The Obligatory Cat-Vacuuming Update

{crickets}

Yes, I have been very quiet here -- those of you who see Antick Musings via the ports to social networks might be happy about that, actually -- but that's only to be expected. Last time I was seriously looking for work, back in that lovely year seven, I threw myself into this blog, continuing the work I'd been doing on the SFBC blog as "Blog in Exile" here and posting many times a day with links and commentary and other SFnal stuff. And, in the end, that meant nothing, and conventional job-search efforts got me a nice marketing job at the venerable and prestigious firm of Wiley, doing things that had less than nothing to do with the SFnal world. [1]

So I'm definitely not doing that again.

Instead, I'm doing the job-search thing every day, and I'm sure most of you reading this have had to do that at least once, and can fill in the general details. I have a lot of alerts and e-mails, and I've written more variations on the same cover letter than I'd like to remember. It's still early days, too, for all that I want this to be over immediately. On top of the usual stuff, I'm also meeting with an outplacement firm to redo my resume and incorporate other tactics, and there's a certain amount of homework as part of that process.

All of that takes time and effort and mental energy. I'm finding that job-searching is more tiring intellectually than actually working is; I don't naturally toot my own horn, so having to do that multiple hours every day takes its toll. And doing that makes me deeply uninterested in writing anything here, unfortunately.

(I'm also reading vastly less, because I've turned into someone who only reads while commuting. That was fine when I was on a train two hours a day -- maybe it's not quite as much as I read in a day back in my glory days of the '90s, but it's still quite a lot -- but is less pleasant when I'm sitting in a basement in front of this computer 12-14 hours a day. But they say the first step to changing is acknowledging the problem, so I hereby acknowledge it.)


So I expect posts to be sparse here for some time. That may be until I get a new job, until substantially after that point, or until I figure out how to motivate myself to read and write more on top of the job search. I won't try to predict which, or how long.

But I am spending time in New York City in the middle of the week regularly now, for the first time in years, which will be substantially more wonderful once the temperature comes above freezing for more than five seconds. And I hope that can lead to actually seeing people in person again, which didn't happen for a long time while I was entombed in Hoboken. At this time of year, I'd normally be saying that I'd see everyone at Lunacon -- or, to be more honest, that I'd see the few people who bother to go to Lunacon anymore -- but that's not happening this year.

Anyway, if there's any meet-ups happening, or other events, I would love to know about them. And I may even reach out to people for lunch dates, though I feel really weird about that, since I have been out of touch with so many people for so long. So you may actually see me emerging from the mists, and, if so, I want to reassure you that I am not a mirage: I actually do still exist. And I come in peace.


[1] Although "Blog in Exile" did lead to a nice relationship with ComicMix that ran for a several years, and I think ended with happy feelings on both sides, so I shouldn't be quite that dismissive of it. But it definitely wasn't the most effective use of my time at that moment, even if it felt like productive work.