Salicious Rumors and the Other Blogs

Funny, how sometimes I just cannot find anything in the news compelling or different enought to comment on some days. I wonder what I have on certain days which gives me the energy and compulsion to type for hours, and others, I do not even check to see if my counter has gone up.

The good news for me, is that I am up to 24 today. I have been doing this for several months and really did not know if I had anyone out there who even stumbled across my page accidentally. I added the counter for my own benefit, after a coworker told me where I could get one for free. I added the PayPal link the same day, as a personal joke with a deeper meaning.

Is there a chance that I could actually make money doing this? I love to write and I love to learn. And I love to share . My obsession with the news has waned in recent weeks, although the election season has given me plenty to write about. In a perfect world, I could get a job doing this, and then I'm sure I would find enough material out there on the web to post ten or more times per day, and have time to edit my content for stupid mistakes and pbvious blunders. At this point, if you have read more than a few of my posts, you know that I am error prone and fairly nonchalant about what I leave here. But I still yearn to be able to write for my livelyhood.

If you have any interest in me personally, read on. The type of work I do has nothing to do with what I learned about in college. I majored in Religious Studies and minored in German as an undergrad. As I approached graduation, I panicked. I knew that, even in a Clinton economy, I had no real marketable skills. Philosophers still have no real professional choices these days.

So I decided, on almost a lark, to go to graduate school for Public Administration. This turned out to be the best decision I ever made. Not only did I graduate with a new knowledge base which butressed my personal philosophies about governence, but I learned administrative, management theories, organizational development and professional skills which should, one day, help me find the high reward career I have sought my entire adult life.

After my internship with a small city outside of San Diego in the Economic Development and Housing department, I decided to try my luck in the real world. I flopped out of the gate for a few months, working temporary positions where I aced my assignmenmts and had many job offers, but for what I considered to be crappy wages, as the Bush economy shrank.

I was offered a new temporary position for a fair wage in the city I had interned, and that went well, looked like it would pan out for the long term, until the state of California went broke. And so did all the cities. The public sector, especially my chosen field at that time, housing and economic development, was flooded with many talented and experienced workers who were willing to take positions for tens of thousands less than they had earned before the layoffs.

So, my wife and I took a chance and moved to Portland. I thought I would find a job right off, but I was unemployed for months before the temp market picked up again and I was able to land a spot where I currently work. I now make several dollars more an hour, but if you read my Bush tax analysis, you know I earn nothing close to what one would expect having a master's degree. I have made the lead of my team of glorified copy technicians, but I still find it unfulfilling.

That's why I do this. That's why I am putting myself out here and taking a risk by reaching out to you with my ideas and my observations and insights. I plan to fix up my web page that I get with internet service with my resume, in the hopes that I am able to fish a better spot in a field I actually care about (I never once said I want to work in insurance when I grow up). It's too late to be a firefighter or an astronaut or a doctor, but maybe I'll go back to school and get my law degree, but I see that lawyers start at wages similar tio what I earn now, and my passions lie in areas of law that would probably allow me to die in as much debt as I am in now.

But I take solace in the knowledge that Bush cannot repossess my brain when I can no longer pay my student loans, I will take this knowledge to my grave, and that, it seems, will have to be enough, for now.

Then again, if you know of someone in the Portland area who could use an independent thinker, creative, administrative genious (one review I received from the finance director at a place I temped at in San Diego), an excellent planner and agent of change with hindsight, forsight, insight and the willingness to take appropriate risk, well, send me an email (pdxpaul@gmail.com). Or, if you have begun to read me regularyly and find my story and posts compelling, "subscribe" through PayPal and help a brother out.

PS: The spell check is not working, so I hope I did not leave too many typos in this post.