This is what happens when one is not yet aware that it is not within his destiny, nor even necessary, to hunt for a job.
I thought, after graduating college with multiple advanced technical degrees in an industry with projected endless growth and highly-lucrative opportunities… that I’d, at least, get a respectably-paying entry-level computer-related job, for starters. I was wrong. It was all a lie.
When you job-hunt on the road (by driving around, physically going to each place you are trying to get paid to work for), it is financially exhausting, and adds a lot of wear-&-tear to your vehicle. When you do it all at home online, filling out endless application forms, rewriting your resume untold times, as if it is a 9-to-5 full-time position itself, the wear-&-tear is emotional, spiritual, and even physical; it wears you down and out in so many ways. I experienced both.
The worst part of it was… the jobs I ended up getting… all paid minimum wage; my degree and years of study… and discipline… and sacrifice… and taking out loans… were worthless. What the hell was going on? I was being shown, in no uncertain terms, that I really was not ever going to be allowed to live or work as anything less than what I was meant to be.
I think I spent all of the last few months I was enrolled in college and earning my first Master’s… job-hunting, knowing I’d need something the moment my last class ended; my student budget would be exhausted then, no more funds coming for the foreseeable future, and no way to survive without gainful employment. (I’d been kept on a VERY short financial ‘leash’ that whole time, allowing nothing to be set aside for savings or a ‘transition cushion’.) I ended up continuing to job-hunt for months after graduation, though, and all to no avail, eventually resorting to expanding my search criteria to “any job anywhere on Earth”… and even asking friends and strangers if they had any leads. These were tough times.
I would later learn that, no matter my military service, my amazing and growing set of degrees and certifications, and my open willingness to relocate anywhere on Earth and for as long as was needed, …all of that just wasn’t meant to be. It wasn’t necessarily that anyone was black-balling or otherwise sabotaging me; I just wasn’t meant to have a job working next to beings far inferior to me in every conceivable way. (And I’m not saying I’m better than everyone; just that being employed is not right for creative free-thinkers like me –and probably just like you.) My ‘job’ was what I’d been doing ever since sketching that dream-house in high-school; I already had my job; my calling, so it made no sense to be job-hunting for something more.
How I’ve wished I’d spent those back-to-back months job-hunting against the current of the destiny and calling and instincts of my life… doing something better. How I’ve wished I’d spent them just working on my art, accepting the ‘shittier’ jobs from the start (thus having a slightly easier time affording food and rent), and, of course, fucking. I was as relentless in my search for what I’d been brainwashed to believe was the only way to make a living and have a career… as ‘life’ was (relentless) at telling me, unequivocally, “No.”.
…Those months of stress and rejection taught me a lot, though; they introduced me to countless interesting companies, people, and technologies, continuing the trend of my life, which is to experience the whole world as one big ‘sample pack’ or ‘starter platter’. They also helped me figure out better ways of looking for people to work for –and with– me, and better ways of interviewing and training them. Job-hunting for months even made me feel proud; I’d never given up on my goal, and I’d managed to survive in spite of abject poverty and brutal failure… all after having removed myself from much of civilization, relocating to the far-north’s great wild.
I am now glad I job-hunted for months.
