From darkness to unexpected dawn

Life is surprising. Today I must admit I wasn't in a good mood. Everything felt kind of hopeless. I was on my way home, but I had just started walking when I found a sunny street with a little restaurant having empty outdoor seats. I sat down and for some reason I didn't follow the normal Swedish rule of pretending others don't exist, but I started talking to the woman sitting next to me. After a while it turned out that she had some own experiences from working in my field and she even gave me some names of companies to contact! The woman was a coach! She told me I just had to go on trying, not because the contacts I work on now necessarily will give me a job, but the trying would work me in the right direction and increase my chances of getting something from an unexpected source. Wasn't that exactly what I needed to hear? I walked away and enjoyed the afternoon.

When I arrived home I found that one of my old contacts had given me an official recommendation! I had also received a personal answer from an employer I had been chasing last week. It all made me feel much better.

What's the saying?

It's darkest before dawn...

New ideas on how to get a job?

I've been rehearsing for almost a year now. Rehearsing for getting a job.

Occasionally I find one I really want. Then what do I do? I call the contact person about ten times, leave about three messages, send a personal mail and then finally fill in the proper form of application.

I check linkedin and find connections. Then the question is, will those connections help me or stop me? Maybe the connections hate me or want the job for themselves. You never know.

Then I'm supposed to wait for an answer. It never comes. I need some new ideas. Next time I'll maybe drive up to their office if it's in town and present myself. What can I do, without becoming a stalker..? Infiltrate their family or their group of best friends? Send messages with personal advertising or design small pop-up windows that comes up when they log in on their computers? I guess not.

At one company I got some business cards. Should I call up the VP and ask why the hell they don't hire me? Well, if they don't want me, why should I bother? I could start a competing company, hire all my friends and get them out of business...? That would be a surprise!

I've been listening to Steven Wright's old jokes. He makes me feel like I'm a little crazy too..

I sure need some new ideas, crazy or not, because the traditional ones don't seem to work.

Memorizing facts, being creative or truly understand?

When I was a kid, my dad knew everything. Everything about politics, history and geography.

At school things should be modern; we worked in groups, we made a play instead of memorizing history details, we used creativity instead of giving traditional presentations. Knowledge was considered old fashioned. Creativity was king.

Today knowledge isn't unfashionable any longer, but what is emphasized in my kids schools is the understanding and their own reflections on the facts. What conclusions can they draw, what similarities have their seen and what are their own ideas?

I'm sure my kids will be able to explain things much better than I can, not only because they learn more, they learn things deeper and get a better understanding. Now I'm not talking about science, but rather on history, religion and politics. Credit to some young enthusiastic teachers!

An honest fool

Why was I raised to become such an honest fool who tells the truth? For instance regarding my current situation as almost unemployed.

I applied for this job. A man from the company called me up since he found my CV interesting. Hurray!!! Then I point out to him that I am eager to start as soon as possible, because I don't have anything to do, since I had to leave the company I used to work for. Silence. No, he had not understood that I was one of those who had to leave the company. Shit. Why did I need to tell him the truth, when he wasn't even asking for it?

They believe the best ones already have a job. They don't expect a brilliant person to become redundant after many years in the same company. Companies usually want to keep their best employees, and not pay a fortune to get rid of them. I'm fully aware of that and I completely understand it.

I should stop being such an honest Swedish fool who tells the truth...

Business cards and virtual contacts

Either I drop business cards, since they just disappear when I need them, or I save them in a large bundle for ever and forget from whom I got them. Once I had a binder where I was supposed to stick in all business cards and write down the context. A terrific idea which I had copied from a smart business man many years ago. I always saved my binder but it wasn't used much...

Business cards seem old fashioned today. There has always been this feature called address-book on all devices, like mobile phones. It used to be annoying because it never had the same format on different devices and I never understood how I could stop my contacts from becoming duplicated when I synchronized the phone with my PC. Sometimes a contact turned up with only an e-mail address. Not very useful to have on the phone when I didn't use the e-mail client on it.

Nowadays I've got a Mac and an iphone, so I'm just now starting to use the contacts in a serious manner. Guess, I can never switch back to the PC world now. Or I'll end up printing the contacts and saving them in my binder..

Don't know what it tells you about me, but I don't like to remove people from my address book. As a matter of fact, I've even got some dead persons in there. Every time I come across one of my dead contacts I send them a thought. At least you're still in my phone, I think, even if you don't exist in real life any longer.

You don't believe in me? Thanks!

I like statements like: "You can't do that!" or "You won't get around" or "You'll get problems"

They give energy to the little devil in me..

So you don't think I can? You don't believe in me?

You just watch me!

I'll show you!

Will Svanberg do another cut?

It's going to be interesting to see what BP and Svanberg is going to do about the oil catastrophe. Svanberg usually let people go in order to raise the stock and to look good. As he did before he left Ericsson with his shares. Don't think it will do the trick this time. Not initially. And empty talk about environment won't help him now....