So How's The Job Search Going, You Ask. Part II.

Playing in the background: Vangelis, "Monastery of La Rubida"
Meters swum today: None. 2000 yesterday, though. Go me!

Well, let's see. Monday I had a really good interview with a recruiter. She gave me a little fishy hand squeezy thing. I'm extremely fond of all things fish (and yes, they are delicious, and yes, I do feel a tad guilty for eating them because they're friends) but anybody who gives me a little fishy hand squeezy thing is automatically cool.

The rest of the week has been pretty slow, though. Except I stumbled onto a web site called "LawCrossing." It's what we call a "job aggregator," which means, the nice folks who work there go to all the Web sites and the law journals and the newspapers and anywhere else jobs might be posted and put them all in one place. I am seeing jobs here that I have never seen anywhere else, and three of them were for litigation paralegals who do exactly what I was doing, so that is awesome. The only thing about this site that I don't like is that it's not free. It's not very expensive, though, and I can cancel whenever I find work. I may not want to. This site is totally cool. I've been all over it most of today reading articles, looking at statistics and lots of other neat stuff. You can apply for jobs all over the world with this thing (though not Ireland, unfortunately - maybe it's just too new.)

This week so far I've applied for 8 positions. That's actually a little low - I did 23 last week. Most of em tend to be at the end of the week, though. I think that's when people give notice, hiring managers panic, and the ads hit Craigslist. (Also an offbeat and interesting source of legal jobs, just incidentally.)

An old recruiter friend was advertising a night word processor gig. I applied for it and she said she'd send my resume along. Working nights isn't exactly my favorite thing, but I've done it before, I'm good at it, and if I get to sleep till noon every darn day, what the hell. Actually I'd be getting off at midnight so there'd be no need to sleep until noon. When I worked for the Feds I got off at 3:30 am, drove an hour home and usually got to bed around 5 am. It's very quiet in the world at that particular time of day. Moving to the day shift after that was like adventures in fast forward. On the plus side, though, I got to take the train.

So I guess it's going. Everything's moving very slowly right now. There are a LOT of really good people out of work, so firms can afford to be very choosy and take their time. I don't think I'm going to get the position in Fort Worth but I guess that could still happen. (sigh) And God knows I'm looking for work and he'll find me the right job. I just need to keep doing my part, putting in applications, networking, etc etc.

Incidentally, if you ask 10 Buddhists if they believe in God, you'll get 20 different answers and 40 deep philosophical discussions. For my part, I believe that we are all part of the same being, a great and universal mind-consciousness that encompasses all the living beings there ever were, are and will be, and that each of us is one small part of this consciousness living out experiences unique to us for the enlightenment of all, and that together we have a collective wisdom that transcends all of our individual failings and makes us glorious in our nobility. Which is just easier to call God. So I do.