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I’ve been trying since the first week of this blog’s creation to write out the next installment of “my story”. So let’s try a “Just facts” method to getting this part of my story written out. This posting will be ONLY about the long search for employment and those jobs I found. That’s all it will discuss. We will leave out love life, social life, etc. Those topics we will pick up in other postings.

In this post, I’ll pick up after that first year which I already posted; you can read about that here. I will also leave out ALL commentary or opinions as much as I can. If I can just file the chronological order of how it all unfolded, then afterwards, I can reference this posting in future posts where I will comment on what I think happened or what ever.

1990
On December 7 1990, I reached my first AA birthday or “Sobriety Anniversary”. I had been unemployed for 3 months. At that time, that was the longest period I ever spent without a job. Unfortunately, this was just the start of what would be 22 months without a regular job.

At first, I would be able to get interviews lined up, but not one of these resulted in job offers. In fact I dont recall any even getting me a second interview. As you know from reading my post about that first year in sobriety, I was fired from my job of 7 years for non performance. In my first experience with sober job hunting, I tried everything I could to get from interview to job offer. I tried the “technically true” truth. I told them I resigned from my job because I was transfered to a new boss and we didnt get along. I tried the actual “god’s honest truth”, aka “I am sober hear me roar” truth. That didnt work. I tried all shades of grey that lie inbetween those two truths. And none of them resulted in job offers. Eventually, the months added up to where now I could no longer get interviews themselves. HR people and IT recruiters for some reason do not like to talk to people who have been unemployed for more than a short while.

This all happened before the world wide web, only text emails and newsgroups were on the internet at the time, so instead of a daily routine I had a weekly routine of job searching. I would get the Sunday preview paper early Saturday, find those ads where I qualified for the postion and then typed up and print out cover letters as fast as my 286 AT pc and lineprinter would allow. Then I would stuff the coverletters with resume copies into envelopes and then drive down to the post office so I would be in the Saturday mail flow, ensuring that for the close to home smaller companies, my letter would be in Monday’s mail. And of course, every evening I pray. None of that resulted in a job.

1991
One day I discover an ad in the LA Weekly for “Extras Needed!”. The first job I got in sobriety was that of a non union extra in a TV Movie of the week. And I loved it. It was a 14 hour day and the pay is literally $5 an hour, but I really enjoyed myself. And so for the next two years, I actively tried to make it in Hollywood. I wasnt thinking I would be a real tv or movie actor, but I was thinking that if I could make it to the union extra and tv commercials level, a new career would be within my grasp. I was wrong. In fact I wasnt even getting enough non-union extra work to make ends meet. Now remember that I really wasnt abandoning my IT career; the HR and recruiter people left me to die in the road almost a year earlier. So trying for commercials and extra work really wasnt much of a dare. In anycase hollywood work failed to make the rent and I ran out of funiture and rare LPs and CDs to sell so I needed something else to get cash. And desperate times called for desperate messures.

1992
I accepted a job working as a phone receptionist and counter person at $7.25 an hour in a Los Angeles park office located in Hollywood. That would be Vermont and Hollywood Blvd in case anyone was picuturing a Mullholland drive scenerio. This was a job funded by State emergency funds so I got to work at this Hollywood park, in an office with “At risk youth”. For you rural people, that would be junior high and high schoolers who lived in heavily gang populated areas. There I am 3 years sober, a degree in computer science and that’s the job I have. But at 22 months since my last fulltime job, I accepted that job with genuine happiness. Not a few months later, I got off of clerical duties to actually getting to work on a pc. Unfortuanately it still wasnt 40 hours a week but I got to do PC database work at 15 bucks a hour! For the first time in a while things were looking hopeful. By the middle of 1993 the decision made that acting was out and IT was back in. While part time work at $15 an hour was ok, I still needed to find a better job.

Its LA in the 90’s and a programmer with a degree cant look for his next big job when his current job is 15 an hour at 25 hours a week. And that meant either an entry level job where they taught me new IT skills at a low starting wage or I attend a tech school and get some sort of certification. But oh yeah, I forgot, I am broke. I am just making ends meet. I have no credit, no credit cards, a $500 barely mobile car and the HOPES for a better job. So how will I pay for new IT training? Well someday I will post the story of how I got my technical school training, but today isnt the day. That saga goes for about 1 year before I ever step foot into the classroom.

1993-1994
I do chose schooling and I now live in the east end of Pasadena. I am once again collecting unemployment but I am in school to get a Novell Netware CNE and that is going to get me my next big job. Or so the plan goes. The schooling took 9 months and I finished with a Certification in Networking.

1995
Now my opportunities go from no replies to my resumes all the way to lots of returned calls. Now everyone is replying to my cover letters and resume mailing. Finally life is looking very hopeful at last! But I still dont have a job yet. I am still only in the middle of interviews, so lets move back a step here. I have to get the job first before we start celebrating.

One week in particular of early 95 will always remain clear in my memories. In this week, I have one of the best all time “How trying to work the steps in all my affairs fucks Harry in the ass again” stories. At that time I had two nice job offers to chose from and I was not sure which way to go. Also at that time, I held two phone shifts of two different 12 step fellowships. I also had 2 monthly panel commitments too. But that story gets its own posting. It deserves its own posting. When I write it, I will put a link here and you can read it. For now, let’s just move onto the job I finally get. A job I actually liked very much.

In August of 1995, just a few weeks shy of the 4th anniversary of my firing I was hired at a nationally known 1800 company. It was a help desk job and my salary was set at the salary I left with from that last company some 4 years earlier. So I get to continue my career in computers, doing what I love to do. As the months turned into years, I got promoted at this company. I moved from help desk fulltime to getting to help my boss with his programming duties. then moved up to sharing equal time in the database programming and then finally on to full time programmer for the database and inhouse applications.

1995 to 2000
Mostly these 5 years were very enjoyable for me, workwise. I got alot of my confidence back and I worked with some great people. I even got another boss who was as good a man as Dave my old boss was. I was mostly happy with how these 5 years progressed. I thought of the time before 1995 as time that I had to endure because it was karmic payback for being a bad employee in the 80’s. And I kept that thought and didnt change my opinion of that topic until 2004.

When 2000 came around, I could honestly say to you that while it was a tough journey, it was something I was glad to have been through. That was of course before I found out that the years of 95 through 2000 would be as good as it gets.

And what happens next is a saga that starts in August of 2000 and continues onto this very day. And it’s story that will have to wait for another posting. Or maybe another 3 or 4 postings.

So this wraps up my looking for work journey of the first 5 years.

Type to you very soon.
Sincerely

Harry A

sober still. since 12/7/89