Arglebargle graaakh argh wait what BLAH

On May 10, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Work27 Comments

Ugh.

I had a job interview today, for a job I applied for on Sunday and got called about on Monday. I walked in not entirely sure I was interested, became sure I was interested maybe fifteen minutes in, and then the interview was over at the twenty-five minute mark. I am reasonably certain it wasn’t a fast interview because they hated me, although I feel like I really bollixed one of the questions. I think the owner is just a quick-decision sort of guy. Hopefully I made a good impression; I think I came off better with the second person I talked to than the first. I’ll know by next week, apparently.

The question I screwed up? What is your greatest weakness, which has gotta be fucking Interview 101, and which I stammered at for longer than I like before joking that my greatest weakness was being crap at deciding what my weaknesses were and then mumbling something slightly more useful. Like, even sitting here now, damn near two hours later, I still don’t know what the good answer is to that. I want to call the guy and ask if we can do the interview over only he asks any other questions other than those two.

My greatest strength is that I’m good at shit. Like, this shit here, that you want someone to do? I’m good at that shit. Give me some money so that I can do that shit and I’ll do that shit for you.

This may be why I don’t have a job yet.

Sigh.

Oh right this needs a title

On March 30, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy3 Comments

So far, Spring Break has consisted of a lot of Transformers cartoons interspersed with occasional attempts to teach the boy to read and preparing a neverending succession of grilled cheese sandwiches. He’s actually getting pretty decent with a list of basic sight words; we’ll see if I can get him up to Dostoyevsky in the week and a half remaining before school starts again. Probably not, but goals are a good thing.

Outside of that and stressing the fuck out about the job market, though, there’s not been much else. I’m growing rather unpleasantly tired of my own bullshit, and am in that stage of bored where I can think of a dozen things I ought to be doing (not least among which would be getting something done on the A to Z challenge, which starts Friday) but being so unmotivated that I’m simply noting that they’re still out there and moving on with continuing to do not a whole lot. Last year my A to Z posts were completely done by now. I have them all scheduled but not a single one written yet.

I am sure that this is at least as exciting to read about as it is to live through.

I have just noticed that the keyboard in that picture is facing the wrong way, and it’s really getting on my nerves.

…yeah, that’s what I’ve got. Gonna take the boy to the comic shop and maybe try to get a short story finished this afternoon. We’ll see.

In which the good news isn’t

On March 26, 2016March 26, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Work7 Comments

So, in theory, I got offered a job last Wednesday, which ought to be good news. I had a company contact me out of the blue regarding a resume that I had posted on a job site and asking for me to come in and do an interview. The actual job itself wasn’t something I might have gone for on my own– sales, generically– but I suspected I could be good at it, and screw it, job.

Two interviews and some new clothes later, I actually got offered a position, asked for a couple of days to discuss it with my wife, and then found myself in the odd position of realizing that I need to have my scam filters up while interviewing for a job. Long story short: the position pays on pure commission, which is bad enough (I have had one commission job in my life, which I quit after my second shift by simply not showing up for my third) but the way the commissions are determined is… we’ll say shifty.

When the guy interviewing you says, during the second interview, “It’s like a pyramid. Not a pyramid scheme, but a pyramid!” it should throw up some red flags. And it did, but they didn’t really fully register until I got home and my wife looked up the company on some web job boards. And at that point… yeah. No.

So I gotta email this guy tonight or tomorrow and turn down an at-least-in-theory paying job when I haven’t been to work since October, which chaps my ass something fierce to have to do, but I should never have to use the phrase “at least in theory” when referring to the paying part of a job, and for this job I kinda do.

So, yeah. Still doing this: anybody wanna hire me? I’m good at stuff!

Back soon, I promise

On March 23, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized4 Comments

Regular, non-exhausted, non-photographic business as usual will resume tomorrow. Until then: I was just offered a job, and I have a big decision to make.

If I wasn’t afraid

On February 22, 2016February 22, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Work5 Comments

A few variations of the hashtag were floating around Twitter this weekend: what would you do if you weren’t afraid?

It’s an interesting question, and it’s been rolling around in my head for a few days, because it’s one of those things that I don’t really think Twitter is well-equipped to discuss.

Here’s what I’ve realized: on the macro level, at least, I’m already doing what I would be doing if I wasn’t afraid.

I’m writing. Right now being a writer is my job. We just started filling out financial aid paperwork for next year at Hogwarts, and one of the first things it asks is the father’s occupation. There’s actually a box to click on to indicate unemployed. I went back and forth with my wife for a couple of minutes and then typed “Self-Employed (Author)” in the box.

I did not click “Unemployed.” I want, ultimately, to be a full-time writer. And right now, that’s what I am.

Here is the punchline, of course: getting what I want is terrifying, and if I was offered a stable full-time job tomorrow I would take it in a second. Because doing exactly what I would do if I had no fear is not, at the moment, contributing to my family’s well-being at all, unless you count the sizable tax refund we’re getting at least partially because I lost so much money playing at author last year.

So: I’m doing what I would be doing if I wasn’t afraid. And I am afraid. And it gets worse every time I do a large-scale job search (several times a week) and it gets worse every time I apply for a job that I’m perfectly capable of doing well and don’t even get an interview.

(Side note: I can understand asking for a college degree in a specific field if the job is for a 22-year-old. I’m pushing 40. I hate to break it to y’all but my college degree from eighteen years ago really doesn’t predict much about what I’m good at now.)

But anyway. What would I do different?

I can only think of a few things, really. I’d look more closely into advertising. I haven’t shelled out money for, say, BookBub promotions or Kirkus reviews because I literally cannot afford to guess on these things. I need to know that I’m going to be making back more than I’m shelling out or I can’t do it. Because I’ve got a decent financial cushion right now, but I cannot afford to spend any of it frivolously because it has to last until I have more money coming in. And thus far there has been nothing to give me any encouragement on the job front.

So, yeah: If I wasn’t afraid, I’d put more money into putting my books in front of the faces of other people, and I’d be more willing to experiment if I had a chance to do that. If I wasn’t afraid, I’d probably have a membership at the Y, since I have time to swim again– and I don’t have, because the $60 a month is not something I want to get tied into right now.

If I wasn’t afraid, from the outside, my life would look exactly the same as it does right now, though. That’s the kicker.

I just wouldn’t be trying to change it.

On that job hunt

On January 29, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Work7 Comments

derbs.png.jpeg A few months ago I sent out a flurry of applications for work-from-home, set-your-own-schedule types of jobs. One of them was doing background checks on people who are trying to get security clearance to work for the federal government. It didn’t look like something that would be super fulfilling as a life goal, but my mentality at the time was basically fuck it, apply anyway.

Forward to the end of January, yesterday specifically, and I get an email from these people, informing me that I’ve passed the first stage of screening (which apparently just involved reading my resume and cover letter) and need to take a couple of online tests as the next stage.

Tests? ‘Kay. Sure, why not, and I was stuck on the manuscript anyway so I needed something else to do. The tests turned out to be childishly easy once I figured out what was actually going on; the first was a Flash replica of a Windows desktop and they asked me to perform several basic tasks like “attach this to an email,” “delete this file,” “rename this file,” and things like that. They allotted fifteen minutes, I was done in five. You get to make one mistake on each question before you fail it, and I made a mistake on the very first question because I didn’t quite get what was going on (if they want you to open the Start menu to open a program, and you click anywhere other than the Start menu, that’s an error) but I was perfect from then on.

The second test was literally “write these three emails.” The first was explaining a policy to an employee, the second was giving directions to a place to a job seeker, and the third was informing the staff of a mandatory meeting. In each case they gave me a bunch of details they wanted me to include but otherwise let me write the message as I saw fit.

I resisted the urge to make the second email dude, here’s our address, if you can’t figure out a way to get directions in 2016 other than bothering me for them you don’t get the job.

I got another email late last night informing me that I had passed Stage Two and asking me to email them several times in the next few weeks where I would be available for a 30-minute phone interview. Included in that email was a description of the training process for the job.

Which is three months long, full-time, mostly out of town, and unpaid. And, furthermore, if I were to complete the three-month unpaid training and not spend a year in the job,(*) I would have to pay them for the training.

They will not be receiving a list of times to call.

The really sad thing is, that entire story legitimately represents the closest thing to good news on the job front I’ve gotten lately. Whee!

(*) And if you thought to yourself I bet they haven’t said how much the job pays, you get a cookie, because no, they didn’t.

#WeekendCoffeeShare: Relevant

On December 5, 2015December 5, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Stories6 Comments

(10 minutes later)

I actually wasn’t going to comment on this initially, but something just hit me: there are a ton of sales jobs available in the area, and I’ve applied for none of them despite a suspicion that I might actually be pretty good at such work. I just accidentally figured out why: after fifteen years of teaching and twelve years of NCLB, one thing I really want is a job where, as much as possible, my evaluation as an employee is based on what I do and not on what other people do. Teachers are probably the best example of that, where just about all that matters to our evaluations now is how people who are not us and who we have no real control over do on tests that we can’t see beforehand and didn’t write. But sales is not far behind– if somebody doesn’t have the money to buy something, chances are that person just isn’t gonna buy it, and talking them into buying it anyway is unethical as hell. Sales is also a little too beholden to the vagaries of the economy than I’d prefer. I hadn’t really made that connection prior to putting this video up, but that’s definitely part of my reticence here.

#Weekendcoffeeshare: Fun is Inconvenient edition

On November 15, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Stories1 Comment

coffee2

If we were having coffee, I’d probably be doing my level best to drag the conversation out for as long as possible. There’s about a foot of grading in the car, and I didn’t assign any of it and I don’t know what any of it is, so you can probably imagine how excited I am about getting to it as soon as possible.

It’s been a busy few days. We had friends over for dinner Thursday, which meant that I spent the entire day cleaning and prepping and cooking for seven. One of the extra four was another four-year-old, my son’s best friend, and they spent the evening carefully tearing apart my nice clean house, so I’m glad I made sure the place was spotless. We had dinner at my in-laws’ Friday night, and yesterday we went to the zoo and then had dinner over at my parents’ place. What this means is that I haven’t touched Sunlight in a few days. Now, I’m not officially doing NaNoWriMo, so there’s no actual notion of being “behind” to work with here, but I would like to get a lot more writing done in this upcoming week than I did in the previous one.

Also, I managed to get through the week with a minimum of panic-attack related stress. I’m pretty sure I actually pushed one away at one point, too. Which is all good.

I’m pretty sure NaNo would be impossible this month anyway. We’re doing Thanksgiving twice; one of my best friends will be in town all next weekend for the first one, and I’ll be in Indianapolis at a conference the weekend after normal Thanksgiving. There is no earthly way I’m going to get any writing done in Indianapolis. It’s not even worth considering. So that’s at least three if not six days I’m already down. If I end the month halfway through the manuscript (currently targeted at 75K words) I’ll be happy. I should finish up the first major section today at right around the 25% mark, so that’s all good.

You are, hopefully, also playing Fallout 4, so that we might discuss that for a moment too. I’m enjoying the hell out of it although I don’t expect to have a lot of time for it the next few weeks.

The job front is … well, about the same. More on that next week, maybe.

Also, I’ve decided I’m done with Force Awakens footage until I see the movie. I’m not trying to put myself on a spoiler blackout or anything, I just feel like I know enough. I’m still not convinced it’s going to be appropriate for my son, which is kind of disappointing, but I’d love to be wrong.

Love to be wrong.

How’re you?