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Happy New Year 2014! Hope Nothing Breaks

At ten minutes to midnight, I turned off the television and went to bed. Kathy Griffin still had her top on and Anderson Cooper still had not penetrated a woman.

Not much else to see after watching Miley Cyrus prance around a cold stage twerking a little person with gigantic cone-shaped tits, right?

As a result, I'm sitting here in the dark at 6:30 on the morning of January 1st drinking a weird concoction of carrots, ginger and apples and waiting for the Chai tea to brew. I've already checked the job boards and I'm still not a backend developer or a digital strategist. Gosh, the jobs out there sound dirtier and dirtier.

The job boards have become a bit like that old obituary joke. If you don't see your name (or occupation) then you're still alive or unemployed.

I am still unemployed, but not for long.

You see my New Year's Resolution is to get a job. That and make sure nothing else breaks in my house, including Gordie the pug.

In 2014, I hope to become one of the more than 93 percent of Canadians who have jobs. That's pretty depressing when you think about it. Only 7 percent of us are out pounding the pavement -- okay, I haven't started pounding the pavement. What's the point? Nothing is open except the Quickie and they're not hiring anyone except people who don't mind getting shot, raped or robbed.

Yesterday, we were in the liquor store and three guys came up to Scott asking how to get into the car business. That's because all those nice folks were seasonal employees and now the drinking season is done and so are they. I hate to tell those guys with the baleful eyes that the car business sucks, especially in January when the only people who buy cars are the ones who crashed them on the way to the ski slope or granny's house.

It's going to be a long, cold winter.

I joined something called Peter's New Jobs a couple weeks ago. Got their free membership at exactly the wrong time. I looked at their meet and greets and there were exactly none, so that's a bit depressing. But next week, I'm going to go to some of these "networking" dothingies but I suspect  that the only people I'll meet will be other statistics, the sort of people you meet at those singles clubs. You know the types, the loserish people like you who have no money, no job. no prospects who walk around with a bigger cloud over their heads than Oklahoma in the fall.

Still, I'm going to endeavor to buck up and do what I can to get out there. My first task is to get a secret security clearance. Do you know how hard that is to get? In Ottawa, where I live, you need a secret clearance to work for the government. There are a million agencies in town who get paid very well to pre-qualify candidates for government work and that includes getting people like me secret clearances. I've been promised by at least ten agencies that they would do my clearance, but then, nothing. So I'm going to badger a few of those people to get my file to the RCMP stat!

It should take, oh, six months now that the RCMP has cleared all those athletes and hangers-on going to Sochi.

My next task will be working on my resume.

And what do you do, Ms. Simpson?
I'm a blogger. 
Oh, I'm sorry.

No scratch that.

I'm a multimedia specialist, a writer, an editor, a video producer, a lover of hounds and a great coffee maker.
In other words, you only have soft skills.
Correct. But I am willing to take my top off and not just in the doctor's office.

Perhaps I should go into one of those head hunting shops, the ones you pay to look over your job experience and tell you that you could be a vice-president of a company. Sadly, not in this country.

I'm 57 years old and I've only worked in somebody else's office for five years.  Hey, I've been busy!

Busy, mostly sitting on the couch trying to beat Ganon in the new Link game and writing this blog which has paid me exactly $200 in one year.

And you know what's the laugh? Everybody telling me that I shouldn't put anything out on the Internet that could be used against me in getting employment. Sheesh! Wish somebody told me that, like, three years ago.

Looking back at my long and checkered -- I mean storied -- career, I must admit I've had my ups and downs.

Some years have been better than others. Once a decade, I get a job as an executive editor at a magazine -- a position for which I am infinitely qualified. The magazine folds two years later, exactly to the day of publication of its first edition. Then it takes six years to find another job.

Seriously, is there anything more loserish in this economy than being a editor of a hard copy magazine now that everything has gone digital? I am, truly a throwback, a ludette.

In between magazine jobs, for six years, I write stuff for people at a bargain basement prices, to make just enough money to pay federal income tax. Well, pay income tax on paper.

But not this year. I'll work at the pet store if I have to, or at the grocery store or if I'm really, really lucky, I snag myself a sweet job working at Starbucks. Scratch that. I'm too old for Starbucks, so I guess my dream job will be working at Tim Horton's. Or cleaning peoples' mansions.

I need to do something to bring home the dog food.

On the upside, at least I don't live in Detroit where people get paid only seven bucks an hour and live in Detroit. Poor things, they are just now qualifying for basic health insurance. That is, if the government can get their website up and running.

A lot of people think we have it great here in Canada. I'm not sure.

It's a chicken and egg thing. We get paid more for menial work but everything costs more because everybody gets paid more for menial work.

At least we don't lose our houses when we get sick. Oh, wait, we've already lost our house because we've been unemployed so long the bank basically laughs at us when we try to get a mortgage.

Anyways, I must get back to the work of finding my dream job.

This morning, I'm going to be practising my elocution.

Hello, Professor Higgins.
Do you want fries with that?

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