Today I began what I call the 'passive' phase of job hunting.

This is where you go through your email archive from your last job hunt & note down the recruitment agency names. Not the names of the *people* you dealt with, just the agencies. Recruitment agencies, perhaps ironically, have a high turnover, & it doesn't pay to become too fond of any one person.

So you take the agency names & you find their websites & you send in your resume as often as you can. Plus you set up all the 'job alert' profiles so that your inbox is flooded with lists of exciting & invigorating roles just begging for exactly the kinds of skills it's taken decades for you to cultivate. Job Hunting, you tell yourself, Is Fun!

Then you further tell yourself you'll actually start doing something more pro-active tomorrow. Or ... next week.

My stars warned me (Rob Breszny, he's so nuts:) that my gods were about to appear as pathologies (see? nuts) this week, but once I learned to listen to them, their true natures would be revealed. Indeed, I do have a dull ache in the back of my right hand -- no doubt the action of one of my gods trying to stay my hand when it comes to the job application stuff. Of course.

Perhaps I am meant to spend several more weeks at home. Which, indeed, I hope to do. Except for a few days next week when it will actually be impossible to stay in my house because (for all those who have been asking) the stairs are being installed!

That staircase really fired people's imaginations. Y'all just hanging out to hear more about stairs, ain't yer? (Closed rise, open stringer, Sydney Blue Gum, one story, with winder, steel bannister with Gum handrail, replacement for a now-illegal narrow terrace-style staircase.)

As there is not enough room for 3 tradespeople, a cat, & 2 residents to live in a house where the bedrooms will effectively be cut off from access to the fridge, I'll be in a hotel.

Which will also -- alas -- cramp the job hunt marginally (hours of internet time is required for job hunting nowdays). I should probably pack a suit.

If I'm lucky, I'll be stuck beside the hotel pool with my laptop, no internet, a healed hand, and lots of time to write & reflect. At some point I will likely start worrying about money, but today -- as I like to say -- is not that day.

Iiiiiiiiiiiiiit's here!



ADFH (Australian Dark Fantasy & Horror) 2007 antho is now available from Brimstone Press. For the low, low price of AUD$24.95 (including postage anywhere in the world), you can have all this:

"Surrender 1: Rope Artist" by Deborah Biancotti
"Tarans" by Simon Brown
"The Sidpa Bardo" by Nathan Burrage
"Empties" by Jay Caselberg
"Finding the Words" by Steven Cavanagh
"The Garden Shed Pact" by Shane Jiraiya Cummings
"Dead of Winter" by Stephen Dedman
"Cheat Light" by Terry Dowling
"The Red Priest's Vigil" by Dirk Flinthart
"Father Father" by Paul Haines
"In the Service of the Flesh" by Robert Hood
"Under Hell, Over Heaven" by Margo Lanagan
"Hieronymus Boche" by Chris Lawson
"Cold" by Kirstyn McDermott
"Pain Threshold" by Jason Nahrung
"The Bat's Boudoir" by Kyla Ward
"Iron Shirt" by Susan Wardle
"Ache" by David Witteveen

Go on. Treat yourself.