The Second, Second Best Blog

The morning walk across the backyard to get some bird seed gave me pause to reflect on the nature of things. The tableau of feathers on the lawn suggests that the day’s start was very good for one fortunate Cooper’s Hawk and the very worst for one of the 16 or so Mourning Doves who are regulars at my backyard feeders.

I went to sleep in the wee hours of this morning with sore stomach muscles and ringing ears, both signs that youth is a memory. The soreness is a reminder of the three minutes spent spinning the Mad Teacups at Disneyland for all I was worth with Patty and Terry along for the ride. The ringing ears have been a constant for months, a reminder that the days when I could hear the singing transformer of a television’s horizontal oscillator are never coming back.

After arriving home from the excursion to Disneyland and Souplantation, Patty remarked that I had been unusually quiet all day. I had to admit that it was an effort to have a good time. It’s almost impossible not to have a good time on the rides, but the in-between times, such as the few minutes before regrouping outside a restroom in California Adventure, allow other concerns to surface.

Our future is cloudy with economic uncertainty. In some ways, it’s the best it’s ever been, but in others it’s hairy and scary. The severance package from Ericsson provided a year of paid health insurance and eligibility for their Retiree Medical Plan after that. It also included more than enough cash to pay off our mortgage as well as a small pension since I was 55 at the time of separation. But now after more than a year with no offers of permanent employment, that pension is our only source of income.

A few days ago, I was more upbeat. The first Google Adsense ads had been placed and had already earned a couple of dollars. It was a glimmer of the hoped-for-future with more freedom and less social game-playing. A later analysis of the websites’ traffic suggested that the earnings were more likely due to the curiousity of friends rather than an anonymous horde of internet surfers. Economic security retreated like the mirage it really is.

The job hunt has wrung me out like the chamois I use to dry my car after hand-washing it. There was one week a little over a year ago when I had not one, but two promising interviews. Earlier this year there were two, several months apart, where I knew immediately that they had been a waste of time. The dirt of my being now lies on the surface where it can be seen with little more than a casual glance: the only aspect of a job I miss is the income and I am and less and less willing to play the games that are expected of an employee.

One of the those interviews was with Ron Stein, the CEO of MICAD Marine in Huntington Beach. One of his questions was if I liked working at Ericsson. “I did. It was a great place to work.” The fact is, I would still be there if “there” had not ceased to exist. In hindsight, I believe that ended his interest in hiring me right then and there. A few days later he called me personally to deliver his rejection notice, the only one ever to do so. It lasted longer than the interview. The gist of it was that he wanted someone who would treat the work with the same urgency that he and is head salesman did. He was full of praise for that one because he spent something like 200 or 300 days a year on the road. It made me glad that I didn’t have to refuse an offer.

Another nudge toward independence and away from servitude came from watching a YouTube video: “Job Interview Skills“. First, I was put off by the length of this video: nearly 45 minutes. Garden variety YouTubers, like myself, are restricted to 10 minutes. Second, I was awed that anyone could talk that long without notes, in his car, in traffic, and produce a video that would garner more than 17,000 views! His channel information, especially his self-described occupation really nailed it for me: “Former software executive – now full time internet philosopher, baby! : )“. Is there some way I can skip the interviews and go directly to Money for Nothing?