inertia begets inertia (a rant)

so... the problem with someone who has been out of work for ages and ages - even if they claim they've been looking for that whole time - is that it shows that they have pretty much given up, or at least that there is some kind of fundamental problem with their "job search." No one goes (in one case) ten years without finding even one job... I think at that point they've just set their sights too high, or demand too much money, or somehow want more than they're owed. And so they're stuck.

If you're an electrician, for example, and you haven't worked in a decade, it's not because you're "unlucky" (as one person claimed), it's because you want too much. Eventually, for instance, anyone else would break down and go wait tables or work at the Home Depot or even flip burgers something - anything to keep even a little bit of money coming in, and to stay active and interactive, and to at least have something on your resume, even if it's not your "chosen career path." In other words, if you haven't worked in ten years - failing some legitimate sort of restricting disability - either you're proud, or you're lazy, or both.

Sure it's hard being a degreed astrophysicist with a brain the size of a pumpkin and not being offered a job heading up NASA, but so figure out another way to get there: volunteer at the local planetarium, write a few articles about how small-minded Stephen Hawking's "theories" are and send them to Scientific American, build yourself a time machine and teleport yourself back to the last time you had a job... y'know, be creative. Because once you have stopped creating, stopped putting your brain to work - daily - on the things you are good at, you're done. I mean shit man, sign yourself up for a Halo tournament and kick everyone's ass if that's what's floating your boat these days... but just go out there and try to make something of yourself (!), however you can.

If not, that's totally your decision, but don't then whine to everyone around you about your ten- year run of "bad luck" on the job market. It's just not true, and we all know it.