Long time no see, friends!

This has been The Summer of Kristina, so to speak.  I have been enjoying an extended period of unemployment.  I’m starting grad school next month and needed to switch to a job that had a flexible schedule to allow me enough time for classes.  I let my boss know a few months ahead of time and was able to recruit and train my replacement.  I figured that I would just sign up with a temp agency and work there until I was able to find permanent placement.  You know, because it’s so easy these days to just pick-up and switch jobs.

Ahem.

So yeah, it’s taking a little bit longer than anticipated.  What have I been doing in the meantime, you ask?  Living the good retired life.   Which it turns out, is pretty damn boring.  My main activities have included include:

• Applying to jobs and hounding my temp agency recruiters
• Hiding out at a friend’s house until I told my parents I was unemployed
• Mowing our lawn
• Mowing our elderly neighbor’s yard
• Painting various rooms in the house (for the first time in 25 years)
• Picking out new sofas (for the first time in 20 years)
• Keeping my #1 Customer status at Da Vinci’s
• Celebrating my 32nd Birthday (month-long event)
• Watching documentaries on NetFlix
• Wathching Daily Show and Colbert on Hulu
• Reclining on our new motorized sofas while watching NetFlix and Hulu
• Going on Facebook
• Going on Pinterest
• Scheduling as many doctor visits as possible until my insurance runs out
• Hiding gallons of ice cream from my Dad so he doesn’t go into a diabetic coma
• Ignoring my Mom when she blames me for things that go wrong/missing that are almost always her fault
• Sleeping
• Not writing on this blog

As you can see, I’ve been busy.

Honestly, though, I mostly avoided writing on the blog because I thought I would find a job quickly and be able to start writing again and not really have to focus on the unemployed period.  This is something I’ve never had to deal with before, so I didn’t really want to write about it.  For the nine years directly following my graduation from college, I worked 99% of the time.  Whenever I switched jobs, I was moving to a new city, and I only had a day or so to travel and unpack.  I literally didn’t take a day off in between positions.  And most of my vacations were about a week long.  I haven’t had this much time off….ever.  It’s strange.

At first I was hyper-focused on finding work, scanning Craigslist and Indeed.com several times a day for anything that might fit my experience.  Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of movement in the Central FL area.  Sometimes days would go by before a suitable position was advertised.  Having an HR background, I’ve learned how to only apply for positions that I have a reasonable shot at getting an interview for; I can’t tell you how much time I wasted as a manager sorting through completely unqualified resumes.

Due to the technology shift of the last 15 years, no one goes door to door looking for jobs anymore.  You sit on your laptop and apply with a few strokes of the keyboard.  It doesn’t take a lot of time.  So you’re left with all these hours of free-time, but not real free-time, because you’re constantly anxious about finding a job.  It’s basically the cruelest type of “vacation” you can take.  Lots of time off, but no money to do anything with it.  A cruel, cruel fate.

So here I am, a week into July, with no real job prospects.  I will admit there is more movement in hiring – a lot of people switch jobs in the summer – but I’m restricted in the location of the job (near my house or school) and the hours of the job.   To say that it’s been a frustrating time would be an understatement.  But I’m drudging though it, knowing that I will have somewhat of a fixed schedule when I start school.  I just hate the lack of stability and permanence in my life right now; not having my own space at home, most of my things being in storage, not having the job situation locked down, not having my school schedule set, and not knowing where I’m going to live when the school year begins.  It’s stressful.

But the summer’s not over yet, so there’s still hope.  There are some potential trips in the works, job leads that I’m following up on, and lots of good books to read.  I’m even getting a tan (yes, I was already tan – but now it’s more like SE Asian tan instead of Chinese tan).

Oh yes, and this blog!  Expect many more posts in the near future (you can thank Mrs. Foster-Gonzalez for pushing me start writing again).

Liz: There’s just four things I want to do this summer: be outdoors, wear shapeless clothing, do some mindless activity like gardening, and learn Spanish.

Dr. Spaceman: There are four things I want to do this summer, but they’re roommates, so it’s tricky.