Employment Update

It looks like I finally got the help I needed with my Resume. All the necessary changes have been made and approved. I have four separate resumes for experience and skill sets: Audiovisual, computer, navy and retail.

The problem is my experience varies from one field to another intermittently over decades, so there will be huge gaps of time in each resume. They are each reduced to only two pages, if I presented my complete resume it would be about eight or ten pages long.

I'll be lucky if anyone hires me because I'm 54 in July, but the doctors at the V.A. told me I'm healthy, no signs of cancer, no STD's. I'm working out at Planet Fitness and eating right. So far I lost around 24 pounds, but I have at least 140 more to go before I reach the green zone on my BMI chart.

But I live in isolation for economic reasons. It's boring and lonely. I need challenges so every day I go online to forums where people need help with Adobe or Microsoft and I make suggestions or edit files. I often answer questions at Quora.com for young people who are about to make some of the mistakes I made growing up. I sometimes do research and gather data for charts and tables.

If you scroll to the bottom here, you'll see some of my other blogs, except for spfldnet. Just google "spfldnet" and you'll see where else I spend my alone time. It's not the best quality, but hey, I'm not getting paid for any of it.

I would like to get paid for what I do, but Patreon or GoFundMe accounts yield nothing. Freelance work online is globally competitive so it's a race to the bottom.

Still looking for work

I'm still looking for work.

I picked up yet another domain name for my menagerie. www.Buylocalspringfield.com

There are all kinds of local non-profit organizations with people who know about getting grants or have themselves set up to legally accept donations for their causes.

I don't.

I'm just a technical person who knows a little about computers, the Internet, graphic design, video production and photography.

Here's what I have to date.

http:www.atheistinsurgency.com
http:www.bachelortimes.com
http:www.buylocalspringfield.com
http:www.coffeecoup.net
http:www.empiredusk.com
http:www.fredslocombe.com
http:www.iicc-iesi.org
http:www.menagerieofmadness.com
http:www.sageofspringfield.com
http:www.spfld.net
http:www.spfld.tv
http://safeworkspace.blogspot.com

There are blogs, Google accounts, MySpace pages, Ning.com accounts, and many message board accounts associated with most of the aforementioned sites.

I'm not really a business person, but if I were to start a business, my model would be unrecognizable.

I can't just do the typical in-your-face advertising everyone else does. I did that for eight years working for the cable company. I have this idealized sense of justice and service to small local businesses who are being steamrolled by multinational conglomerates and I'm tired of the same type of advertising.

It's better to just be easily accessible, direct, concise and associated with community support programs. The main contest is exposure, exposure exposure. The opponents are the national franchises and multinational conglomerates.

I only have my one PC and a few gadgets.
I wish I had an office somewhere accessible to local businesses.

Job news is souring.

I keep hearing negative job reports in the news. The Economic Policy Institute reports that the U.S. has fewer jobs now than it did nine years ago in May of 2000.

The irony is that I was downsized in June of 2001, after a nine year career in the cable advertising business. By this logic I can assume that the recession we are in right now actually started back then.

Local advertising is the first to be cut from business budgets, but as you can see more frequently on television, Walmart has stepped up it's advertising campaign.

The big national restaurant chains and big box stores have the ability to compete in a way that local businesses cannot. Lowes, for example, can drastically reduce the price of plywood in Springfield for a time, while raising the price of plywood and other products in South Bend to make up the difference. Local stores cannot do this, unless they can work out some sort of system with their distributors. Good luck with that.

Because of the Internet, the entire nature of advertising is changing. The impact of newspapers, television and radio is greatly diminished because the audience is turning to search engines that lead the consumer off into individual realms unknown by potential advertisers.

Consumers will not be nearly as influenced by advertising as before. Advertising is based on centuries of behavior research that yielded tools that reach into the subconscious mind of the public. I'll never tell.

Now, meaning and value are fragmented along with the audience. People will search for what they need, and there is no way that advertising on it's own will raise the volume of consumption.

The only thing to do is get yourself a blog and just submit posts about your business. Your customers will find you.