. . . aaaaaand it's pretty much time to say goodbye for the immediate future.
I am typing to you all through a free public wifi hotspot (that is ridiculously slow) due to the fact I've lost my internet connection at home. Moreover, I am losing my flat and am being forced to relocate by the middle of next month to avoid an eviction. I've ran out of time and can economize no longer while looking for
the golden ticket any fleepin' job out there that pertains to my skill set. I can't afford to work for who I'm working for anymore, and the least expensive place I can find to live is more than 30 kilometers away. I certainly can't afford the gas to commute and there are no rapid transit options where I live.
I am also still having zero luck finding work in the IT field as well. I am about to write off the whole college experience and the last five years of job searching as a colossal charlie foxtrot. I have heard nothing but puppy farts and sunshine from college employment advisers, and nothing but lies and bovine excretia from staffing agencies, hiring managers, and HR people I've had the occasional pleasure to interview with.
What it boils down to is this: It seems I'm too old to engage in a career in IT. At 33, with experience setting up a fully functional Citadel-86/RA/WWIV telecommunications community (yeah, I know -- those terms mean NOTHING in this decade). Basically I'm obsolete, my skills are arthritic and I still have no more of an idea what I want to pursue in IT than when I started going to school.
I regret listening to myself. I regret telling myself that the cost of going to college, working full time and going to school full time, missing out on the growth of my son, and running myself ragged for more than two years now . . . was going to be worth it. I regret listening to the admissions representative who told me the IT industry was (and still is) seeing solid growth and there would be no trouble placing me anywhere I wanted to go. It seems the only people who have benefited from my time and effort are the corporate
non-visage who hold stock in the company doing business as the college I attended. I also regret listening to my parents, who told me when my father earned his degree, that doors opened up left and right for him and he immediately doubled his income. I paid at least twenty grand to get myself a pay cut and I haven't had a raise in five years.
So it's time to reinvent myself and start over for the perhaps fifth time in the last ten years. I'm more than likely going to go back to what I was doing before (I was a fairly good forklift driver in the past but I hated being treated like bantha crap with the added expectation of behaving like a myrmidon every day). At least if forklift jobs are still paying what they are now, I might have a chance to start paying my own government back for that waste of time and resources I went through.
Maybe I'm just being whiny and self-absorbed here; I don't know.
I still want to keep in contact; my email address is still available through my cellphone (which was gifted to me and maintained by my parents; it seems I can't pretty much do anything on my own these days!). The interface is awful and the 3G connection is dodgy at best, but I can still send and receive basic emails and browse the internet.
*sigh . . .*
Above all, while I do intend to stick around as I can, I do want to take a moment and thank each and everyone of you for your time, patience and good humor.
