KickStart Me.

A big ask, but first, a big update...

I made $14,943 last year, including $3,200 in unemployment benefits that were collected from mid-June through September.  I made 30% above the poverty line for a single male with no dependents.  Should I stop complaining about how little money I have or should we all be outraged that the poverty line is set so embarrassingly low at $11,490 per person?

I think the latter.

Most of my income from last year came from the first half of the year when I worked at Kroger's inbound call center.  Thankfully, I got a tax refund of about $1,200 this week, which I can use to pay February and March's rent, with what's left going toward utilities.

I was fortunate enough to get 4 published features on Food Dive, 2 of which I've already been paid for and the other 2 I will use towards food and gas.  Of course, my last 2 features only owe me a total of $80.

I'm not supposed to tell people that... I think because they would be embarrassed for people to know that they pay so little.

So while there have been small bright spots, I am still as poor as ever.  Despite the tax returns, I am only able to pay up one month on rent.  Hopefully, I'll have a job by April, but honestly, it feels like things are slipping away from me, and the honest truth is that the longer I'm unemployed, the less likely I am to get hired.

Writing has been one of the few bright spots of this whole situation, but even that has been strained.  I've told you guys that I have a 7 & 1/2 yr old iMac that is starting to show it's age, but it's now preventing me from writing.  Most of the time, I can't keep the computer on for more than 10 minutes before it crashes.  It's a Late 2006 Intel iMac, so there isn't much I can do to upgrade it.  I've also been able to apply to less employers for the same reason. I start to do an online application, then the computer crashes.  I need to do something about that...

The Big Ask...

Here is where I need your help again.  This time, my rent is secure for at least another month, my food/gas is sketchy, but my big problem is a dying computer.

I need to raise money to get another computer, so I can continue blogging, freelance writing, and of course, applying for jobs.

As before, you can use the PayPal Donate button on the right.

The money I raise(unless I get a massive amount of money) will be used for a new computer that will not fail me, so I can continue to create content when I'm not applying for positions or researching companies I'm about to interview with.

So if you can donate, please do, and if you can't donate, please tweet this blog or share it on facebook so others may donate.  

Frustrations

One week ago, I didn't think I would have a place to live and I thought I might be in the beginning stages of an eviction.  I've since raised enough in PayPal donations through the PayPal button to the right of this post to be able to pay for December & January's rent.

I'm trying to remain positive but new frustrations make getting out of this mess seem less likely.

I applied to many places in the past week.  I applied to Starbucks, both retail and corporate.  The great thing about Starbucks' retail online app is that you can apply for multiple positions at once in a cluster of locations in an area.  Costco uses the same online application software, so I have, with 2 online applications, applied for over a dozen positions.

My expertise is in food and the food industry(not restaurant industry), so I have applied to positions in several companies and several positions in one food company.

To date, I have had a phone interview with one company and several rejection emails from another.  That is it.  I reach a point where I run out of things to do on my end.  At a certain point, I have to depend on someone to hire me.  Hell, at some point, I have to be lucky enough to get just a phone interview.  The truth is that nobody has to give me a moment, a thought, or a chance.

Then the panic sets in...

Am I unemployable?  Is my resume bad enough that there are always going to be other people that get interviews ahead of me?  My resume makes me look a lot worse than I really am as an employee.  I'm smart, I have skills, and I'm a fast learner, quickly absorbing technical knowledge.  But as I tried to start a career after college, I embarked on an odyssey of finding a good job/person fit.

What normally happens is that I run out of time/money and I am forced to say yes to the next opportunity, regardless of if it's right for me.  I took a position in 2008 with Cargill to work in their feed mill.  Cargill is a great company, but my training was in food science and operations, not necessarily mechanical engineering or management in a feed mill.  Boo hoo, right?  I know...  I took the job because Cargill has 54 different business units and I was assured by a corp recruiter that I could get into a different area of the company if my training to be a Plant Manager of a feed mill didn't go well.  That wasn't the case, and after trying(and failing) to catch on in a different business unit, I left.  Cargill was nice enough to give me a month and a half to try to find another position, after which, we would part ways.  Unfortunately, Cargill has a very decentralized HR, and were unable to pluck me from one area and put me in another.

That lasted 5 months.

My odyssey continued with several other jobs where the company was bad or the training program was bad, and in between, I worked lower level jobs to sustain myself until the next opportunity.  So this will be the part where people comment, telling me it's my fault, and to a certain extent, that's true. The question is whether the punishment for being brutally honest about my job/person fit is a life sentence or something I can overcome.  I will not apologize and do not regret being picky about a career position.  If I'm going to work somewhere every day until I retire, then it's going to be doing something I have a passion for and wake up every day wanting to do.

I tried to get into the creative end with marketing and the prospects there seem even worse.  I'm great with ideas, well spoken, and well written.  I thought that I should have no problem being a copywriter... except that I didn't go to school to be a copy writer... except that I didn't work an unpaid internship doing copywriting... except that every copywriting opening starts at 3-5 years of experience in copywriting.

I found the same thing to be true of the ad world.  You can't get a start in advertising... I know this sounds insane, but you have to have always been there to get a foot in the door.  There are no entry level ad jobs.

I like writing and even have a standing offer for freelance writing work, but at $40 a published submission, it's more a hobby than a job.  To make matters worse, I have a computer that keeps shutting down as I get into anything like writing or a long online application.

I have a Late 2006 Intel iMac that I got when I was still at Ohio State.  It's about 7 and a half years old and really starting to show it's age.  To make matters worse, these particular iMacs have a known issue with the soldered on graphics card, where the screen will go black or the computer will overheat.  If my computer freezes while I type this sentence, then blogger will have my progress saved and I can return after waiting for the computer to cool off.  If my computer freezes while in the middle of a long application, I will have to start over, in many cases.

I only asked for the bare minimum amount of PayPal donations to pay rent.  I didn't want to overly rely on online solicitations for all my bills.  But if you like my writing or if you're a fan of Mac OS, I would be willing to accept donations that would help me get another iMac.

I'm probably as likely to get enough donations for that as I am to get hired on somewhere... Either way, I hope I'm wrong.