On Job Hunting

They are jobs designed to kill jobs.

I've been looking for work since early September. Now, I must admit, I'm not looking particularly hard. I'm not in any financial dire straits and at my age, with the number of years left where I'd want to put in a good day's work, I want to do something that I would enjoy.

I want a job that will bring me joy.

I've applied to countless jobs, looking for technical writing, though most of my applications seem to have fallen into a black hole. I've had only one interview, though as we started out, it became clear to me that the job wasn't particularly interesting and wouldn't bring me joy.

Speaking of interviews, many job listings state that I would have an initial 15 to 20-minute interview with an AI tool, to which I say "no thanks." If a company can't use a real human, who can see the value that I bring to an organization and get an actual feeling about me, how can that company truly find people of quality?

Every weekday morning, I start my day by checking job search engines. There seem to be a lot of writing and editing jobs out there, but when I look at the description for those position, I'm seeing more and more of them in which the applicant would be creating content for AI tools or would be editing and evaluating the content that an AI tool produces.

I can only equate a job like that to someone who used to assemble cars and is now evaluating a robot that would be tasked with building a car. You're training a machine to replace people.

Why would I want a job that would train a computer program to replace me?

I'm starting to think that I don't want a writing job (unless, of course, somebody paid for me to write a column, much like The Brown Knowser). That's not to say I'd refuse a documentation job if the right one came along but it would have to be one that would, as I said, bring me joy.

I've also applied to retail positions. I enjoyed the retail jobs from when I was younger and I was good at them. When I worked in the Merivale Mall, at a paint and wallpaper store, my sales skills caught the eye of a manager of a camera store, who poached me. Years later, a colleague at the camera store left to work in a bank, and convinced me to join her there—she had been poached, herself, by one of the managers, who then poached me.

All this to say, I did well in the nearly 16 years that I worked in retail (and yes, to an extent, banking at that level is retail).

So far, nothing has come from those applications either but I haven't given up. And again, I want a retail job that brings me joy.

I still have plans to be fully retired on my 63rd birthday, which is now less than two-and-a-half years away. But when I say 'fully retired,' I don't include writing fiction, writing my blog, taking (and possibly selling) photographs, or creating content for my YouTube channel. Those passions, which bring me joy, will continue until I can no longer pursue them.

So what does all this say?

I'd like a job but it has to be meaningful to me. I certainly don't want to do a job that will kill jobs for others. And I only want to do this job for a short period of time.

Know of any?