The Modern Hobo's Lament

Just a quick blog entry to share with you readers what in the hell my business is morphing into. Well, just as my personal life has been in major upheaval and constant state of flux for about the past year and a half so has my business. I don't know how many of you out there have noticed but I suspect those who have were shaking their heads at many junctures. It actually started just after the death of my father last April 14th. This inevitable event is a significant point in any man's life. Freeing in some ways and confusing in many others. On one hand I was free to do anything I wished without that voice on my right shoulder saying "What would Dad say?" to anything I did. No more would I have to register Republican yet vote Democrat or agree that Roy Clark was a better guitar player than Clapton or have to try to explain Mick's gyrations onstage or agree that we didn't need our own swimming pool because they have a perfectly good one down at the Rec Center. I could put my cart before my horse any damned time I wanted to damn it!

Then again, there were many other things that I must then send up a posthumous "you were right" to like wishing I had finished college and at a minimum gotten my bachelors degree, even if it was in interpretive modern dance, it didn't matter as long as I had the sacred sheepskin. There I was at 52 years old, a ten year gap of employment history due to caring for Dad full time in his last years and going forth attempting to reenter the job market with only a Community College Associates Degree and my horse tripped over the cart and fell down and bumped it's head. All of a sudden CEO's and billionaires were 25 years old and post IPO retirement age was no greater than 35 and gone was the "pension" and "home appreciation" and secure blue chip investments. Score one big one for Dad! So after sending out over 1,500 resumes in the past year with not one single call for an interview it doesn't look like I'm a very desirable commodity. I was a decade ago what changed? Well crossing the big 5-0 line is about akin to job hunting suicide. Then there's a spotty credit history and sub 600 FICO score and a rather lengthy history of brushes with Johnny Law and now this glaring ten year gap and the lack of a 4 year degree. Never mind that I have been building social networks and managing social media campaigns back since Web 1.0 and I finally was ahead of the learning curve of the masses for once in my life on a very hot subject. The kids with 4 years dance degrees had developed automation apps that could do what I did on auto pilot PLUS spit out great analytics and statistics better and faster than I could so I caught a good breeze as that train blew by me and I was back sitting by a rail yard campfire toasting a hot dog on a stick with a bunch of fellow hobos of this century's depression even though we keep our blinders on and don't call it such. Humph! What to do? What to do? Was the hobo's lament. Somewhere tonight there's a portable 8 track playing Framton Comes Alive as the the hobos pass a doob around the campfire.

More in Part II

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