Mmm_pickles's Journal: Long time

Ahh . . . now really, I should write in my journal more often. Okay -- nothing to see here, nothing really to write about. Sara and I drove to Portland, Oregon for Thanksgiving with my Aunt Barbara and my sister and her family (Amy, James, and their three year old daughter Selma). Barbara has a lifelike stuffed dog, which was quite a hit this weekend. It stares out the window or around a corner.

Today I had a burst of energy in the job hunting realm. Unfortunately, a lot of the job postings are looking for some very specific skills -- the trend towards hiring senior people seems to continue. I wonder how hard it is to actually fill those reqs. It often seems to me that there must be no more than one or two people in the Bay Area who actually fill the criteria listed.

Sara and I have sort of developed our housing dream somewhat. Someday, we hope to own (or co-own, with our friends) an apartment building in the Mission. We'll put solar panels on the roof. Strangely, the dream seems to get farther and farther out of reach the longer I'm unemployed. Alas. I keep hoping that I'll find the perfect job but it hasn't shown up yet.

Anyway, the recovery appears to be real this time (I hope, I hope) so maybe the jobs will start popping up again. I'm trying to reinvent myself as a system administrator (as opposed to a programmer). The question keeps coming up -- how do I divide my time? Do I spend more time studying and learning new skills or looking at job postings and sending out my resume? How do I become truly wizardly at Perl and Linux? Am I just too old (33) to learn new tricks or am I the agile, quick, ace programmer/system administrator I like to think I am?

In some ways, I'm grateful for this period of unemployment -- it almost feels as though I'm fresh out of college again. So much possibility, so much unknown. It's frightening but exhilirating.