Connections

This post is dedicated to my father, who is less than comfortable with the online connectedness of today's society.

I can understand this reticence intellectually, although I do not grok it personally. There's a lot out there, and much of it is Not Good. From random folks oversharing <raises hand guiltily>, to who-the-heck-knows-what-tweets'll-come-out-of-the-White-House-today, to Creepy Stalkers, the Internet can be a scary place.

But there were two incidents yesterday that really made me happy to be part of the online community.

There are a few people on LinkedIn (one of whom I know better on Facebook) who have been so helpful to me in the swamp of despair and rejection known as Job Hunting. Although I have not found what the UI people call "suitable employment" yet, these three ladies have been especially encouraging and inspiring, just by being who they are on LinkedIn. Yesterday I felt I should tell them so, in a public forum, and tagged all three of them.

One of these women is LinkedIn famous. And her mere presence (and she followed me back! How flattering!) caused a lot of hits on this thanks-for-being-you thread. One of the other tagged connections messaged me to thank me for the number of hits on her profile thereby. I did not tag people with the intention of getting hits on my profile, except possibly from the three people I tagged. But the response was amazing; I made fourteen new LinkedIn connections, thousands of hits on the thread, hundreds on my profile, and now my name is out there to so many more people. And that was in the course of one Friday the day before a holiday weekend.

The other great connection went like this. I have a group of online friends who are parents of children Abby's age; most of us have never met in person, but we have known each other for over sixteen years online. One of them has a child who is sadly unwell, and her mom posted a fundraiser request (for hospital expenses) on Facebook. Now as we all know, I have no money, so I shared it with my own (considerable number of) Facebook friends. One of them (whom I have also never met in person) not only shared, he donated.

The neighborhood Facebook page we set up has been useful again this week, as several houses at what we call "down by the front entrance" were without water for a few hours Thursday. I texted the repairs and maintenance guy, he explained the issue, and I shared on the community page.

This, my friends, is what the Internet is for. What it does when it works properly.

And in the offline community, today Lizzy and I had a playdate with a friend I've known on the fringes for a couple years now. This friend is someone I knew to say hi to at school and PTA functions, and her child (in Lizzy's grade) has also been to several classes and camps at Studio East. Lizzy says she's the nicest person in the fourth grade (I'm inclined to believe she is correct), and her mom and I are now friends too, rather than barely nodding acquaintances (who help a girl out when she's dithering over whether to go to Weight Watchers).

Community. Connections. Online or off, it's all important.

Job Depression

Depression comes in several flavors for me, and it's a fairly comprehensive list. The types are very entwined; some of it is just my brain's chemical makeup, some is grief, some is situational-but-not-directly-grief, some is body-chemistry-but-not-brain-chemistry.

It's not a good mix.

Please don't suggest meds, meditation, weight loss, Vitamin D, melatonin, counseling, etc. We're doing these things, and doing them appropriately. They've helped a lot; I can now use the phrase "widowed mom of two," for instance, without curling up into a ball. People offer to help, and although those offers (especially from family) often make me feel like an incompetent-at-life-preadolescent, I do usually take them, especially if they directly benefit the kids. Swallowing my pride over and over is not helping with depression.

But these things don't actually help a lot with the current underlying issue, which is that I need a job.

I'm working a bit on a freelance basis; textbroker.com is terrific. I've tried delivery services, though there are some technical snafus going on with that. But these are not a living in and of themselves. I don't qualify for assistance (except the food bank, according to my research) because the death benefits I get for the girls means I make too much for that. And I wouldn't want to do that anyway; I want to work. I'm not disabled, not enough to be unable to work anyway, though if you read my blog regularly you probably know that temporary emotional disability due to a death in the family was certainly a big part of the problem at my last job.

In any case, this is not meant to be (yet another) post about that whole mess; suffice it to say that I'm better now, and as long as I don't have to deal with retail or call center hours and bottom-line-only-screw-the-worker employers or irrational-Veruca-Salt customers on the daily, I could work. I could work full time and be happy and productive in it. Because the daily rejection is adding to the depression in a big big way, and as well-meaning as it is, so are the offers of help.

So here goes.

Requirements: standard work week or telecommute ability, 25 to 40 hours a week, $16+ an hour, in writing or editing or communications or software testing or even plain old data entry.

Wish List: the above, plus a few dollars an hour, close by (to northeast of Seattle) or with commute subsidy, full benefits for me and Lizzy (Abby has her own through her dad), and writing about video games (at which I'm actually pretty good, thanks, Atari/Humongous).

And for the sake of all you hold holy, please no "business opportunities." I don't have the wherewithal, financially or mentally, to start my own business or participate in your MLM.