I need to vent, and welcome any advice, on several matters which are somewhat entangled with each other.
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For eleven years I processed words for lawyers. Few are as efficient or as accurate as I am. So when my employer shut down in December, I thought, no problem: I’ll laze about the house until I’m sick of it, then make the rounds of the temp agencies and be back at work in no time. It didn’t work out that way. I’ve worked about three of the past seven months, and my reserve is gone. I asked my agents if there’s anything I can do to make myself more marketable; they all said “it’s not you, it’s the recession” — but ego-balm pays no bills. The dinosaurs didn’t get far by reminding themselves that Chicxulub was not their fault.<\/p>\n
You may ask why such a towering intellect spends his life at such a dead-end trade. Once upon a time I worked as a programmer; but after getting laid off the second time (1987) I said to hell with it: I wasn’t having fun anyway; couldn’t see any path from what I was doing (embedded 8bit firmware) toward anything more interesting; couldn’t face another year of rejection. I type a hundred words a minute; I can live on that. So I gave away most of my neep-neep books (I called it my Great Renunciation) and settled down to be the best damn menial office-worker you ever saw. The dollars\/stress ratio, particularly in my last job, was quite favorable.<\/p>\n
But in recent years I’ve been increasingly fidgety. I want to do something that I, at least, find interesting enough to talk about; something that won’t be obsolete in ten years. Independent of that, I’d prefer to work for a business that has real customers and a sense of progress – but nobody other than lawyers pays typists so well.<\/p>\n
What to do? One of my old stumbling-blocks has faded: unlike 1987 I now have social contacts who might be useful (if I could get back into programming at all after fifteen years), and better understanding of what they talk about at Sili Valley parties. But I’m almost phobic about talking to strangers, and nervous about any job advertised with words like ‘creative’ or ‘challenge’.<\/p>\n