If we were having coffee, we’d be talking about the same thing everybody else is talking about: it’s 2016!  What have you been doing with your life for the last couple of weeks?  What do you want to do with your life next year?

I’m not super interested right now in looking back at 2015.  I blogged every single day last year, most days more than once; feel free to start with January 1 and work your way through.  The year had high points and low points much like any other and was, I think, on balance more high than low despite the chaos of the last few months while I’ve been on medical leave.

I don’t do resolutions.  Resolutions happen in January and are abandoned by February.  However, if you ask me what my current goals are in life and I don’t have any, it means I’m probably deeply depressed.  I always have a couple of goals that I’m working on; right now is no exception.  Most of them are related to my writing and I’ve already discussed.  The rest, right now, are job-related.

I want a new job.  Preferably soon.  Real soon.  I’ve put a hold on stressing out about it over the holidays; there was no point, as the holidays are a deeply bad time to be unemployed.  You have to be unemployed through the whole several weeks; all the folks with job openings, on the other hand, are looking at piles of resumes and going “Yeah, we’ll deal with that when we get back.”

(The exception that proves the rule: my brother recently moved to Illinois to be with his fiancee, and has had some trouble finding work too.  He had a series of interviews last week in rapid succession, and when the third interview in three days was “go downtown, talk to this person, and then do the paperwork for your background check” I told him he had the job and to not worry about it.  Why?  Because they pulled in teachers over winter break to interview him, and they did three interviews in three days, and that means they’re in a huge damn hurry to get the job filled.  I was right.  Most of the jobs I’m applying for are not jobs that are going to lead to death or dishonor if they’re not filled this week.)

Well, at any rate, tomorrow’s Monday, so everybody will be back.  My suspicion is that every office on Earth will start with a horrible three-hour meeting and then 80% of the people at work will spend the rest of the day looking around their desks, bleary-eyed, and trying to remember their passwords, and that therefore the earliest any “Hey, come interview with us!” phone calls could possibly happen will be Tuesday.

I am desperately hoping to get a phone call on Tuesday, especially for one particular job that I applied for the week of Thanksgiving and was explicitly told not to hold my breath about until after New Year’s.  We’ll see, I guess.

At any rate, I’m going insane over here and I need a new job.  So that’s goal one, even before any writing stuff happens: get a damn job.

I kinda feel like that’s enough for right now.  How about you?  What are you working on right now?