It's Not Rocket Science: Week 34

Another week, another seven days which are gone from my life. That being said, it had it's life changing moments. My family and I revisited Sabetha, Kansas, our former hometown. I made several contacts there about possible jobs. They have an incredible 4% unemployment rate there! I would have never, never guessed that I might possibly move back there, but I had a great time when I lived there, and I could very well stand to have a great time again.

Other than those personal job contacts, I applied for the obligatory 17 jobs. The highlights include some of the smaller space companies with government contracts for International Space Station resupply. One of them had the most ridiculous application process. It was basically filling out a form that included everything on my resume. Why can't they just read my resume?

I celebrated Thanksgiving! Atypically, I didn't get enough turkey. The rumor around my house is that we might get a small one and make that this week, because none of us had our fill of turkey. Regardless of the food I spent a little time to think of some of the things I am thankful for. One of the things I am learning through this unemployment is how much life is not necessarily about our job. There are so many things that in my life to be thankful for that I feel ungrateful complaining about not having an engineering job where as millions of people around the world do not have clean water or any idea when they will eat again. If the rest of the world heard the way that Americans talk, I think that they would be astonished at our arrogance, ignorance, and what we take for granted. I realized this listening to one of my generation talking this week.

It was also the first time in seven years that I have been able to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family and that was quite nice. Family is awesome!

I ran 65 miles including a 10k run that I raced to sixth place. I was first in the 20-29 age division, getting beat by a teenager and 43 year old, but no 50+ men or any women! The two races this summer that I ran I was beaten by women, both times former olympian women. I also took two days off from running, one planned and other inconvenienced by my driving shift through Iowa from 1:30 AM to 5:30 AM. I am really good at driving long distances. I knew I would drive through the worst part. It was fine though, turn on Pandora and go. Piece of cake.

No Janzen Gear news or new paintings. I did start a Squidoo Lens about choosing hangboards. I read three free ebooks from Seth Godin on the trip to Sabetha, as well as reading Seth's blog sometimes. The concept of a lens is pretty cool, like Wikipedia, but more subjective and detailed.