Still jobless and fancy free

This is just a quick update on what’s happening in the BlogRodentSphere. (Yes, I take my “branding” too seriously, sometimes!)

I’ve been unemployed since November 9. However, by God’s grace and the help of friends, Jennifer and I have not suffered from a loss of income. In fact, I’ve only drawn one week’s worth of unemployment checks. We’ve managed to keep busy with enough freelance work that we’ve been able to make our dreaded mortgage-payments and other sundry bills relatively on-time. We’re without health-insurance, though, so we are praying none of us fall ill.

I’ve had several interesting and fun interviews. None of them were high-pressure (with the possible exception of the church interview), and I felt instant rapport with everyone I’ve interviewed with:

Most of these organizations are looking for project managers of one stripe or another and so far, I’m still having conversations with four of them. The remainder didn’t pan out for various reasons, none of them my fault, I hope. For example, the church wanted a webmaster to take over their flagging website — but they really needed a network administrator to take over their entire tech infrastructure, which wasn’t me. Magnet Street realized they needed a programmer/developer to handle their growth instead of a project guy, and Tyndale realized they didn’t really need to fill their position after all, and they redistributed the workload in-house. Everybody in every interview has been very supportive and helpful.

But, still, so far, no work. I do have three hopefuls on the docket, all of them still involving lengthy commutes of 20–40 miles.

Hopefully, this time next week, I’ll be able to blog that I’m hired, and I’ll share some of the lessons I learned after 17 years of not having had to look for work, and suddenly finding myself without regular pay.

Meanwhile, if you have need of an experienced generalist in technology, feel free to hire me! (See my professional work history at my LinkedIN profile.) Contact me, and I’ll send you my resumé along with references.