employment woes restated and updated

Looking for work makes me feel horrible. Even though I rarely forget that I have few directly marketable skills, an unimpressive work history, and no clear idea of what I'd like to be doing, navigating the classified ads really drives those points home...so much so, in fact, that I can almost bring myself to tears just by skimming another dozen or so job descriptions.

The minimum requirements are the worst part. At the basic level, it bugs me when I just don't meet them...especially if it's for a job that I know a mongoloid monkey could perform. Why, certainly I could be a help desk operator...but wait, I don't have two years experience in a 'fast-paced call center environment'. I've taken unsolicited telemarketing calls, and I've called several call centers and technical support lines over the past few years. Do you mean to tell me that I don't have the basic qualifications to get the job that those semi-lingual, borderline-rude, reading-from-a-script yahoos got?

I guess I could lie...I understand that's standard practice on resumes. Honestly, though, I feel that I'm stretching the truth enough, just by pretending that I still know all of the things I was required to do for any given job I had (for instance) five or ten years ago...or, even more honestly, that I learned all of those things perfectly while I was still there. Let's face it, so much of any job is just flying by the seat of your pants anyway, getting things done as best you can. So when I fill out my resume, if I exaggerate at all, I exaggerate based on the things which I know I'm capable of...unfortunately, employers are well aware of this tendency among prospective employees, and so require some sort of proof. I don't blame them, but I wish I could get the chance to reassure some of the employers that I'm a little more reasonable and circumspect about my abilities than most...

It doesn't help that my work history is made up of so many transient situations. I'm willing to bet that there are very few of the same people still around at any of my past companies, let alone any who can give any kind of in-depth recommendation. Oh, and that's not even mentioning half of the companies, which don't even exist anymore...why yes, between 1995 and 1999 I worked at a production studio, doing many of the things that you're hiring for...uh, but they went out of business about six months after I left, and the IRS actually called me in to give a statement about some irregularities on the accounting and management side (which I had little contact with, I assure you, except for all the under-the-table side jobs that the owner had me do for his family and church during down times). Yep, that's the sort of golden employment history that assures a fast track to success...

Okay, so when it gets right down to it, I may as well have been doing nothing for a decade. I'm pretty much in the same boat as I was when I first got out of college...and discovered that my five years of binge drinking, counter-cultural musical and literary discussions, and casual political activism hadn't actually prepared me for any sort of career. I'm actually in worse shape, because at that time I still thought I might be able to do some video work without hating every minute of it, and there were no unexplainable gaps in my employment record to account for. Employers are, understandably, at least slightly more credulous and tolerant of a 24 year-old with no practical experience than they are of a 36 year-old who seems a little too eloquent, intelligent, and personable to have been doing nothing of worth for more than a decade...

I do understand that some sullenly dutiful mediocrity with several lukewarm official recommendations and all the appropriate minimum qualifications is much less of a risk than a good-natured, quick-witted blank slate...who may very well be an unreliable liar, a druggie, a mental case, a slacker (and if you looked critically at my true history, I could just about have qualified for all of those, at one time or another). I guess I'm just reaping what I have sown...I know that my good points outweigh my bad ones, and that in the right job I would be a shining example of an asset to a company, but the burden of proof is on me. And I can't come up with enough of that proof. So I guess I'm just screwed.

There is always that other option: going back to school, or finding some other way to gain the skills and experience to do something more rewarding and appropriate to my talents. That's a whole other ball of anxiety, so to speak.

Primarily, I just have no clue what it is I'd be suited for, or skilled at. I'd be more than willing to invest a year or two in my development...except that I don't really see anything out there that would be worth it, in the long run. Sure, I'm smart enough to successfully complete a course in programming, or get an MBA, or learn copywriting or nearly anything, really...but how much of an edge would that really give me? Then I might have a better chance to get the crappy jobs that I'm nearly qualified for right now, and only look twice at because I'm desperate and they seem almost within reach. I'd be pushing forty, competing directly with kids who have fewer reservations about themselves and lower expectations of what constitutes a rewarding situation...and, honestly, probably more raw energy and ambition than I could summon on a regular basis.

Not a model for a rosy career path, exactly...I feel like I should be wise enough at this point to nail down exactly what I want out of life and spare no effort to achieve it. Unfortunately, all I have is a handful of negatives- the things I know that I'd hate, and the things I seriously doubt that I'd be able to become rewardingly competent at (my ending preposition count is dangerously high at this point...maybe editing, for example, is not for me after all...).