Yesterday was a nice day.Spent the morning working on a short story and then took the train to the city in time for a weekly lunch I haven’t attended in months. I got to see a lot of colleagues I normally only see on line and was treated to lunch by Aaron Rosenberg (a swell guy with some books to his credit, go out and support him).Afterwards, did a quick tour of the nearest Barnes & Noble with Keith DeCandido and then we hightailed it uptown to Pocket Books. I popped in to say howdy to the various editors there in the Media Tie-In department. It’s always good to see old friends and colleagues, shooting the breeze about their work, office politics, licensee nightmares and the latest television gossip. It also, I admit, was a chance to remind them all I’m alive and available should things come up. While this led to nothing immediate, one never knows.From there, I walked a few blocks over to DC. I had a meeting to discuss a research project for one department and I have to say the meeting went very well. I’ll enjoy the research and establishing a good working relationship with another department. Having said that, it was certainly a little odd walking the third floor where Collected Editions resides. I said hi to everyone in the group, heard what they were up to, answered a question or two on work left behind, grabbed samples of some of my recently-released projects and finally remembered to grab my personal sketchbook which I inadvertently left behind.Finished there, I walked over to Deb’s office where I sat reading a stack of comics as she endured a longer than normal day with lots of rush projects requiring her attention. Initially, the plan called for a bunch of us going out for drinks but the day’s projects took up too much time and by 6:30, no one wanted to leave or wanted to go straight home. Deb and I just grabbed a train back to Connecticut and it was certainly comforting riding with her once more.As for what’s going on, the job hunt continues. Applied to a lot of stuff I found on line but that’s like mailing your resume into a black void, you never know. I continue to talk to people and network but so far, some tantalizing possibilities remain tantalizing possibilities. I quickly jotted down all my writing commitments and I have to say, there’s plenty of keep me busy especially with this short-term research project on top of it.So the answer is: I’m busy and optimistic.
Busy is good, optimistic is better! Continued good luck.
Sounds like a great day. We continue to send you good thoughts. (Nomi sends you good wishes and good fishes.)
As someone who has been out of work more than I care to think about over the past ten years, I regard the online sites (Monster, jobs.com, the lot of them) as spectacular wastes of time. Of course most career advisers and authors of job hunting books will tell you that it’s a necessary part of the process, but I have tried to spend the smallest possible percentage of my job-hunting time replying to the listings you find there. As you say, it is a black hole. Of the hundreds of responses I sent out over the years, only a handful of real interviews ever came my way. In fact, I am hard-pressed to recall hearing of a single person I know who got any sort of halfway decent job through these services. I fully believe that these online services exist to merely squeeze money out of the desperate (for the obligatory service upgrade they all tell you you absolutely must have) and to build databases for other scam artists, like fee charging headhunting services and pyramid scheme recruiters.