Tired of being unemployed...

The headline says it all, my friends.

Though I'm not completely certain if I have covered this in a previous blog the fact remains that I am beginning to believe that I am unemployable.

So you can take from this that the frustration of my forced,  nearly five year vacation is starting to grate on my nerves just a bit more as the year inches ever closer to April when it will officially be five full years since I was regularly employed.

Today was a perfect example of a day in the life of a 21st Century job searcher.

Two applications with resumes, one rejection letter in the mail. 

It's actually to the point now that I become excited at the arrival of rejection letters because it's a rare thing indeed for me to get ANY response to applications AT ALL.  I have no idea where they go when I send them, especially when it's, an online application.

There is an Internet "meme" circulating now designed to be a self-affirmation pledge which states that to be a successful person in life, one must accept the past as history and not blame personal failure on anything but yourself.

That person clearly did not have to deal with something like I've had to deal with these past five years.  During this period, I have taken great pains to stay away from placing blame on my last serious job but it's come to the point that there is no other logical explanation for why I can't find work.

More accurately, there's no logical explanation for why that is the reason why I can't find work.  Specifically, it's my belief that the calls made to my previous employer to check the reference is the reason I can't find work because the reference they give has a certain stink to it that four years cannot wash away.

All I did in losing my job was misplace a form. 

That's it.  No other violation. 

The kicker: it was in a correctional facility where officers sold inmates drugs and cellphones, female officers were frequently impregnated by the inmates, and the administration often allowed inmates to self police themselves by engaging in "fight clubs" rather than go through the disciplinary procedures that would deplete population and reduce profits that the lower functionaries and I would never see.

But I am wearing the scarlet letter because I committed an unpardonable sin of losing a piece of paper that for any other officer could have been forged (and was on a regular basis).

I'm fairly sure that of all the things the company I used to work for might say about me the fact that I lost the job over a piece of paper is played up to the degree that I'm the second gunman on the grassy knoll, John Doe #2 from the OKC Bombing or Osama Bin Laden.

In any case, that's what's on my mind today.   I'll keep towing things at the wall and see what sticks, but the more I have to do it,  the less I'm enjoying it.