life as understood

You might have guessed that part of the reason I haven't written for a while is the U.S. Open, and you wouldn't be wrong. During Wimbledon, I tried to combine my loves of writing and tennis, but when I penned a piece about the thinly veiled arrogance that characterizes Roger Federer, I got a bunch of hits worldwide, and a few good reviews, which bolstered me up until I realized that the best one by far was from a Nadal fan site. Sigh. So anyway, it's either tennis or writing from now on--not both. Right now, it's writing.

I'm on the job hunt again. True, I have a couple of jobs already, but I want more. I hope that you, dear reader, have a job of your own, because I'd feel bad going about jealously trying to amass jobs like acorns for the winter, if you didn't have any at all. The problem is that my principal employment is only 20 hours per week. My other one, the freelance writing and editing, gives me work here and there, but it's not consistent. Though I'll be spending a serious amount of time this season on grad school application preparation, I certainly feel that I have the capacity to provide my little family with a few more bucks per week. And if I have the capacity, I have the responsibility.

For the past couple of weeks, I've been working, in my role as a freelance writer, with a good gentleman from New Jersey, helping to build content for his website. The site is hireangel.com (don't look at it yet--it's not up), which is his job search consulting business. The man, with whom I'm working rather closely, is a professional job search consultant with a wealth of knowledge and over 20 years of impressive experience. He, the very Hire Angel himself, imparts this knowledge upon me, and I gather it up and make it sound pretty, for that is my calling. This past two weeks, I have literally spent hours upon hours of time staring at, and even writing, expert job search advice so perfect and simple, it's almost as if poured in from beyond the veil.

You know where this is going, don't you? I'm not using the advice myself--at least not well. Me, the very writer of said advice. I know what to do, and I don't do it. I think I'm somehow an exception, just like everybody else. Despite the angelic presence of an expert on my shoulder, I persist in making only cursory attempts at getting another job. Why do I do this? All the resources one could ever want, and instead I elect to fall back on the same shotgun approach that's never won me anything. I suspect this isn't such a rare tendency, but it is baffling.

Remarkably, I have two interviews next week, and they're both pretty decent jobs, at least as far as I can tell. How I landed these interviews, I'll never know. It's almost as if I've been granted mercy that I don't necessarily deserve. Man, I'm the best...

All I'm saying is, maybe we should use our resources.