School is starting soon. Isn't it funny how all our lives are set up with school? My life, even though I am not a teacher or a student, is set up by semesters of school. Granted I do still have a child still in school but I "work" for a living so school should not matter to me. But over the years it has.
Back to school sales indicate the fall has started. Living in the northeast that means the leaves should be turning orange but in the southwest it meant that it was still beastly hot until late October. The other thing back to school sales indicate is the traffic is once again going to be awful. Going back and forth to work for people that get stuck behind those big yellow buses will probably not be joyful.
And what is it with these towns and cities that think no one has anywhere to go at 9 and 3. They have schools that have no where to drop off kids except on the streets in front of the schools on a busy street. Traffic backs up for miles and everyone is getting all upset. Granted it only takes about 10 or 15 minutes for the buses to load or unload but people get very frustrated.
And if that isn't bad enough, what is it with these kids who wait in the house for the bus and when the bus gets there they walk as slow as humanly possible to get on the bus. The worse part is nobody says anything to them. I would be giving my kid a good boot in the butt. "You're holding up the traffic Junior, get it in gear!" Isn't that what our parents used to say? Oh wait, our parents didn't have to say that because we walked 10 miles to school and they (our parents) walked 25 miles to school in knee deep snow. I wonder how deep the snow was in the southwest desert in September.
Then Christmas comes and we all get a 2 week break from the school bus hassles. We can get to and from work again without getting stuck behind the big yellow buses and all those slow kids. You know who I feel most sorry for; the school bus drivers. Those poor souls have to put up with the sulking in the morning when they go in and the crazy antics on the way home. They have to listen to drivers cuss them out for being in the way, they have to deal with parents who are not happy because Johnny had a problem with someone on the bus and because some idiot like me writes a piece talking about the big yellow bus.
Well after Christmas, all the college kids leave and back to school the other creatures go much to the relieve of their parents until June. Then we get a couple months off again from getting stuck behind the big yellow buses unless you are unlucky enough to live near a summer camp that uses buses to get the kids into camp. If that is the case you are out of luck, I am sorry to say.
Now after all this is it any wonder that my life still runs on a semester base. I follow those buses everywhere. I see them go by my house in the mornings, I hear them pick up the kids. I get stuck behind them at the local school. I try to plan my day so that I do not go down the road where the school is at the time school gets out but somehow I always end up there at dismissal time. I guess I should have been a teacher so that my biological clock could have been in sync with the school year. Perhaps in my next life.
Good luck to all the school bus drivers, teachers and students that will be going off to school in the next couple of weeks. Students please try to move a bit faster to the bus, you are just aggravating the world by being slow and one of us sitting in a car may be the person you sit in front of for a job someday. We may just recognize you as the slow poke who held us up in the morning on our way to work. That may not be such a good thing for you.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Resumes: What Does it Really Tell Us?
In the last year of my unemployment, I realized that my resume never fully reflected the work that I have been doing. Granted I have not been employed in the conventional sense of the word but I have been working. As a matter of fact, I have probably worked harder in the last year than I have in the last several because I have had to juggle 3 positions instead of one. Let me explain.
First, I got laid off from a job that although I enjoyed it, until I was laid off I never realized how stressed out I was. Marketing for the skilled nursing market was competitive and at the end, cut throat. At the end of my run we were all fighting for a few patients and many people were getting laid off so they were opting to stay home and take care of family members instead of putting them into a nursing facility. So my new job became looking for a job. That is a full time job in itself.
Second, while looking for work in the first few months, my time was taken up solely by that. After a bit, there was not as much time required as my sources were drying up and so I began to dedicate more time to my volunteer work with NAMI Waterbury. That started to become the focus of my life. I attended Chamber of Commerce meetings to promote NAMI Waterbury, I went out to do presentations on NAMI, I taught classes, ran support groups and so forth. Along with this I was still looking for work. In the meantime, someone asked me for help on the Salvation Army in Waterbury so I volunteered for that. Again, my time was now taken up looking for work, volunteering for NAMI and volunteering for the Salvation Army.
Third, while all this was happening a friend of mine approached me to tell me she was starting a technology company that would revolutionize the way we communicate. She wanted to know if I wanted to be part of it. Why not! So I began to help with some of the marketing materials, some of the data base development, business development, software testing, sales, design team work and so on. All this is done pretty much gratis as the company is pre-revenue. This company is working very hard on making the correct connections and will be a very important one in how the world communicates in the future. I will be a part of that group if all goes as planned which is great.
Now what I did not think of as I was still out looking for a "job" is that all of what I have done over the past year, paid or not, has been experience. I did add the NAMI experience to my resume but I never added the other experience because I did not think of it as important because it was not "paid". Is that how we value ourselves? Are we just prostitutes to the world of companies and businesses? Do we have no shame? Maybe we should be arrested as well as the ladies who walk the streets at nights if that is the way we value employees.
The work I did over the last year was more valuable than most of the work I have done in the many years I have had a "job". That reason is I was able to do things that my superiors at other jobs never gave me the chance to do. I was always held back for one reason or another. There was always someone ahead of me or someone more important that had to be in place. But now I was the person in charge that could make decisions or at the very least could follow along to find out how things were done.
I have now seen a business start from the beginning. An idea became a company and is growing into a living thing. I have looked for sales people, technology people and I have gone out on sales calls. I have lived leaner than I have lived since I was in my early 20s. I am stronger now than I ever have been although poorer than I have been as well.
Employers look at my resume and see a gap of work history of one year but they are sadly mistaken. I have worked the last year, just not in the conventional sense of the word. Not in the paid sense. Those of you who did not hire me or interview me because you saw that gap, your loss!! I am the best there is. To the company who let me go, you really lost because I am a loyal employee. To NAMI, the Salvation Army and SentryBlue, I am glad I have been able to give you my time because you appreciated every little bit I could give you and I will continue to give you whatever I can. It has been worth more than money and that is the biggest lesson that I have learned from this whole experience. Giving is definitely better than receiving, that is a lesson the whole world needs to learn!
First, I got laid off from a job that although I enjoyed it, until I was laid off I never realized how stressed out I was. Marketing for the skilled nursing market was competitive and at the end, cut throat. At the end of my run we were all fighting for a few patients and many people were getting laid off so they were opting to stay home and take care of family members instead of putting them into a nursing facility. So my new job became looking for a job. That is a full time job in itself.
Second, while looking for work in the first few months, my time was taken up solely by that. After a bit, there was not as much time required as my sources were drying up and so I began to dedicate more time to my volunteer work with NAMI Waterbury. That started to become the focus of my life. I attended Chamber of Commerce meetings to promote NAMI Waterbury, I went out to do presentations on NAMI, I taught classes, ran support groups and so forth. Along with this I was still looking for work. In the meantime, someone asked me for help on the Salvation Army in Waterbury so I volunteered for that. Again, my time was now taken up looking for work, volunteering for NAMI and volunteering for the Salvation Army.
Third, while all this was happening a friend of mine approached me to tell me she was starting a technology company that would revolutionize the way we communicate. She wanted to know if I wanted to be part of it. Why not! So I began to help with some of the marketing materials, some of the data base development, business development, software testing, sales, design team work and so on. All this is done pretty much gratis as the company is pre-revenue. This company is working very hard on making the correct connections and will be a very important one in how the world communicates in the future. I will be a part of that group if all goes as planned which is great.
Now what I did not think of as I was still out looking for a "job" is that all of what I have done over the past year, paid or not, has been experience. I did add the NAMI experience to my resume but I never added the other experience because I did not think of it as important because it was not "paid". Is that how we value ourselves? Are we just prostitutes to the world of companies and businesses? Do we have no shame? Maybe we should be arrested as well as the ladies who walk the streets at nights if that is the way we value employees.
The work I did over the last year was more valuable than most of the work I have done in the many years I have had a "job". That reason is I was able to do things that my superiors at other jobs never gave me the chance to do. I was always held back for one reason or another. There was always someone ahead of me or someone more important that had to be in place. But now I was the person in charge that could make decisions or at the very least could follow along to find out how things were done.
I have now seen a business start from the beginning. An idea became a company and is growing into a living thing. I have looked for sales people, technology people and I have gone out on sales calls. I have lived leaner than I have lived since I was in my early 20s. I am stronger now than I ever have been although poorer than I have been as well.
Employers look at my resume and see a gap of work history of one year but they are sadly mistaken. I have worked the last year, just not in the conventional sense of the word. Not in the paid sense. Those of you who did not hire me or interview me because you saw that gap, your loss!! I am the best there is. To the company who let me go, you really lost because I am a loyal employee. To NAMI, the Salvation Army and SentryBlue, I am glad I have been able to give you my time because you appreciated every little bit I could give you and I will continue to give you whatever I can. It has been worth more than money and that is the biggest lesson that I have learned from this whole experience. Giving is definitely better than receiving, that is a lesson the whole world needs to learn!
Monday, August 16, 2010
Crazy Things
Have you ever wondered how things in your life got so crazy and out of control when you used to think you had everything in control? There was a time when I was convinced that I had complete control over the way my life ran. And for the most part that was true. Then as my kids grew older, when I should have been gaining more control of myself and being able to do the things I want to do. Then life got out of control.
When my oldest was still at home, my youngest was still little. So clearly I still had control of the house. Unfortunately, when the youngest became a teenager, the oldest moved away, my step-son had graduated high school and decided to move in with us (which I do not mind at all most days) and suddenly I have lost all control of my house. I no longer have a living room. I have an office/living room/all purpose storage room. My husband's den has been turned into the hangout for the kids. The kitchen is a grazing ground. Even our bedroom is not a sanctuary any longer as they come bounding in there for advil or band aids at any time.
I purchase $300 worth of food and within 2 days it is gone. Where does it go? Well, at times it is left out so my 2 lovely dogs can devour it because heaven knows they need people food. If soda is purchased, a 12 pack is gone in a day. Now my kids are big but they are not huge, I cannot figure out where it goes. Oh I forgot the friends. They are in here at all hours of the day and night. My husband does not seemed phased by this but it drives me insane. I am trying to keep my sanity by ignoring it but it isn't working.
They also appear to think I am made of money. They cool the outside in the summer with my air conditioning and heat the outside in the winter with the heating. They must think the the neighborhood needs lights because when the middle one comes home at night, he never shuts any of the lights off when he goes to bed. They also have the house lit up like a Christmas tree when we are out at night while they are usually in the basement. I am sure that Connecticut Light & Power must love us.
Forget showers, first I couldn't get them to take them. Now I can't get them out of the shower. I am in and out in five minutes. My kids are the kings of the hour shower. The water company and oil company love us too.
Anyway, the lesson is that we have spoiled them rotten. But I am sure that I would not have done it any different. Someday they will all be gone at which time this house will be incredibly quiet, the den will be a den, the living room a living room, the kitchen a kitchen and our bedroom ours. I am sure we will be lonely. The one thing I do pray for is that each of the three gets at least one just like them. I really hope that each of them has a girl for extra punishment. That would be true payback for all they have put us through because these boys hover over anyone they love and I am sure girls would scare them silly!!
I love you boys!!!!
When my oldest was still at home, my youngest was still little. So clearly I still had control of the house. Unfortunately, when the youngest became a teenager, the oldest moved away, my step-son had graduated high school and decided to move in with us (which I do not mind at all most days) and suddenly I have lost all control of my house. I no longer have a living room. I have an office/living room/all purpose storage room. My husband's den has been turned into the hangout for the kids. The kitchen is a grazing ground. Even our bedroom is not a sanctuary any longer as they come bounding in there for advil or band aids at any time.
I purchase $300 worth of food and within 2 days it is gone. Where does it go? Well, at times it is left out so my 2 lovely dogs can devour it because heaven knows they need people food. If soda is purchased, a 12 pack is gone in a day. Now my kids are big but they are not huge, I cannot figure out where it goes. Oh I forgot the friends. They are in here at all hours of the day and night. My husband does not seemed phased by this but it drives me insane. I am trying to keep my sanity by ignoring it but it isn't working.
They also appear to think I am made of money. They cool the outside in the summer with my air conditioning and heat the outside in the winter with the heating. They must think the the neighborhood needs lights because when the middle one comes home at night, he never shuts any of the lights off when he goes to bed. They also have the house lit up like a Christmas tree when we are out at night while they are usually in the basement. I am sure that Connecticut Light & Power must love us.
Forget showers, first I couldn't get them to take them. Now I can't get them out of the shower. I am in and out in five minutes. My kids are the kings of the hour shower. The water company and oil company love us too.
Anyway, the lesson is that we have spoiled them rotten. But I am sure that I would not have done it any different. Someday they will all be gone at which time this house will be incredibly quiet, the den will be a den, the living room a living room, the kitchen a kitchen and our bedroom ours. I am sure we will be lonely. The one thing I do pray for is that each of the three gets at least one just like them. I really hope that each of them has a girl for extra punishment. That would be true payback for all they have put us through because these boys hover over anyone they love and I am sure girls would scare them silly!!
I love you boys!!!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)