My little chatterbox

I've started really listening to my younger son.

Not that I didn't listen to him before now, but I've committed myself to really absorbing his words while 5-year-old logic still reigns supreme.

Tonight he told me he thought he was "Made in China".

About a week ago, he told me that his new shirt was "so new. Well, maybe it's not THAT new. But it's new"

And he keeps raising his hand at the dinner table to ask me whether I, for instance, " 'member the time when there were those girls we met at that cabin and we all went on the boat together. I wanna do that again."

Now, despite the nuggety pearls of impossibly cute wisdom, Stephen has become a running monologue, the human equivalent of white noise. He simply never shuts up until he finally falls asleep.

Woe to his kindergarten teacher. Maybe he'll grow out of it.

Tick tock tick tock

It's getting toward the end of Week Four at the new gig. My boss asked me if I was ready to make it permanent. And I punted. Said I needed more time.

A myriad of factors really have made it hard to judge. (Really!) Factoring in the long commute. The inertia of getting my thinking reoriented after 14 years of TDI. The unusual helplessness of a new gig (Where do I get Post-Its...and other, less trivial questions).

But, in the end, she asked me if I can really be happy doing what I've been doing - in the way the New Gig does it. And honestly truly seriously...I just don't know.

I'd be a fool to walk away from a reliable paycheck. I can make this great. Right? Can't I?

Everybody likes a warm shower

Imagine it: You turn on the water...you climb into the shower - and the water is scalding. You tell yourself the water can't stay this hot for long. You get a little used to it, but ask yourself how long you can take the scalding water until you'll start to burn.

Then, without warming, the water turns frigid.

You wonder: How long will this last? Is this better or worse than the boiling streams?

And you wish that you had some way to regulate the two - just a little - to make yourself a warm and satisfying shower.

This, in essence, has been my first few weeks at the new gig. Frantic one day - playing catch up, scribbling on Post-Its, running from desk to desk, files were due an hour ago...then - the next day - wait and review and archive and wait and think and hope and collect and review and wait.

I know every job has its ebb and flow...but tidal waves and trickles is a new one on me.

Don't let the ink dry

Another week gone...and my email and calendar at the new office still don't work right.

...so many big adjustments...

I'm acclimating to a place that kicks off projects at 4 and has them essentially done by noon the next day. Over and over and over. Soon it will be automatic - it isn't yet.

I always joked that I'm a great food improviser: I can open the fridge and make a tasty dinner from leftover bits, castoffs and sauces. That's how I've been surviving at my new gig: stitch together a phrase from the previous project, mix with a dash of two pieces ago, fold in a healthy dose of boilerplate, and blend.

These patchwork quilts will suffice. For now.

Hit the road, Jack

My new gig started yesterday, and there's so much to adjust to that the jury is definitely still out.

I know that I'll have to stop saying things like, "At my old job, we X, Y and Z". But, so far, I've found it hard to resist the temptation.

Isn't that the healthiest thing for any new relationship?? Unfiltered talk about the ex?

One thing I DO know is that I've been lucky with the commute so far. It's more than double my former commute (there I go again...comparing apples and kiwis) but mostly, it moves. On some level, I tell myself that it's a good thing - I'll get to catch up on my books-on-CD on the 30-mile drive. But when I see the unpredictable patches of brake lights at 7:30 every morning, I'm never really sure they'll let up and the traffic will get going again.

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Treading virtual water

I've ended up with a lot of wasted time these last few weeks - only, I didn't know it was wasted time when I was wasting it.

I wish that meant I cut myself some slack, reveled in my family before they all headed back to school, or generally did things to "get my head right".

But, no.

The time-wasters are my new haunts - where I post my profile, update my resume, look under every rock for job leads. I've blogged a little about my love/hate with Monster.com. For about three days, I couldn't seem to update anything there, even after restarting and re-logging in and anything else. Even now, I'm still not sure why there's a line on my profile to the effect that "Employers cannot view your profile". Great. I'm talking to myself. Not unlike this blog!

Then, this week, it was LinkedIn. I've spent a lot of time there making connections, building a network. I found a gig that sounds perfect for me on their "Jobs" and applied right there through LinkedIn. But unless I miss my guess, only people in my network can see my profile. So the HR person probably can't see my stellar recommendations and carefully crafted list of accomplishments and talents.

It's like this portfolio that I'm finally dedicating myself to. All this work (and all this help I'm getting from friends).... I just hope I get somebody gets to see the portfolio soon.

Surfing down the rabbit holes

I didn't used to be like this...

In college, I could sit in my office studying, reading, plowing through stacks of work. At my job, I was a master-multitasker, floating from meeting to meeting, team to team, task to task. I took notes; I prioritized; I followed up; I did the legwork; I got it done.

When did my brain turn to linguine? I know it's just a temporary linguine, but I feel like I'm a lot of loose strands that don't exactly go anywhere.

When I first got the layoff, I immediately hit Monster and other job sites. I searched, I even started applying. I barely had a resume; I had no portfolio, no samples in conveniently packaged pdf form, no website. So now I'm backing up, breathing deep and laying the groundwork for my future potential jobs. All that angst (which I thought was driving me to action) was all for naught.

Not that that idle angst has left me. Even now, I check email, then go to LinkedIn, then I remember I said I'd send someone my resume, then tweak my resume for the 8th time, then I go to Commarts to change my online resume to match the tweaks, then I scan something because I "need to get going" on my portfolio, then I decide whether the thing is worth scanning or whether I should try to get the actual file from an old friend, then my 5-year-old knocks on the door to ask me for a snack, then I go back to my email to make sure I didn't forget anything ELSE from yesterday (damn this linguine brain!) then I remember I need to check on the deadline for my 401K rollover and isn't the Visa bill due today and and and

...and it's an hour later. And I didn't send my resume. And the item didn't get scanned. And my 5-year-old is still hungry.

I feel like I'm walking up an icy hill encased in Jello.

What else would you expect?

...update on the last post.

Apparently I managed to apply twice for the same position. Once on the Monster site, once on the company's own site.

And, yes friends, I used two (somewhat) different cover letters, since I had to re-create the one that I thought was lost to cyber-nowhere-ville.

I won't wait by the phone...

Curse you, Spinning Pinwheel of Death!

I feel like Charlie Brown on those fateful days when the rainclouds followed only him.

It took me FOUR different attempts to apply for a job that looks good.

I started through Monster, then, when I had keyed in everything under the sun, uploaded the resume, crafted the cover letter, Monster informed me that this employer has its own application site. And, miraculously, none of the content transferred - or was even saved on my Monster profile.

Cue the spinning pinwheel of death...my constant friend over the next few hours on the new job site. Every key stroke, every time I moved on the page: spinning pinwheel of death.

And that was only the first time. Two more aborted attempts before - I think!! – the dang thing went through.

Technology isn't completely at fault - I know what I did wrong on Monster (I think!!!) - but I feel like this is on-the-job-training at the butt-kicking factory.

My grandfather used to say that. Or at least I think so.

"Daddy, let's play baseball"

I definitely know that I'm lucky.

Well, I'm lucky for a lot of reasons, but this time I'm lucky because my house has a separate room we use as an office. So all the resume-updating and portfolio-building and email-sending can happen from one purpose-built location.

But, by the same token, my wife and my kids haven't gotten back to school yet, so the house is a series of distractions. When I was working, I longed for days when I could go to the beach or throw a baseball with the boys or hug my wife any time I wanted to. Now I can do those things, but I can't ever shake the nattering feeling that I should be back at my keyboard, working hard to head toward the Next Big Thing.

That didn't take long

The first bit of blog humor comes courtesy of my wife:

Some good friends brought us to a Dodgers game last night and my wife came back and posted on her Facebook page that "you know you've been a wife and mother for a long time when you start wondering who washes the Dodger uniforms and what is their secret to getting all the dirt and grass stains out!"

A quick reaction

I told a friend of ours that I had started a blog.

"Is it funny?" she asked.

"Not yet," I replied.

It'll get there, I know. Life will return back to some semblance of normal, although probably a different normal than my normal normal. (Got that?)

I imagine that this'll be the toughest time. Funny how we never truly know how we'll react to a crisis until it happens. Bloody knee? No problem. I pull out the gauze and ointments and calmly take care of my panicky son. But a pink slip? It's really bugging me right now, despite my optimistic outlook in the first few days after it happened. (My wife KNEW that was too good to be true.)

Things are tough all over

One of the silver linings for me about this lay-off was the opportunity to reconnect with friends and colleagues. When you're plugging away at your 9 to 5 (or 9:30 to whatever...), you don't always stay in touch. So I've started making calls, sending emails, updating my LinkedIn profile and checking my Facebook friends - trying to network among the peeps before casting the net wider.

Some of the feelers went out just to see who was where - who's still in LA, who's happy, who's makin' it, and who's not. "Are you still selling real estate in Palm Springs"... "Congrats on your new gig"... "How are the kids". But - truth be told - some of those feelers did go out to see what chances there might be for a little work.

And there, the picture is pretty grim. No surprise - I am a victim of the recession, the same recession that's causing down-sizing and delayed spending and uncertainty. But I may not have been completely prepared for what I'm hearing. I'll adapt - I always do. But it sucks right now.

My friend Michael may've put it best: "We need a seminar on 'Business and Surviving the Recession: What the F$%^"

Every story has a beginning

..and this one starts with an ending.

After 14 years, my Designory career is over. Client cutbacks + smaller budgets + recession + lousy prospects for automotive sales = Fewer people on staff to market = Layoffs.

But, at least for today, I look at it as a positive. Ironically, I'll probably write more, now that I have some time to pursue it.

Funny bit of irony: One of the first things I did was to take the classic "Career Planner Quiz". The results? A career that "allows (me) to be creative.... thinking of new ideas and strategies that can have a broad range of applications, including Writer/Editor, Teacher, Strategic Planner, Consulting, Marketing, Communications, Research and Development". Always nice when The Universe winks at you to tell you that you're barking up the right tree.