Those of you who have read my diaries long enough know about the struggles I've had looking for work. Well, a couple weeks ago, I simply quit looking. Instead, I volunteer for my county doing what I had done as a paid intern in the hopes that the higher ups will find the budget to hire me, unlikely as that seems, but hey, I have to do something to maintain my sanity.
I'll go more into the reasons why I stopped looking below the squiggly.
First of all, the private sector where I live is a ghost town. In over a year that I've spent looking for jobs, I've had a few interviews here and there, but no callbacks whatsoever. I've done everything I can to find a job, and where I volunteer is probably the closest I've ever gotten to obtaining one.
Vocational Rehabilitation and similar services in my county barely function due to the continuous theft by the cronies who refer to themselves as 'elected' officials, and colleges and other institutions are even worse.
Just before I graduated, a job fair was held where I went to school, and what disgusted me the most is that not a single table had companies or people hiring for what I or most folks there had trained for. What I did see was companies like Target, McDonalds and Chick Fil-A. Sure, there were a couple of tech companies, but they wanted experienced programmers with master's degrees.
Worst of all was that the so-called career specialists were telling me I had to be 'open minded'. They may as well have said 'Just take what you can get and shut the fuck up', because that's exactly what I hear when people tell me to be open minded.
As some of you know, I'm working on getting my license, since it's the only way anything I do will be taken seriously by employers, or so it seems. It's funny how all these organizations pay lip service to giving us a chance to be productive citizens, and yet when it comes to doing the deed, nothing materializes.
This is why sometimes I feel so resentful and angry, as do so many other people in similar situations. It's not that we're unwilling to do the work expected of us. It's the fact that top-heavy employers deny us the chance. Despite the pretty speeches about how people should get educated or about how folks with disabilities manage to rise despite our hardships, it doesn't mean shit in the real world where the only thing that matters is how much profits a business makes every quarter.
So in closing, I only have this to say: We work hard. We take our punishment. We sacrifice. We do everything we can to prepare ourselves to be self sufficient, so how about giving us a chance for once, instead of just talking about it?
See you around,
Homer