The Unemployment Chronicles: Week 8

This week was kind of anticlimactic... and antiproductive. Don't let the somewhat negative tone of this post affect you. Sometimes moving forward is not easy or full of roses.

In the world of job searching: I applied for eight jobs between online forms and emailing people directly. The stories from the companies who are hiring is pretty much the same everywhere, "We didn't expect so many people to apply online. We had over 150 people apply for this position..." Ok hr, take a hint, the internet is kind of a big thing and it is really easy to apply to most places. Second, have you heard that unemployment is about 10%? Underemployment is over 17% as well. Thats more than one in four people in the US that aren't working as much as they would like. With those numbers in mind I am searching out other sources of income.

I opened up my coaching services to the world. My direct coaching experience is somewhat small but I've read more about running than a lot of coaches. I've also run more miles consistently than a number of coaches. While mileage is in itself not an indicator of ability to run fast, it does show how to set up a sustainable schedule for long term development.

I pulled the plug on the licensing deal with the Italian company. I'm going into production myself by outsourcing through mfg.com. I want to get it certified by the UIAA, and sell them. As far as incorporation and business law I've decided that if it looks like I am about to make enough to get out of the poverty line ($10,830) then I'll worry about legal stuff. I mean I guess they could throw me in jail but what would that accomplish? I'm so low you can't take any money away from me. Having so little money right now I think is a really good thing. I am not very vulnerable to losing my Ferrari or retirement savings. I've cut back on eating out, coffee, and the "entertainment" I pay for so I'm spending less money. Also, and this is a continuation of many things that I have said the past half year, I'm really really incredibly lovingly thankful for who and what I have. Every second is a blessing and I am not wasting my life. My friends are so valuable, more valuable than all the money I can imagine.

I discovered that for eight days I had an extra preposition in my resume. So I don't intend on getting called from any position I applied for in the last eight days because of that. Great isn't it?

I finally put my resume on my website. I have been considering it for a long time it just seemed like a waste of time and potential for stolen identity. However, I am who I am and I am 100% convinced that there is no one in the world that can be Isaiah Janzen. My hope is that someone will read one of my Abaqus posts and look for some consulting services or something and see my resume and contact me. Perhaps a head hunter might also come looking while he surfs the internet at work. I doubt it but it's up there in gory detail for the world to see.

Something my dad always suggested in our family was having nothing to hide. No locks on inside doors, no secrets, etc. I didn't always agree but as I get older it's like why not? I will not share the secrets of my friends and family because many things are not appropriate for conversation. Other things will not help anybody by being spoken about so I don't share everything. You see information is power. The more I have the more power I have. CEOs know their companies better than anyone else and thus make the big bucks. So in a way by providing more information I have more power. Who knows maybe someone will write a biography about me before I write an autobiography, if I live that long and do anything interesting...

I am working on building or rebuilding three websites and that is going slowly because I know what I want, and I haven't been able to make it happen yet. All three are designed to be able to provide me some sort of income. We'll see how many I actually take live. We'll also see if any of them actually make enough money to cover the cost of hosting.

In other news after weeks of delaying and procrastinating I am working on my Broad Peak documentary again. My goal is to finish it this week before I go to Arizona. Well, maybe I'll finish it in Arizona. Then after I send free copies to everyone that's in it, I'm going to start selling them on this website. I think this little experiment will do better than my paperback. Maybe even well enough to cover my cell phone bill.

Except for being able to pay all of my bills, I'm in no huge rush to join the 9-to-5 working for work's sake. I've been thinking about it. If my running steps it up two notches or I decide to go try some crazy climbing I could totally be a professional athlete. Watch for a post later this week titled "Colder than the Girls."

In the social and entertainment part of my life: I ran 91 miles this week. I had two good workouts and a nice medium long run. It snowed Monday and Tuesday then I was sick the rest of the week. All of that conspired to keep me from doing a long run (18+ miles) and getting the mileage that I wanted (95+). Whatever, it happened now I'm moving on. In the world of running you have to just put in the work, even when most of the workouts are not awesome and satisfying.

I have been helping out with this robotics high school group and I went down twice this week and had fun. One of the interesting things about this group is that they cut aluminum on wood work working machines. They just change the blade before they cut metal. I screwed up twice in one night by supervising the kids cutting metal with wood tools and once using a machine they weren't even supposed to use.

I watched Norwand with four of my friends. Basically there is a push in 1936 to get the first ascent of the North Face of the Eiger. Two teams of two, one German team and one Austrian team, go up and end up in one big team. They all die. But seriously? Have you watched any movie with mountaineering where someone didn't die? I haven't released my movie yet but there is a death. We all know the risk and that is part of the experience. Anyway, the movie was in German with subtitles. It was pretty good.

Here is an oil painting I made this week titled: HACE and Frostbite

The story is that these two were the first two to come down from the summit push on Broad Peak when I was at camp three. The one on the right had really bad HACE and had a high altitude porter help her down and the one on the left had frostbitten toes and was helicoptered out two days later. To the best of my knowledge there are no photos of this because at the time there were only about five people at camp three. It's kind of an impressionist style but it was also snowing when this incident took place.

What does the future hold: I'm taking off to Arizona near the end of this week! My grandparents have a condo in Sedona Arizona and I've wanted to see it in the winter for some time. There is also one person out there I plan to search out and have a meeting.