Finding Freelance Cred

Since I officially became unemployed, I've been doing a lot of networking. I'm not very good at it, since I'm rather shy, but I'm getting better.

Now, when I meet someone at a business gathering, or even informally, I'm much better at whipping out my card and saying, "If you or anyone you know needs a good freelance writer," have them give me a call. I've gotten a lot of brush-offs, but a few people have looked at it thoughtfully and said, "You know, I sometimes do need a writer," or, "I sometimes hear of things."

I hope these people will give me a call. I may even muster enough courage to call them back and say, "Hi! It's Caroline Schomp, and I'm just calling to check in and see if you have any writing that needs to be done." People tell me that's the way it's done and that I need to be more aggressive about "marketing" myself. I guess so.

I just finished a freelance story for ColoradoBIZ magazine. I hope they like it and print it. It will give me another clip to add to my portfolio. Add that to the newsletter I ghost-wrote for the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association a couple of weeks ago. I can write. But I need to figure out how to sell better.

Need a freelance writer? I'm available. Call me. 303-388-3109. If this doesn't work out, maybe you need to hire me full time!

I've been fooling myself all these years

True confession time: I wasn't a very good student in college. I've been going along all these years thinking I wasn't great, but I wasn't bad, either. Truth be told, I was pretty bad. Don't tell my children.

I'm afraid I didn't take the academic part of my college education very seriously. My apologies, Mom and Dad. I should have paid more attention to my studies than I did to being the consummate party animal, at least during my first two years. Junior and senior year I spent more time working on the college newspaper, and that's what saved my butt.

In my youth-inspired arrogance, I applied to three of the top journalism schools and all three of them turned me down. I can remember sitting in a rapidly-cooling bathtub, contemplating drowning myself over the humiliation. And then I hatched a plan. I wrote an irate letter to the school to which my academically minded boyfriend had been admitted pointing out to them that I had spent much more time working on and running a newspaper than doing school work and that they should admit me based on that criterion. Then I went to my academic advisor and made the same argument to him. Dear Dr. Stevens agreed and volunteered to write a supporting letter to the master's program to which I was seeking admission.

What arrogance! What hubris! What audacity! What luck!

They bought it and I was in.

I was a much better graduate student than undergraduate student. I managed to accrued a grade point average for my master's program slightly north of a 3.0.

I need to remember that I once had such audacity and try to recapture it as I move forward. I'm in close to the last chapter of my working life and I need to be confident, bold and imaginative, just as I was sitting in that bathtub wondering how I could make the future work for myself in a way that I chose.

How Not to Let a Job Applicant Down Gently

Perhaps the most demoralizing thing about looking for a new job is the waiting, especially when you know that you may wait forever and never hear anything.

With unemployment as high as it is right now, employers are being inundated with applications. And behind all of them are individuals ... waiting to hear if they're wanted. Many employers have simply decided to let them wait forever, never acknowledging that they received an application at all. Others let you know that they received an application. Then silence. You may hear weeks or months down the line that they hired someone else. The best you can hope for is a form letter - these days it's an email - saying, "Thanks but no thanks." That's really a gift because it means you can cross that employer off and move on without worry.

The employer who deserves the biggest raspberry of all, in my book, is the one who acknowledged receipt of an application one day and the very next day said there had been such a large number of applicants that he couldn't interview very many people, so I was out of luck. That employer clearly had someone already in mind for the job and was simply going through the motions.

I know that, particularly for government jobs, an opening has to be posted and applications taken, simply to fulfill the letter of the law. But it's a sham and it shouldn't happen. Even when they have someone in mind for a job, they should look over every application to make sure that the person they've pre-selected is really the best person for the job. Give the taxpayers their money's worth.

And all the rest of you employers out there: Put yourselves in our shoes and at least send us the kiss-off email. It may take you some time, but you'll at least have a clear conscience. You do care about having a clear conscience, don't you? Because you never know when it's going to be you out here looking for a job, and waiting.

Mother Was Right: Learn to Type.

Mother made me take typing when I was 11. For six weeks at the beginning of summer I rode my bike to East High School and pounded away at a heavy-duty Underwood manual: asdfghjkl;' space, qwertyuiop space, jfj, kdk, sls. It's come in very handy, and this week I had a real-world lesson in why Mother was right.

Monday morning at the local Workforce Development Center. Workforce Development Center is what they call the place that unemployed people go for skills training, to use the computers and to scour the lists of job opportunities posted by local employers. I was there for computer training.

It might reasonably be argued that someone who keyboards at 70-80 words per minute and who has been using a computer for 20 years might not require training, but I thought I had a need. The business world is all about PCs and I'm a Mac person; Windows intimidated me. The unemployment folks told me that two classes, computer basics and beginning Word (as in Microsoft Word) would give me a rudimentary understanding of what I needed to know.

I presented myself at 8:20 a.m. at the Westside Workforce Development Center, located in the Richard T. Castro Human Services Center, a huge modern complex that houses a clinic, a childcare center and the City of Denver's Human Services offices. As institutional architecture goes, it's pretty nice. The floors were clean and the crowd fairly orderly. Since it's on Denver's west side, the largest number of users are Hispanic.

I check in at a desk by punching your social security number, "Your Social," on a keypad. The lady behind the counter asks, "You're Caroline?" and receiving affirmation, she hands over a pen to put my name on the class list. "Take a seat and someone will call you soon," she says. Less than five minutes later, instructor Al O'Hara starts calling names. There are about a dozen of us who follow him into a windowless classroom filled with Dell Pentium III computers. He asks us again to enter our "Socials," grab a manual and take a seat.

Looking around, I see that most of the class, like me, are in various stages of middle age. Although the information sheet specified "business casual attire," for most everyone except me, that means jeans and a t-shirt. There are a few baseball caps.

"Anybody here use a computer much?" he asks. I raise my hand and he inquires why I'm in his class. I give him my 30 second explanation, which he accepts with a shake of his head. Class begins with an explanation of hardware, software, the parts of a computer and the reasons people use them.

About 30 minutes into the hour he instructs us to open a program on our desktops, "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing." Wow. Shades of seventh grade. Actually it's kind of fun taking the lessons and playing the games. It's clear that over the years I've stopped typing discrete letters and now type words. About 15 minutes into typing practice, Al comes over and asks me, "How fast do you type?" "About 80 words a minutes," I tell him. He shakes his head again. Other members of the class are still hunting and pecking around on their keyboard as Al moves on to the next lessons in the book.

After a short break, we move on and finish up the class with a demonstration and trial of Word. My lack of understanding of Windows notwithstanding, by this time I'm helping some of my classmates when they have questions. The gentleman sitting next to me has stopped just looking over at what I'm doing and started asking me questions. He's flirting a little bit with me.

Class wraps up right at Noon and I sign up for the afternoon Word class, then head out to Federal Blvd. to find something to eat. It's sunny and there are parents with kids playing out in the yard. Lots of folks are smoking and a few have brought lunches and are eating and visiting or reading. The only places I can see are a 7-Eleven down the block and a fast-food joint across the street. I choose the fast-food place and order a semi-healthful burger with lettuce and tomato and a limeade, pull out my book and read while I eye the crowd.

It's easy to see why people are fat. One guy walks away from the counter with four burgers, fries and a large drink. He's a heart attack waiting to happen. Plump mothers with plump children line up to buy their food; this place doesn't offer salads or non-breaded chicken or fish items. My gentleman friend from the class turns up and tells me he wondered where I'd gone after class. He'll be in the Word class, he says.

There's a new teacher, Kim, for the Word class. She's a peroxide blonde with a red shirt and red cowboy boots. Kim is a very engaging personality, but it's clear she hasn't gotten much training in how to teach this class. She's following the manual closely and has to pause to figure out the next steps. We're supposed to be typing in a memo and learning how to make changes. It's stuff like figuring out how to highlight text, cut, copy, paste. I'm really beginning to wonder why I'm here, since there's very little difference between Word for Windows and Word for Mac.

Al strolls in and Kim happily turns over the class to him, while she walks around the room, helping people. They're having trouble typing in the short paragraph and she volunteers to help them type it, just so the class can move on.

Al is moving on to demonstrations of how to justify text, change font styles and sizes and finally, how to use color. The clock is pushing toward four and I'm ready to go. Maybe home to practice Word? Compare my well-loved Mac to the PC I used all day?

If a potential employer asks me how my computer skills are, I won't feel like I'm fibbing if I say they're top-notch. My classmates are not going to be so lucky. Fortunately, you can take the classes at the Workforce Development Center over and over and over; many of those folks will have to, in order to compete for jobs.

Thanks, Mom. You were right about the typing.

It's Less about What You Know than Who You Know Who Knows Someone You Should Know

Networking. I don't think I've ever been very good at it. Not only am I a shy person, I've always been very timid about asking anyone for a favor. And asking someone to spend their valuable time on you is asking them for a favor.

Yes, yes. I've read the stories/blogs/manuals that say how much people like to have others ask them for advice, but in my heart of hearts, I'm still not sure. It's a hump I'm struggling to get over.

I had coffee today with a gentleman who gave me some very valuable advice on how to go about this networking business. In my head I knew what he said about my job search was solid and helpful. My heart was sinking. Head has got to win. I came home and made at least one of the contacts he suggested, and used his name, as he offered. I hope it will bear fruit because then my head will have won one more battle and perhaps provided me the courage to make the next call.

And the next. And the next.

I need to find work. Not necessarily a job, but some work where I can earn not just money but the confidence to climb to the next rung of this very scary unemployment ladder.

Yeah, maybe Dan Rather had it right: "Courage!"

The Disorganization Woman

Today was the day I was going to get organized. Start making a list of networking possibilities. But I haven't done it. I've read the newspapers, Newsweek from cover-to-cover. Went to visit my sister and drank two cups of tea. Visited the Urgent Care for a minor problem and got a prescription. And now the day is almost over.

When you don't have regular work, it's very easy to not have enough time to do it in. Say, WHAT? It's a true statement. Without a structure to one's day, it's easy to waste time. Because there aren't pressing problems to solve, documents to write and meetings to attend, there's nothing to prevent flitting aimlessly along without getting much done. Minor distractions become major trips down paths that branch off endlessly into the day. At the end of the day, one hasn't accomplished much.

I've heard people say that one needs to approach finding a new job like a job. One friend of mine says she actually dressed up every day like she was going out to work and sat at her desk making telephone calls. Now, THAT's self-discipline. It's true she was rewarded with a great job after several weeks at that. I would like to follow that model. Ought to follow that model.

I am afraid of finding a job. There. I said it. After 10 years of setting my own schedule, not wearing dress-up clothes and working at home, the thought of getting up and going to an office every day flat-out terrifies me. I'm afraid that I'm going to be recognized for a fraud. I'm afraid that my skills won't measure up and that my ideas will be found lacking.

Fear is paralyzing and until I find a way to get unparalyzed, I'm afraid I'm doomed to having more days like this.

It's not a pretty prospect.

Welcome to the Stage, Preemptive Unemployment, and My Hatred for Brett Favre

Allow me to preface this post with a word about this blog for the strangers that may come across it in their web wanderings. Originally, this was conceived to be a sort of continuous conversation that takes place between a mother and her son. Obviously the author of the previous two posts is the mother, which makes me undoubtedly the son. Though I am unsure of exactly how she thinks, I would venture that we both delight ourselves in a few of our similarities, just as we decry each other for the rest. To wit, we both have a habit of speaking to poor drivers as if the driver was equipped with a radio piece linked directly into whatever car either of us is driving. The habit is indicative of people with excellent senses of humor, since any condemnation of a bad driver must be by rule humorous enough to enlighten the passengers. the habit is also indicative of insufferable know-it-alls who are convinced that no matter what the endeavor, theirs is the right way. So when I am happy with my mother, I compliment her for having a sophisticated sense of humor, but when I am angry with her, I denounce her as a pompous contrarian, and vice versa. It is with this rationale that we will approach the other's posts, albeit more gently.

I've never had a job to mourn. My employment opportunities up to this point have been marked by how much I hated each job and the unique reasons I had for hating each one. So I cannot pretend that I understand the feeling of losing a "real" job. I do not mourn the fact that I'm no longer a baby-sitter or a gopher at a dealership.

But there is an anxiety shared by today's college students that is, in effect, a doppelganger for the anxiety that members of my mother's generation are feeling. While they elder fret that they will lose their jobs and be rendered obsolete, the younger are perpetually in fear that they will never even get a job. This is preposterous, eventually a person actively seeking employment will receive it, although the time it takes seems to be stretching more each day. But sitting in school that preaches the gospel of pre-professionalism, majoring in a subject that is preparing me for...what? Six years ago, this wouldn't have as large a concern, but the more I peruse news sites the more I feel anxious. I believe that today young people are encouraged more and more to place stipulations on their lives; inflexible plans that have to be rigidly in order to stave any number of calamities. It is imperative for one to do this, or major in that. There are times when I regret not attending a smaller liberal arts college, where the level of doubt surrounding my decision to not plan my life past 25 wouldn't be frowned upon.

As for Brett Farve, I grant that his current form is fantastic and a little inspiring. But I've never seen an athlete that has turned himself into a narcissistic publicity circus so adroitly, nor have I ever seen a media or a public so taken in. Jordan, even with his deftly timed faxes and musings about "seeing if I could still school some of these young guys", never got away with such brazen attention whoring. So, while my mother was rooting for Brett, I was elated when he threw that interception, because it was almost divine in its appropriateness. Favre, forever lauded as a "gunslinger" and someone that just "hucks like he's in high school" and been brought down by football's Murphian nature: what can go wrong, will go wrong, which is why you throw the ball away. In the end my favorite media-created story line was completed, that being the Saints as an allegory for the redemptive city. If you watched the viral cameras of Bourbon street, you say people hugging each other and dancing like the time before a certain hurricane. When the Broncos won their first Super Bowl, the rioting was massive, so I was elated to see the kind of togetherness that optimists always believe is the result of a successful championship run. Brett couldn't have created that.