As one of my favorite holidays of the year approaches, (what could be better than gathering with friends and family and eating?) I try to remind myself of what I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving and how it relates to my job hunt:
I'm especially thankful for the family and friends who have encouraged me during my job hunt and who try to help in many ways.
I'm also thankful for the many part-time jobs I have and to the state unemployment department for keeping me off the streets by providing me some money in exchange for my hard work or my taxes. It seems like every day I add up how much I'm making, or about to make, from my part-time work, so that I'm sure I'm making progress. I've detailed these before, but here are the many jobs and/or projects I'm working on that are either bringing in a semi-regular paycheck or I hope will soon someday:
1.
United Reporting. A great company that has treated me well as I collect police arrest logs for them.
2. AOL's personal finance site,
WalletPop.com, where I'm among a host of bloggers who
write daily. I've said it before, but if you want to read my stuff that would have made it to this blog, at least some of it, then bookmark this:
http://www.walletpop.com/blog/bloggers/aaron-crowe/It's a Web site I plan on writing more for, and a job for which I'm very grateful for because this blog led me to it.
3.
Spot.us, a community funded reporting Web site where "crowdfunding" is used to raise money for serious journalism in the Bay Area. I have two
story pitches there,
one of which I plan on writing soon.
4. Writing, editing and designing city newsletters. With only one client so far, the work is sporadic but gives me hope for the future. This is work that I think will start to increase early next year as I push to plant more seeds for my consulting business.
5. Investigative work for a company that does background checks on executive hirings. Early next year I expect this job will start, where I'll go to courthouses and gather public documents on potential hires.
6.
RedwoodAge.com, a Web site devoted to people 45 and older. It's an Internet startup in Mill Valley and so far I'm not making money at the
blogging and few
stories I do for the site, but I hope it will someday pay off well, as many people who work at startups look for.
7.
The Public-Press.org, a noncommercial news site for the Bay Area that is expected to go live with news in January. The site is already running, and for now mostly deals with the need for alternate media. I'm volunteering at this Internet startup as an editor, although I don't expect it to be a paying job anytime soon. For now I'm helping coordinate stories and I'm also
blogging about the media.Lots of work, although I'm trying to concentrate on the actions that pay and less on the ones that don't, because bills still have to be paid. I'm writing in four blogs, only one of which pays, so some of that writing may have to be cut back. All of that doesn't leave me much time to look for full-time work, which is my ultimate goal, so it may soon be time to rethink my strategies. My hope is that some of these part-time jobs and volunteer work will lead to full-time work somewhere down the road. This blog, a non-paid effort, led to a part-time gig for AOL, so at least that worked.
For all that, and all of you faithful readers, I'm thankful. Have a nice Thanksgiving.
For the unemployed, it's a shock to learn that the IRS wants your money, even if you didn't earn a paycheck in 2008. If you earned some money -- through unemployment benefits, part-time work or pulling money out of a 401(k) plan -- among other things, then you must file a tax return. Today I wrote about this issue for the unemployed for WalletPop.com.
I continue writing for RedwoodAge.com, and today I wrote and blogged about Rickey Henderson on RedwoodAge.com and his election to the baseball Hall of Fame. I wrote about how Henderson is an iconic baseball player for many Baby Boomers, and was my favorite baseball player growing up.
The marketing of Aaron Crowe looks to get a bit interesting this week as a guerrilla job search firm has offered to help me rework my resume. If I like the service, I'll promote it here and tell my friends, family, etc. I was laid off more than six months ago and figure I might as well try something different. I'll give it a try and report what's happening here so other unemployed people can learn from it and apply it to their job search too.
I've written here before about non-profits and not-for-profits and why I'd like to work at one. I expanded on that idea for this WalletPop story about how not-for-profits need more workers than for-profit businesses, and how they pay a little more. Interesting stuff from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, one of my favorite places to get job data.
A comment was recently made by a WalletPop reader on my story about callbacks for job interviews. He didn't gain anything from the story, which is fine, and he made a point that I think is worth remembering in the search for a job. The full letter is linked to the story, but this is part of what he wrote:
As I've said in previous posts, I'm not big into New Year's resolutions, but I plan on a few this year, one big, one small: Finding a career where I can have an impact, and being better organized.
My year in review:
This is one of the early photos I took of Emma, and one I'm most proud of. Not only is it adorable, which I'm bound by law to say as her father, but I like it as a black and white photo. I wish I had taken more black and white. This doesn't have much to do with my job search, but has a lot to do with the other aspect of this blog, which is how the job hunt affects my time with my daughter. Partly it has by allowing me more time with her, such as the time I took off over Christmas that I might not have had if fully employed.
Once again, I give thanks to United Reporting for being such a kind employer. One of the bosses there sent me a box of candy with a Christmas card, note and best of all, a $50 gas card at Arco. While that may not sound like a lot to Google employees or others, it's a lot to someone like me who has spent his entire career working at newspapers. I won't again go into the meager Christmas thanks I've received at newspapers for a year's labor, but it was rarely this good, and not even close in recent years.
It's amazing what having a job, although a small one, with Internet giant AOL can do. Not only am I getting paid to write about personal finance at AOL's WalletPop.com Web site, but my personal blog about looking for work in these troubled economic times is seeing a huge increase in page hits, etc. since I started writing for WalletPop on Nov. 11. And thus my money from Google's AdSense program is turning from a few cents into a few dollars.
Exactly two months after I started this blog, it has led to a paid job blogging for an AOL web site about personal finance.
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