Spending the way I want to (and not feeling bad about it)

After reading a personal finance blog today, I realized that I needed to sit down and map out where I wanted my money to go. I've had my tax rebate for a week. It's been simmering in my account and I've been terrified that I would spend it on bills or a mess of small purchases before I had a chance to do something with it that was meaningful. So I laid out a plan. Keep in mind that I'm unemployed, so my plans are forecasts for a very immediate future. Meaning I only plan two to four weeks ahead.

I have roughly three different sets of income coming in, and I'm working on a fourth. Doesn't sound quite like unemployment, I know, but most of these are contract-based arrangements. And I don't plan on being a contractor, so I consider myself still unemployed. So the fact that I have money coming in is the part of my planning that's most successful at the moment.

Of those combined incomes, I'm saving about one third. We all know that nothing is permanent right now. And why would we want it to be? Permanence means there's no room for change. Change in a bad economy can mean you may end up lost, with no solid path to follow. And that can be the most exciting thing in the world. It can help you achieve clarity.

When I sat down to iron out my financial plan (only for the next few weeks, of course), I thought about what I have coming up, which is a lot. I'm flying to Seattle for a weekend, driving to Memphis for another weekend, and driving to Chicago for another weekend. And none of these trips are business-related. I'm not a financial prude, so to speak, but I do like to be frugal when I can. Because frugality doesn't mean being cheap, but it means knowing what is going on around you and using your resources most efficiently in light of that. So I'm going to defend my spending.

A great part of being unemployed is having the opportunity to get to know yourself better, and to build your personal relationships. And I don't mean networking relationships, although that's also a good plan. But what I mean is your basic relationships, like those with your family. These are the important ones because they most immediately affect your happiness.

All of the trips I'm taking satisfy that need. Plus two of them are cultural. Ultimately, the decisions I'm making about my career will be better because I'm not using every minute of my time to worry about it, but I'm also working on myself and doing things that matter to me. And I feel like a person who can do this really has it all together.

The point is that as long as you're planning, you should handle your personal finances in whatever way works best for you. Also, take my advice and don't be too frugal to do things for yourself - they'll make you a better planner anyway.

Building my network (or the lack thereof)

This is another post about my unemployed self. (After this, I'll get to Chapter 2 in the story, so stay tuned.) I have started to wonder, considering I have a pattern going of writing about my career status, and considering this blog is still relatively new and not quite nailed down on any one piece of subject matter, if perhaps I should make the blog about my journey through the job market.

But I think that's a bit too trite for the current times, unless what I was seeking out with the blog was a meaning-of-life realization that could potentially help other people in my situation. And then I wouldn't get to write fiction.

So in resisting yet another blog reflection piece that's rising up in my throat, instead I'm going to talk about where I am in my life and why I have not nailed any job interviews. The most surprising thing about the job market is that it has kicked everyone's ass. Even though we all know how tough things are, you are never quite prepared enough for unemployment. I wasn't even shocked when my boss sat me down and explained that the company was buckling down which unfortunately meant that my position was to be eliminated. But no matter how much you think it or say to your friends, "Yeah, I saw it coming" and no matter how many times you hear from your folks, "You'll be fine" you're still not in a place you want to be. And if you had the choice you wouldn't be there either.

When you're stuck in a situation you're not prepared for, there are all these preparedness strategies and planning steps that ideally you want to take before you get to the point where you're stuck, like building your network. Unfortunately even though the job market is bad there are a lot of people like me who didn't prepare. The job I was laid off from was my first job out of college. So I was just beginning to build the first morsels of a foundation for my professional network. Unfortunately, I didn't care about it enough then. I didn't know anyone, and I certainly wasn't thinking ahead.

You may think a professional network is not useful unless you're looking to make a move. But actually, when your career is at its peak, or when you're in a place where you're building strong relationships with clients and other people in your business and you're happy, that's the ideal time to do a little side work on your network. And it will be easier then because you'll be a positive force and you will come across as likable as opposed to someone who is desperate.

The problem with trying to establish connections when you're in the here and now of your job search is that the people you talk to likely have lots of other people who are also talking to them about the market and where they want to go in the industry, etc. And why would these professionals pick you out of a stack of names of people they only know through acquaintances of acquaintances? You're getting more value out of the meeting than they are. They are doing you a favor, and what do you have to offer them?

Right now one out of every twenty people doesn't have a job, so it's likely that professionals established in their jobs have friends who are looking. And they will give preference to people they know well and like as opposed to people who seem nice but who are needles in the haystack.

So the point of this post is that I used to think networking was lame. I'm not very good at confronting people with the intent of making them one of my contacts, even if my method is good - if I got to know them casually and made sure we talked every now and then, not even bringing up the fact that I wanted to possibly use them to my advantage in the future. But I've come to see the value in having a professional network, not only for yourself but for your friends and for those kids like me who will come to you for help down the road. Plus it's always good to know people because having lots of options is good for you.

I'm now working really hard on my network. I'm not schmoozing because I'm no good at schmoozing. But I'm sort of schmoozing in my own way. I'm building my connections by being helpful. I feel that if I offer myself to them, as a consultant, a volunteer, or otherwise, they'll one day remember that nice chick who helped them out. And doing things for other people makes me feel good.

So trust me, take this advice and start now, no matter where you are in your career.

The Season: Chapter 1

The wards were all full now, even the ones at the hospital in Galvin, an empty brick building owned by the state and the only one not being completely converted to a living care center. Its sign was still buried in the bank from a two-year-old flood which left much of the main levels warped and smelling of fish. The rehabbed wards were on level four, and once off the elevator, it was as if you had stepped out of the ruins and were seeing what the architecture was like in its prime. The housing was only for those in the latest stage of the cancer. The ones who had to be monitored constantly and sheets and bed clothes changed and foreheads patted with cold cloths. The ones who had to be treated after being treated to prevent the collapse of their nervous systems and the shriveling of their organs.

There were methods of keeping things orderly and they went something like this: the farmers brought their seeds to the organic growing houses on the first of the month, and lines of them waited, some for over an hour. They handed in their seeds along with the trade paperwork, which showed the amount of acreage that was preferred for each crop, what its primary use was to be, which was most often one of two things – human consumption or livestock feed – and then the farm code. It was easily an all-day event, many of the farmers coming from wealthy corporate land shares south of Carmine, so they had hundreds of acres of crops to switch out. They were the wealthy farmers, and you could tell from anywhere you stood when they showed up. Their boots were pure brown leather and they had the look of heavy set preachers, not field men. Their skin was not as grooved and their hands were always clean. They were over a three hours drive away, which was why the first had become the general “planting” day for most.

Planting was at the beginning of the month, and crop collecting time was middle of the month. After the state started the houses, they came up with a system that would set the course for when sickness fell across the country. They did a pre-planting-season crop that came up around the first part of spring, and when they began collecting seeds, the workers in the org houses would grow those crops throughout the summer to be used for fall, and in the winter they would treat the land and grow only in the temperature-controlled greenhouses.

John Delafont was poor, a word which he didn't even know well. His want in life was to build his own house, which he did, and to be completely responsible for his family, which he was. Carmine was a community of small farms, and if anyone had to be in such a situation as the poorest of the farmers in Carmine, it would be the Delafonts. They were the most accepting of the families. John and Dorene had two sons, Frank and Alan. By the time the cancer had set in for both boys, John had already made the decision to do the planting himself, but he hadn't told Dorene.