An introduction, one last stand

Well, it looks like I have showed up a little late for the party on this one - Bernie already got this blog off to a rousing start. Hopefully, I, Drew, can continue to convey the same frantic, spastic energy that Bernie has.

First, let's rewind to May 2008, when it all began. College graduation was upon us, and the world was our oyster. Or, at least, it would have been under different circumstances. Little did we blue-robed graduates know that the world we expected to be there was about to be pulled out from under us, and instead of working together to create a new and better world full of green energy and breakthrough technology, we entered into a vicious dogfight, drooling and barking over the scraps of a broken job market.

I can't begin to express how strange it is to be reading about the collapse of the financial system (and everything that goes with it) while you're expecting to get your start in the world. By some combination of luck and skill, I managed to make it out of the cave that first time, and in a way that made me feel like I was progressing toward something greater. At a small Connecticut nonprofit (which shall remain unnamed), I did the kind of work that Bernie so desperately desires - making and taking an epic amount of phone calls, shouldering project assignments, doing slave work, and generally sucking up.

I knew it would just be a first step - the world of nonprofit organizations is notoriously tough to break into - but I didn't know that the second step would make for such an impossible climb. The closer I looked into what I had gotten myself into, the less fortuitous it seemed. I never minded the sheer volume of work that made up my day, but the division of it plunged me into office politics that I otherwise would have stayed out of. Indeed, the whole structure of the office was not ready for another person, as the same few people had worked together for so long; additionally, talk of money problems began to surface behind closed doors. My hours were reduced (instead of raised, as promised), and from there, the writing on the wall became visible.

That was March of last year, and my life has taken some strange directions since then. Even with so much talk of a bad economy around me, I thought that there still must be some strategy that would get me a new job. Despite a move to the Boston area, where the grass seemed greener, that job never showed its face to me, and now I find myself in a near-empty room, weeks from making another move back home.

Where do I go next? I'm not even sure about that. It seems like a bad time to take any step - the job market at home is still unsatisfactory, graduate programs are expensive, and, for the life of me, I can't seem to figure out what it is that I really want to do. Thus, this blog was born, as an outlet for energy and a cure for boredom. Stay tuned for more posts examining the unemployed life from all angles.