Mass Mailing

Been working hard these past couple of days – primarily trying to find a job. Severance running out, unemployment running out, yet the bills keep coming in. A doctor who doesn’t accept my insurance and who I’ve never met is trying to get $4,000 outta me. Important children’s birthdays (and parties) coming up: Patch’s first and Little One’s fifth. A car on its last legs, sorta. A quarter-million things that need to be fixed around the house. School costs. So, the pressing urgency to find work.

As you may have heard, companies are (generally) not hiring. Fearful of the whole insurance reform disaster and a massive upsurge in payroll taxes, companies are quite hesitant to bring in new people. Unless you are some sort of super salesman who can bring in ten or twenty times your expense to the company, you’re gonna have a tough time finding employment.

Of course, simply reducing all major taxes across the board, both individual and corporate, would put this recession behind us rather quickly. But Obama does not want to do that. So, we languish, and suffer.

Anyway, I’m trying not to get too down. I just spent a little over a hundred bucks to find a job. Hopefully, I can write that off when I get my taxes done in six months. I jazzed up my resume, wrote (with some help) a really neat eye-catching cover letter designed to sell myself to the executive who will hopefully read it, and went to Staples and had 150 copies made. Then I went to the library and photocopied from one of their business directories the top 400 companies (in total sales) in my state. I also know where they’re located, how many employees they have, and what their business is. My wife and I went through the list and triaged, based on near-ness to us as well as compatibility to my personality. Bought a hundred fifty stamps from the post office and two hundred adhesive business envelopes.

Six hours it took – six hours! – to sign my cover letters, address the envelopes, stuff ’em, and slap a stamp on. Yesterday I did 96 and mailed them out this morning. Just now I finished another 18. We’re getting farther and farther away from home distance-wise, now, but I still can get another 30 out of the remainder of our list.

We’re operating under the assumption that if you throw enough spaghetti against the wall, something’ll stick.

I have a follow-up letter, too, that I’ll take to Staples in two weeks, and then the mass-mailings will begin anew.

Wish me luck, and maybe send a prayer or two our way if you’re of the praying persuasion.