Sunday Nights...

I don't know if any other unemployed people feel this way, but Sunday nights bring out a mix of emotions. It's that "oh, I don't have to be in at 8am" feeling, following by that "oh, I don't have to be in at 8am" feeling.

My house is quiet---everyone has gone to bed---and I'm sizing up what the week holds: some career networking meetings, lunch tomorrow with a professional contact I've known for several years, and most of all, HOPE.

For me, hope comes from God. I have no way to manufacture it in myself (and believe me, I've tried!). I don't watch TV news and don't read newspapers, as they are the town criers who are telling everyone that the sky is falling. I read somewhere years ago (perhaps in What Color is Your Parachute?) that even in the worst of economies (and the US has been in much more difficult times that the current one--back in the late seventies and early eighties when unemployment was higher and home-loan interest rates were ridiculous), one truth remains--YOU ONLY NEED ONE JOB! That's right. There may be millions of people looking for work, but you need only one job, not one million, so your odds are pretty good of finding one.

I've found a lot of jobs posted on the job boards (so someone is hiring), and I answer those, but I am working on building my marketing materials and my network so that more than just one person (me) is looking for jobs for me. My church (400-500 people) ran a bulletin insert today for those looking for jobs, listing the 10-second "elevator" speech with contact information, so my network just grew by an additional couple of hundred people.

The one thing I think most job hunters have an ongoing struggle with is the range of emotions and the frequency of their change that job seekers have to manage. You have to be positive to keep pushing the search for jobs, and you have to be positive to interview and network effectively. None of this is easy, I know from several job-hunting experiences, and I also know that I cannot keep all of this under control outside the love of Christ.