Whinge

Yes­ter­day I did some­thing I haven’t done in a very long time. After work I sat down and read for six and a half hours. I should have con­tin­ued search­ing for jobs [cur­rent­ly look­ing in Toron­to] or worked on the redesign for Tremon­ter or read some Neigh­bor­hood Con­nec­tions Grant Pro­pos­als or done some more hoof­work try­ing to find get a list of youth pro­gram­ming for the 2007 Cleve­land Lead­er­ship Sum­mit or even gone for a run or made din­ner or at least done the dish­es or vac­u­umed. I cur­rent­ly have no moti­va­tion. I’ve been work­ing so hard at so many dif­fer­ent things for so long and still haven’t got­ten any­where [or so it appears to me]. I’ve been look­ing for a new job for two years now and have had three and a half inter­views in that entire time. One of my cowork­ers, fresh out of col­lege, just got a new job mak­ing $6k more than I do.

There is obvi­ous­ly some­thing wrong with how I search for jobs or my resume or my com­port­ment in the inter­view that wrecks me. I need to fig­ure out what that is, exact­ly, and fix it. Although being pol­ished and the right fit for the job does­n’t mean the job is going to be out there, in Cleve­land at least. I need to fig­ure out what I want to do with my life and do it. Cur­rent­ly I’ve decid­ed that when and if I ever get $4k saved I’ll just quit and move from Cleve­land. It is hard to save that much when I still make under $29k after near­ly three years and one pro­mo­tion. Where will I go? I don’t know. What I’ll do when I get there? I don’t know. Wher­ev­er it is, it’ll have to have more oppor­tu­ni­ties for me than Cleve­land does, that’s for cer­tain.

I love Tremont, I love the style of Cleve­land and its enter­tain­ment scene, I love the peo­ple. I’ll con­tin­ue to do the best I can for the city until the day I leave. But I’m out. That’s the only moti­va­tion I have today. Cleve­land’s got every­thing I want in a city except for a good, chal­leng­ing and inter­est­ing job.

9 thoughts on “Whinge”

  1. We are a cou­ple of folks who may also leave Cleve­land due to our jobs. As for job search­es, they are tough to do in the man­ner of apply­ing all over the place. I think I’ve only got­ten 2 jobs of the ones I’ve held by cold send­ing of resumes for job open­ings — the rest I’ve got­ten by hear­ing about needs from friends in or near dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies…

  2. As for apply­ing to places out of town, I got lit­tle to no bites until I put my aun­t’s local address on my resume. So — if you know any­one in any city you apply in, I’d sug­gest ask­ing if you can use it. You’re wel­come to use ours for NY jobs. The only catch is you have to be pre­pared to drive/fly out for an inter­view if you do get con­tact­ed. The line I used was “I’m in the process of mov­ing and fly­ing back and forth between cities. The next time I’ll be in town is x — would that be a good time to meet?” Good luck!

    And by the way, even tho I had a good job in Cleve­land, I agree they are few and far between, and even the job I had had very lit­tle growth poten­tial.

  3. The Cre­ative Group and Aque­nt are both good, but they will want you to live in the area first because they do most­ly imme­di­ate place­ments.

  4. Genevieve, did you go to a cre­ative staffing firm for help get­ting a gig in NYC? That’s still my like­li­est bet as far as mov­ing goes…

  7. This is exact­ly why I’m so hes­i­tant about com­ing back to Cleve­land. I know I could get a much nicer place to live for a lot less, and I’d be around “my peo­ple” and all the places that mean some­thing to me, but there is not a chance in hell that I can get a job like the one I have in New York (I essen­tial­ly read ency­clo­pe­dia entries all day for a pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny). It’s very lit­tle respon­si­bil­i­ty, zero stress, and real­ly inter­est­ing. I know I could get some­thing with lit­tle respon­si­bil­i­ty and zero stress at home, but that “real­ly inter­est­ing” part…no way.

    Good luck to you. If you end up com­ing to New York let me know.

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