Catching Breaks

Life in Cleve­land is becom­ing increas­ing­ly unful­fill­ing for me. I have spent the last 9 months look­ing for anoth­er source of employ­ment in this area, and have been most unsuc­cess­ful. This is my third Cleve­land win­ter, and in the time I’ve been here I feel that I have offered plen­ty of myself to Cleve­land through time and effort, yet Cleve­land has­n’t offered me much in return. And by much I mean one thing: a decent job. I like the peo­ple, the cul­ture, the pace, but when, as a young pro­fes­sion­al, I make so lit­tle mon­ey that I have to bud­get whether or not I can afford to go down the street for a beer at the Lit, there is a prob­lem. I’ve tried the net­work­ing routes, cold call­ing, brows­ing through every career board and clas­si­fied and even out on the limb things like search­ing through my refer­rer logs for pos­si­ble leads [Pen­ton Media, I’m look­ing at you]. My skillsets are wel­come as long as there is no price tag attached, but oth­er­wise, this area does­n’t seem to have much use for them.

Peo­ple talk about catch­ing breaks, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it hap­pen. Every suc­cess I’ve had, I’ve had to fight for tooth and nail, but me ver­sus Cleve­land is a fight I can’t win. So today begins my search for employ­ment else­where. I’m going to start in the big metro areas, NYC, Chica­go and LA [where I’ve recent­ly start­ed cor­re­spond­ing with some old friends from the ND Film Depart­ment], places I already have friends in, and places that might feel that they could use me. If all else fails, by mid-sum­mer I’ll move back to Indi­ana and go back to school in order to get my teacher’s license. Cleve­land has had its chance.