Brother, Can You Spare a Job? An Interview? Anything?

The Minnesota workforce centers are closed state wide do to the gov't shut down.  They provide assistance to unemployed people: classes on interviews, resumes, employment opportunities.  I have been looking for a job for 18 months now and haven't gotten a single interview; just a collection of thank you emails from companies for sending in an application and my resume.

Is it better to cold call or pound the pavement?  Is it OK just to walk in and ask?  Or do I need to make arrangements beforehand?  Wither by internet or newspaper.  It seems that if you ask five HR people, you'll get five different answers to each question. With no repeats!  THAT is what frustrates me more then anything.  You can't create a strategy and stick with it.  You have to constantly change up what you're doing.  You need to have a dozen or more variations on your resume/cover letter depending on what you are going for.  Green lights for one interviewer are red lights to another.  Worst of all you don't get any feed back afterward because that requires calling and that makes you seem desperate and that turns them off to you.  WHY???? Why does wanting the job make you not a fit??????  Why does wanting to please make them not consider you????  And don't get me started on those questioners where you have 50 minutes to fill out 100 questions and there questions you really have to think about but you can't you need to finish in the time limit, and worst of all half the questions have nothing to do with the job you're applying for!!!!!  And they'll repeat the same one worded 10 different ways.   AAARRRAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Sometimes it feels like I have to blackmail or threaten someone to even get a foot in the door.  We're in end of my rope territory here.  I just don't know what else to do.  

A CPAP For All Seasons

To insure the best fit, this man has no nose.

This fine morning I went down to Arrow-med and received my new CPAP machine.  For those of you wondering, the machine forces moisturized air through your wind pipe, forcing it to stay fully open thus counter acting the sleep apnea which restricts air flow and leads to you sounding like a grizzly with bronchitis operating a buzz saw under a 747.  This ups oxygen in the blood and helps you slumber the sleep of comas.   

The element most important to the success is the mask.  They come in all shapes and sizes.  From small nose only models to full face masks that look like the diving helmets from The Abyss.  The best way to describe how it feels is how Tia put it, "drowning on air".  You feel like you're going to suffocate even though you can feel air coming in.  The machine I have starts low and then adjusts to my "prescribed pressure" as I fall asleep.  There is an unusual feeling in breathing in and out and not being able to tell its happening.  The first mask on my nose pulsated like a frog's throat sack, and the pressure was way too high.  After several adjustments and breathing exercises out of a Lamaze book, we had the right one.   

When I was younger I had this bizarre ability to stay up for a couple days at a time with out aid from caffeine.  I did this so as to have more time to myself and equal out time I was happy with time I was sad (aka in school).  As I've gotten older, sleep is more important, a nap now and again is good for the mind.  I wonder what I'll be like with more energy?  I might get off my ass and exercise.  And losing weight may even undo the need for the CPAP!  Or nor.  We'll see.