’ll see what happens then. Three rounds of layoffs in 2011. Pity is that if I can hang on until the end of May, I’ll get another 40 hours of vacation time from my employer. We’ll see what happens.

Maybe it'll be easier just to kill da wabbit.

And it doesn’t even bother me that potential employers might stumble across this blog and read my little bitterness here – because, outshining the bitterness, I hope, is a person working hard to cope with what life dishes out in a way that keeps bread on the table and a roof over our heads. Take that, Karl Marx.