The hangover

I’ve been through this a few times before, it is never fun. First you say that it’s okay and that you’re okay, as was the case with my last post. Then it starts to hit. I think the main thing is just tiredness—I suppose it’s the feeling a person gets when they put a lot of energy into something and not have it work out. I feel drained. I was in a state of readiness for the last month, and now it is catching up with me.

Any time something like this doesn’t work out I wonder what’s going to happen when my 99 weeks [if I am lucky enough to actually get the full amount of benefits] of unemployment is up. In some ways, I will have more options…I will be able to take part-time, temporary, and seasonal work. I will probably take the CPA and graduate degree off my resume, depending. It’s frustrating knowing that all of the work that went into those achievements may have wound up being for nothing. But that hasn’t happened yet, and maybe it won’t.

But the thought will not exit my mind, I may be one of those people who never really has a career, just seasonal work H&R Block type work and temp gigs.

I did post to a few government jobs this week, though. Maybe something will come through later this summer.

Alas....

...I was rejected today for the casino job. Oh well, I don't feel as bad about this one because I think I really did well on the interview, I guess they just had someone else who was a better fit for them. Wasn't meant to be. I'm too busy reading THE LONELY POLYGAMIST. Very funny book, surprisingly it reminds me of Larry McMurtry, the same hapless middle aged protagonist whose personal life is in a state of chaos, except in this case instead of one wife he has four.

I was essentially an entry level person, and I think the job might have called for someone with a little more experience. That has been the recurrent theme over the past ten months.

But things look good for unemployment to continue at least till the end of this year, so I'm not too worried.

Light at the end of the tunnel?

So...the interview. Or interviews.

Had three total, although none were really formal. Two with HR people, then a panel one with the accounting staff I would be joining. That one went really well. Although I don't have a lot of hands-on experience, it turns out that I do know a lot about some of their issues, sales and use tax stuff, and a lot of the unique aspects of tribal gaming. I feel that has to be a plus, and I doubt that many of the other candidates are going to have that knowledge or have my other qualifications.

Only snag...an Excel test early on. Badly flubbed at least two of the 10 questions. I don't know if it was pass/fail and I passed it so they went on with everything, or if it's something that will be taken into account later. Really should have tried to review a few things beforehand. Problems using Excel, etc., are probably one of my biggest issues at work. I wasted a lot of time at the Big Firm trying to figure out how to do a lot of it. I used it for basic functions in school, but that was all. I'm going to try to brush up on it. One of the other places I've applied to is doing a similar test.

Unfortunately, they have a ton of applicants, so this was just the first round interview. I don't know if I will be selected for the second round, or if I will be interviewing with other people next time. What I think will happen will be that it will be the same accounting group, but much tougher questions--these questions were really general.

As usual, we shall see.

I ended up gambling! Yes, I gambled at my job interview. There was about a two hour interval between the HR interviews and my meeting the accounting staff, so I had to do something. So I ended up playing Time Machine again, but ended up losing around $10. I think the interval may have been by design...get that extra gambling revenue out of the applicant! Still, better by far than my spending nearly a grand on a plane ticket and hotel room for a half-hour interview, which is what I did back in January for the IRS.

Do I feel lucky?

I haven't posted this much in one day since my ranting and raving about the Big Firm.
The casino people called, the interview is tomorrow morning at the casino. Bad part is that my interview clothing [probably not the full suit--people don't do that here] will end up smelling like cigarette smoke.

My "ace in the hole" so to speak...it is an Indian casino and I happen to be Indian. Not the distant "grandmother was a Cherokee Princess" Indian, but an actual tribal member. I don't *look* Indian, but am a little over a quarter of my "official" tribe and also can claim another tribe [just not officially--as far as the government is concerned, you can only belong to one tribe at a time.] Anyway, this has helped me before in working with other Indian-oriented jobs, so it might here, although contrary to popular belief I don't think it's automatic. And besides, why couldn't there be another qualified Indian candidate? Maybe even one from their actual tribe [I'm from another part of the country, so for all I know the people here might think that I'm taking a job from one of their people anyway.]

Wish me luck. I will try to avoid the temptation to gamble. Probably my biggest advantage will be the CPA, because I only have book knowledge when it comes to the rest of this. Why oh why did I go into tax? I'm starting to think that going into tax is the accounting equivalent of majoring in English.

"We wish you success in your professional career..."

About a week after I'd figured they would never get back to me, the county finally sent the rejection letter. That was decent of them. "Although you were not selected, this in no way reflects upon your qualifications as a candidate for this position." Okay.

Kudos for them mailing me anything, though. So many have not done that.

I'm considering crashing a job fair at my alma mater. Alumni supposedly have to pay $25, but I've been to the event back when I was a student and there was absolutely no one checking anything. Things might have changed now, though, and I would have to pay for parking which is not as big of a pain at that school as it would be at some other ones, but still...they did send a list of companies, only a few seem promising anyway. I guess I might depending on what else I have going that week.

Tired.

No pictures for a while. That is probably bad. I know visuals are often important.

Really tired. Been up since just before 5 AM, our new "normal" wakeup routine. I've done all the errands for the day, and am happy to be enjoying a quiet afternoon so far [the Father-in-Law is out and about, so the TV is off.]

The Federal Agency wtih whom I've interviewed twice has a new posting, which I applied to. Maybe the third time is the charm. I have a much better chance this time around, this job is located here where I am, I'm not attempting any type of relocation. And since I've interviewed with them twice already I think it will be easier for me to prepare. This is assuming I get an interview, but I think I probably will just because I did the last two times I've applied [each time you apply to a specific job announcement you basically have to do everything all over again, with a few exceptions.] Maybe it will work out, although I would probably prefer this other job I am currently working on the application for. The Federal job will involve a lot of conflict and unpleasantness. That will probably be stressful. Oh well, given past experience, I have around three months before they will even call me for an interview, so plenty of time to find something else before then.

Reading LITERARY LIFE, a memoir by Larry McMurtry, one of my favorite writers. His last one, BOOKS, had almost a stream-of-consciousness flavor and this one is similar, although at least a little more focused. BOOKS was about his bookseller business, book scouting, and book collecting in general. This supposedly is about writing, writers he has known, etc. Like BOOKS, it is a slim volume and I'm glad the library had it.

When I was taking creative writing classes back in my early 20s, McMurtry was a big influence on me, or at least on my better work [only one story, really, that basically was young-adult type fiction.] I too wanted to write about rural folk, something which I am still interested in doing, although at the time I didn't appreciate how much good material I had right in front of me.

The rest of my work was pretty poor. Experimental stuff that didn't work, "look at me" type fiction, attempts to write about things that I had no real knowledge of [and could not successfully fake it,] and so on.

Anyway, LITERARY LIFE seems pretty good so far. There seems to be a sense of finality to these memoirs. McMutry's novels tend to be bleak in some ways, he has a penchant for killing off characters that he's written about for years, I guess a sort of closing of old accounts. Any time he revisits an old setting you know that there will be several deaths before the story's end. He recently seemed to finish up the "Thalia cycle" of novels that began with THE LAST PICTURE SHOW and spanning five books with RHINO RANCH, what seems to be the final installment. I enjoyed all five to various degrees, although I was still college age when I read the first two books and well into my thirties before the others came out.
I should revisit the earlier ones now.

Most of the books I liked in my teens/early twenties have not really stood up for me, or at least I feel less strongly about them. I suppose most things are that way.

Ah, interviewing.

Time to get another haircut---haven't done that since January, when I had my fiasco of an interview with the IRS. Also time to iron my suit, which I haven't worn since that same fiasco of an interview. Had to buy a new suit back then, I've lost weight over the past six months to where my old interview suit no longer fit. I figure at least I will get to wear my new suit twice. Most of the time people only wear suits when they're interviewing. Even ties are not worn a whole lot anymore.

I'm studying my governmental accounting/auditing standards. I still have some of my CPA review material, which should cover most of what I need to know as far as governmental accounting. The various audit standards I'm having to look up online.
Doubtful that they will specifically ask about any of this, but I need to be able to demonstrate that I know something about the type of work they do.

It is funny, when I was in school I didn't want to do audit at all. I was determined that tax was what I wanted to do. Now I'm the opposite, I'd rather get away from tax work just because it would take years before I was actually doing anything other than data entry and clerical tasks. And one of the "dream jobs" I had when I started studying accounting was working for a state or local government [other dream employers: a college/university, healthcare, or a non-profit setting.] I'm just really thankful that I'm getting the opportunity to correct my past mistakes. I feel that I would do much better in this environment than I would in a lot of the other jobs I'm looking at.

Still finishing up the James Tiptree biography. It doesn't end well.

I Am an Auditor for the County.....

...or hope to be. Today I got a call about a county government auditing job I had applied for back in January. I'd taken an accounting test last month and placed 4th out of probably around 100 people. I was not sure if that was good enough to get an interview or not since I figured it might be a situation where you have people tied for various places, but apparently it was.

So I'm brushing up on governmental auditing standards [found an auditor quality assurance program that they have on their website.] Have zero auditing experience, but I'm looking at my old CPA review material. Unfortunately I don't have the Auditing book, but I think I can find most of the important info online.

Having the CPA will help.

Things could be turning around, but the key is to be prepared.

Is it Monday?

When you're out of the workforce for a long period [going on nine months for me] you tend to forget about the days of the week.

Finished the Feinstein book—it was not as good as I thought it would be, but I finished it Saturday night [it was not very long.] The problem may have been that he was trying to tell the story of too many individuals so only a couple stood out, so a lot of the book had me saying “Now who is that again?” as I read.

The job search continues…got two nice e-mails from local firms I applied to over the weekend. They don’t need anyone right now, but one will re-visit things after tax season.

I appreciated the reply. That’s one nice thing about smaller firms, they are more likely to get back to people [but they don’t always do it!] With larger companies, the end result becomes one of those Unsolved Mysteries. I interviewed with the IRS twice this past year and never heard anything about what happened, just had to assume I was not selected when I never got a call.

My goal these days is to find a job before my current unemployment extension runs out in August. Now that we know we will be staying here a few years, it is easier to focus my job search. Before, we really had no idea where we were going to go or what to shoot for. The bad part is that employment opportunities here are pretty limited, but I think with patience and some effort, something will turn up eventually. I think I should be able to collect unemployment after August, but I’d rather not have to do that. I am tired of not working. I enjoy having the downtime to read, write, and so on, but I feel like the longer this goes on, the harder it will be to catch up. Accounting is not a static field and there are always changes in tax law, accounting practices, etc. If I’m out of the workforce for a significant period, it’s going to be more difficult. Hate to say it, but I am really banking on getting on with the IRS eventually, because they don’t really care about a lot of the things that are causing me problems getting hired elsewhere. That was the same reason I ended up at the Quasi-Federal Agency that is Known for Workplace Violence. They didn’t even interview me, they just looked at how I did on their exam and put me to work. Which is probably how they end up with their, ahem, somewhat “eccentric” workforce.

To Account or not to Account

I am in a quandary. I did well in my accounting courses, was interested in it, still have an interest in tax issues, what’s going on with accounting standards, etc. Tax is one of the rare fields where pretty much every single person is affected by it. It appeals to my interest in politics, history, and how things work.
But I seem to have a really hard time making the jump from school to the “real world.”
Some of that is because the work you do as a new accountant is basically data entry clerical work. It’s more important to have a strong working knowledge of tax preparation software than anything else. The person who goes the farthest in the early stages of their career is the person who is best at knowing how the software works. I am not that person.

I continue to apply to firms. Public accounting is not really what I want to do. It’s one of those things that people put up with for a few years until they get enough experience to go someplace else. My wife just found a job, and that makes me want to get a job even more. I don’t want to be the slacker husband, although at least I'm probably going to still be collecting unemployment for a while. I’m interested in the IRS, but that will bring with it a whole new area of stress. I’ve interviewed with them twice over the last year and have a pretty good idea of the problems associated with being a revenue agent—pressure to close cases, uncooperative taxpayers and their representatives, and a ton of bureaucracy. Good benefits, though!

Recently heard from yet another former co-worker. Apparently the Big Firm had a massive bloodbath right before Thanksgiving. I was surprised at some of the names of those let go, they were people I knew were sharp and who always had a lot of work. I assume what happened is that the firm has lost so many clients that there was no longer anything for them to do. They expect the firm to cut more after April 15, and a lot of this year’s class of new hires are afraid they will be fired before they finish their first year [important to do this in order to qualify for the CPA license, otherwise you can’t get licensed until you complete a year of experience.]

Anyway, enough of that for now. Next time…Library Book Saturday!