another weekend, another set of "to-dos" that will be left undone (again!)... for some reason I cannot find the motivation to clean, exercise, run errands, etc. Maybe this is because ever since I lost my job i have no real schedule... and since I can just make it up as i go along, i tend to put things off. I'm sure i am not the only person who feels this way, but when you're feeling unfinished and misshapen on the inside, it usually shows in the way your house looks... how neat you are, etc. so, i am hereby giving myself a break. I vow to read, watch a movie, cook something yummy, take a leisurely walk and give myself a pedicure BEFORE I do anything else. (now, watch me put THAT off too!)

Craving structure and time mgmt skills!

okay, it's 11:53 and i should be asleep, right? well I just had to do something fun before turning in for the night. after all, I just spent the past six hours (or more) reinstalling windows xp, microsoft office, my printer, skype, odesk team, all my favorites, google toolbar, gmail, blogspot, and so many other things that make my life complete. I got the dreaded windows system32 ntoskrnl virus and had to reinstall everything. in the process I lost all my data, so i guess you could say i learned my lesson. BACK UP YOUR DATA!
And just one thing before I go (I must get the blood flowing to my legs after sitting for WAY too long)... I hope Sergio really kisses Lauren tomorrow.... I really, really do. (c'mon Serg, you can do it - and Lauren, what is so wrong with wearing some lip gloss, really?)
And one more thing - i really really hope i get the job at i-marketing... interview is in 8.5 hours! the only thing i won't be happy about is the drive to princeton every day... i was really starting to like the "content creation" business. too bad it doesn't pay well enough!

rainy, rainy monday

Here I go again... blogging when I should be job searching! I never realized how everything seems to come down to "optimization" these days... in other words, it's not just for search engines any more. Now our resumes all need to be "optimized" for specific, job-related keywords. I learned this when I applied for a new business development position (for which I am the perfect candidate, by the way!) and was told I didn't have enough experience in business development (or selling new accounts) to qualify for an interview. Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard that... anyone who looked at my resume would have clearly seen that this is not only a huge part of my background, it is my "forte"! But the recruiter said I needed to "incorporate specific keywords into my resume" in order to PROVE this to the hiring company. Apparently, no one even reads your resume anymore... they just scan it for specific keywords, same way Google scans gazillions of pages of web content to find the most relevant pages for your search. If the keywords aren't in there - in significant numbers - your resume just gets overlooked. After learning this new little tidbit of job-searching wisdom, I'm tempted to create a resume that makes absolutely no sense, has no complete sentence structure, and relates nothing about my 20+ years of experience... rather, I will simply repeat the relevant keywords throughout every paragraph and bullet point, and see if that will land me an interview. Should be an interesting experiment...

Meanwhile, a word of advice to all "traditional media" people (newspaper veterans, radio and broadcast, even outdoor advertising sales reps): Be aggressive... B-E- AGRESSIVE! Before long, you will be fighting for your life in an even larger pool of potential employees in already oversaturated job market. With just about every major newspaper and traditional media company about to go belly-up, there will be a huge (and I mean huge!) influx of unemployed media people out there with you looking to "break in" to the digital space... so be sure to "optimize" your resume with all the really cool interactive buzzwords that they haven't learned about yet. It will be the only way to compete in what promises to be dog-eat-dog job market.

Enough said.

okay, lauren talked me into this, so i guess i will have to write something now... hmmm.... maybe i should have named this blog something else, like "i'd rather be watching anderson cooper", or "iwishihadajob" or "iwishilookedlikemegryan"... but i guess i'd really rather be in paris, even if it has been SEVENTEEN YEARS AND 5 DAYS SINCE I'VE BEEN THERE!!!!! so, this is what blogging is like huh... like why would anyone even want to read this besides me? well maybe if i'm famous someday, someone will find this blog in the blogspot archives and publish it into a bestselling book, so i better be on my best behavior (kinda takes the fun out of it though!). one thing i will say is that it's better than twitter. i was having a hard time fitting all my thoughts into 140 characters, and some really creepy people started following me. there's definitely something sinister about twitter, i just haven't figured out what it is yet.

well, goodnight and happy april fools day!