CarlinComm.com/Blog

Wow, how did this happen? I haven’t posted anything here for a whole month!

That might mean I’m incredibly lazy, or very busy! Take your pick

The good news, since the last post, our water here on the “Comm-Pound” hasn’t frozen again. In fact, its been a lot warmer, some days even slightly above freezing, and there’s been no new snow for a few weeks now.

Wow, so much time has past… Guess I can talk about the New Year at least.

I’m not going to talk about Resolutions, because frankly, I’m just about perfect anyway. (we need a different font for sarcasm, don’t you agree??)

Really, Goals and Resolutions get so much bad press. We start off the year going to change the world, and by the 3rd week of January (that would be about now) we can’t even get excited about cleaning out the cat box anymore. I heard on the radio that the 3rd Monday of January is the most depressing day of the year.I had to look that up… hmmm that was yesterday! Well, I guess if I don’t know its Monday, I don’t have too much to worry about!

A good friend of mine has a To Do list for the year, kind of like that movie, “The Bucket List”. I like that idea, and think I’ll be working on one myself. Maybe I’ll even post it here when I do it. Then in the comments you all can add what items you’d like to do this year, and we can nag each other if we forget. Good, yes?

For anyone who’s been aware of my last couple years, this may either be an obvious next step, or a shock… but either way, I’m actually trying to find one of those JOB things that everyone else is always complaning about. I mean really, those of you who have jobs sure don’t seem very happy with them. But this last year I really have to admit to myself, that the last 10 years of shooting video and photos for people hasn’t really set my world on fire. Sure, I paid my rent most months with it, and bought some Raman noodles now and then, but I am nearly exactly as broke this year, as I was the year I got out of the Navy. Only then I was in San Diego, and I had a pretty good tan. Now I’m in Alberta, and sometimes I can see my breath. In my trailer. But then the furnace kicks on, and blows fire at me, and I’m all happy again. Life is good

So, That Job thing. Kind of an interesting job market in Alberta this year, and this time of year. First off, Alberta has been THE place in Canada for finding jobs, for so many years. Half of Canada moved here it seems, to get jobs in the Oil industry, or supporting the Oil industry, or to take jobs that were vacant because those people worked in the oil industry. Then with the recent “market correction”, oil kind of slowed down. Like a lot. Suddenly oil guys were taking other jobs, anything they could get into. Leaving a lot of other people now wondering where else they should go.

So I’ve been kind of “flinging mud on the walls, to see where it might stick”, a phrase I learned many years ago. I’m sure it wasn’t from an interior decorator type person. Oh, and for the record, I don’t recommend you decorate your home by flinging mud. Just saying.

Again, I’ve been self employed since just after the Y2K computer thingy… back in 2000. Thats when I started getting paid to go to weddings and bring my cameras along. It was a sweet gig. WAS!

So now I have to dig out my resume. Can’t find a resume. Darn. Ok, go write a resume. Hmmmm. Amazingly, I actually have an incredible breadth and width of experiences to draw from. Much of it is actually real even, not like some resumes you read or hear of, where flipping burgers reads like the head chef for the Queen or something. As I wrote the resume, I actually started splitting it out into specialized resumes. I have experience as a computer tech. I’ve wired networks in buildings. I was a security guard. Actually, 2 or 3 kinds of guard… I was patrol, I was armed in a casino, and I was in the military security force, too. Then there is my time in the Navy. I was an aircraft mechanic, a tech publication librarian, a work center supervisor, a painter, a janitor / custodian, hazardous waste officer, safety officer, aircraft tow tractor driver, I have experience working on jets and helicopters, I have experience working on ships, I’ve worked as a cargo mate.

Suddenly I realized I had TOO Much experience! I mean really, who would believe me? Or worse, it looks like I’m flaky, I jumped around too much. But that’s not how it was. Sure, I did all those jobs, but some of them were at the same time. Everyone in the Navy has at least 14 jobs it seems.

In the last month or so, I’ve applied for probably 50 or 60 jobs. If I even remotely thought I was qualified, or I liked the job, or it was within 50 miles of where I live, I applied. I’ve even had some people contact me back! So we’ll see, right?

Irony, to me at least, is I really don’t want a career, exactly. Well, maybe I do. I’m still trying to get my head around that. Put it this way. The whole time I was a photographer, I never had a steady gig. I had a small group of repeat customers, but for the weddings, every week I started over. New client, new location, new problems it seemed. And I had to be everything. I had to be customer relations, marketing, management, flunkie, I made runs to the store, the post office, the bank, you name it. For that one day of “work” I ended up working a week or two.

So now, I’m a bit excited about showing up to work, doing my job, and going home, and not thinking about it, much, when I’m home. I’ll let someone else decide what I’m supposed to do next.

But here’s the cool part, to my way of thinking. I’m still thinking like a business owner at heart. While I’m working for someone else, I can still come up with some projects on my own if I want to. And with any luck now I’ll finally have some seed money. So it might not be so bad

I have other stuff to tell ya, but I think I’ll write that as a separate post, otherwise it just gets too confusing

Thanks for reading, it felt good to get that out of my head!

Carlin, eh?

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