A few Laid-Off Lessons

Being laid off was not a great experience.  It was the first time I had ever involuntarily left a job.  But I suppose it’s better than being fired.  It wasn’t my fault, I was just a victim of poor financial standing by my former employer.  But unexpectedly having to search for a new job was stressful, although it was pretty nice to have 3 and a half weeks to just kind of hang out and relax.  During my time off I learned a few things and made a few interesting observations with the extra time I had.  Some laid-off lessons if you will.

1. Craigslist is a decent place to find a job. Believe it or not the job I currently have was found this way, and the only other interview I had also came from Craigslist.  As long as you can comb through all of the scams and creepy old men looking for personal massage therapists to work out of their basements you can find the diamonds in the rough.  Craigslist is a free job posting board, while sites like Monster and Career Builder cost money to list jobs, so small businesses and local companies use it to save money.  You may not find a CEO level job here but it’s not bad for lower level positions.
2. I am not qualified to bus tables. That’s right, I couldn’t even get a call back to any place I put in an application.  I applied to well over a dozen part-time, minimum wage, restaurant positions in Jacksonville and couldn’t even get a sniff of interest.  Most restaurants wanted a few years of experience which I sorta kinda don’t  have. I worked five years in food service, not in a commercial restaurant, but five years of food service experience.  Maybe since I was a salaried managed for a major food service company I'm over qualified? Or maybe my lack of experience waiting tables makes me under qualified? Either way I'm undesirable.
3. Jacksonville is really nice this time of year.  I just threw that one in there to rub it in to everyone back home.  70 degrees in January and very sunny.  
4. Reading and writing are all kinds of fun. I had lots of time to write (this blog) and read some good books. And it was really refreshing to spend more time using my brain instead of melting it away in front of the TV.  I’d recommend it to everyone.
5. Working out and eating healthy leads to getting in better shape.  I think everyone probably already knew that, but I actually had the chance to follow through with it for a month at a time.  I lost 8 pounds in a month, which wasn’t really my intention but I guess it doesn’t hurt.  And I kind of like running for an extended period of time again.
6. Learning new stuff is both fun and rewarding!  Okay so that sounds a little corny but it’s pretty accurate.  I taught myself HTML programming and feel pretty smart right now.  I had turned my academic brain off since graduating college so it was good to see it still works.
7. Starbucks is busy at every hour of the day.  I started going to a few different Starbucks in town to get out of the house while writing or working on my programming book at various times during the day, and I always had a hard time finding a place to sit.  There was almost always a line.  And their new blonde coffee blend is pretty good.
8. Red Box was a really good invention. I can remember the days of Blockbuster and paying like $6 to have a movie for 4 days.  Why was that an accepted way to rent movies for so long?  Why did we ever need movies for more than 2 days?  Most people pick up a movie to watch it that day or the next, and once they’ve watched it they’re done with it.  But with Blockbuster you had the option to watch it for 3 more days if you wanted.  No wonder they went out of business so quickly.
9. I like sleeping in. Nothing else really needs to be said about that one.
10. I like money.  Or I like having money.  Well, I like having enough money to not have to worry about spending an extra dollar or two here or there.  Okay, so I don’t know what that actually feels like, but I know what the opposite of that feels like and I know that I don’t like it.  Hmmm. Goal: Make more money. Or win the lottery.
11. Craigslist probably took someone about 10 minutes worth of programming to make. After completing and intro to programming and HTML book I could make a site like Craigslist.  But I don’t think I would change anything about it, because it coincides with the shady nature of many of the people advertising on there.  Maybe that’s what the creator was going for.
12. Don’t ever watch any of the free movies Comcast has available for you OnDemand.  They’re all really bad. I would prefer any SiFi movie over one of those rotten tomatoes.
13. Harrison Ford was in really good shape in the early 80’s.  Watch BladeRunner, you’ll see what I mean. On a related note, I have learned that not everyone that lived in the 80’s was out of shape.

You may find some of these helpful, but probably mostly worthless.  Either way, thanks for reading.  And even though no one ever listens, please, leave a comment. They’re fun.