Tag: chronicles of the marginally employed

I signed a two-month Independent Consultant Agreement this morning to work for a start-up in San Carlos, California (for the Pirates fan.)  Thus, four days a week, beginning March 8, I will be writing copy for the Web for this company and assisting in other SEO activities.  The goal is that I become a full-time, salaried employee at the end, if all goes well.  Regardless, I’m thrilled.  In a sense, it makes these last few months worth it, hard as they’ve sometimes been.

I walked away from a well-paying sales job in November because it wasn’t an ideal fit.  End of day, not everyone can cold call, especially in this economy.  I struggled consistently my last few months on the job before quitting at the suggestion of my boss.  I still think I made the right decision, but financially, it’s been tough.  I left with little savings and have been unable to receive unemployment benefits, since I quit voluntarily.  Thus, my folks have had to help me out a lot the last few months, which is humbling at 26.  I learned an important lesson: Never quit a job unless you have another one lined up.

But if it’s been the Dark Ages for my bank account these last few months, it’s been the Renaissance for this site.  After managing just a few posts a month towards the end of my sales job — shit posts at that — I suddenly found myself with time to write every day.  Thus, I went to near-daily updates, and the number of visitors to this site tripled in the process. Google Analytics says I get 945 visitors a month right now; in November, I was getting 300.  Granted, popular baseball blogs exceed in a day what I currently attract per month, but I feel I’m on my way to good things.  I haven’t just been writing more.  I also feel like I have been writing better.

The job search was definitely challenging.  I left my sales position with a stated goal of writing more, but with that said, I wasn’t sure what field I would next work in.  Thus, I considered everything from more sales work to online marketing to pouring coffee (I think I had a 24-hour stretch where I applied at three different Starbucks.)  I have to say this new job seems like a great outcome.  I like start-up culture, the company I’ll be working for seems cool and I’m excited to get to make a living writing.  Writing doesn’t really seem like work to me, and I miss it when it’s not in my life.

The looming question, of course, is what impact my new job will have on this site. When I interviewed for the job, my boss made clear that if he brought me on as a salaried employee, it would be a 50-hour a week commitment.  I figured it might effect the number of posts I write per week, as I’m currently doing about six.  If I do go full-time, I wouldn’t be surprised if that number drops to three, though I will look to maintain the same caliber of writing.  Were I to choose, I’d sooner sacrifice quantity than quality here.  My rationale might be different if I had a different kind of site.

Anyhow, I want to thank everyone who had a hand in getting me this job.  That includes the administrators who oversee me here.  Were it not for this site, I doubt I would have been hired.  I’m telling every journalism student I talk to from now on to start a blog, if they don’t have one already.

I had an interview on Wednesday for an Internet marketing job in San Carlos, California, which meant another chance to talk baseball.

My interviewer was a Pittsburgh Pirates fan, who looked to be about 40, give or take.  He thought I might not be familiar with the teams of his era.  No bother: I named Willie Stargell, Manny Sanguillen and Danny Murtaugh.  I briefly described Steve Blass Disease, which I wrote about here in August, an affliction named for a Pirates starter of the early 1970s who, for no clear reason, lost his ability to pitch.  My interviewer and I of course discussed how Pittsburgh has struggled since 1992.  And I mentioned “Chicken on the Hill with Will.”

Allow me to explain that last thing.

When I was growing up, one of my friends, Alec, had family from the Pittsburgh area.  Alec’s mom told me that Pirates great and future Hall of Famer Stargell had a restaurant and whenever he would homer, everyone in the restaurant got free chicken.  I never knew for sure if this was legit, though I just did a Google search and saw a reference to it on Stargell’s Wikipedia page.  Talk about happier times in Pittsburgh– a restaurant could stockpile a warehouse with unused chicken if it tried a promotion for the current Pirates.

Anyhow, I discussed Stargell and more with my interviewer.  For all that we talked baseball, though, he seemed most impressed with the fact that I could name all four members of The Beatles.  I have a follow-up interview set for Monday afternoon.

(Postscript: He hired me)

I had a phone interview this morning for a possible position with a business consulting office in Pleasanton.  I have a link to this site on my resume, and as a result, baseball comes up fairly often in interviews, which is great.  Baseball is more fun to talk about with potential employers than, say, speed skating, and I never have to feign interest.  In fact, I think half the time, I have to force myself to stop talking.

The man I spoke with this morning, a fellow named Ed, mentioned that he was originally from northern New Jersey and grew up a Yankees fan.  Ed said he came of age at an interesting time, in that nexus after the Giants and Dodgers left for California, the dreadful Mets arrived and the Yankees still ruled.  Halfway through his childhood, though, things changed.

The Yankees are one of those sports franchises that people either love or hate, like the Dallas Cowboys, Detroit Red Wings or the Los Angeles Lakers.  Traditionally, they spend the most money, have the most obnoxious fans and beat only the most sympathetic, lovable teams.  But I don’t reserve the same animosity in my heart for the Yankees that I do for the Lakers.  Partly, this could have something to do with me being from Sacramento and a longtime Kings fan (and to say that is to know heartache.)  But the Yankees also have an interesting history.

Essentially, the Yankees have traditionally been one of two teams throughout their history:

1. Perennial World Series contenders
2. Second division clubs with some awful luck

Granted, they’ve probably fallen into the first category a solid 85 percent of the time.  But the remaining 15 percent is heart wrenching.  It is comprised of times like the deaths of Thurman Munson and Billy Martin, and the injury-filled declines of Don Mattingly and Mickey Mantle (the retirements of Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio were sad too, but that didn’t stop the Yankees from the World Series in those days.)

Ed hit high school right around the time Mantle retired and, as he said, the Yankees couldn’t beat a Triple-A club.  The highlight I remember about them from the early ’70s is that two of their pitchers swapped wives.

That’s never good.

(Postscript: They had me in for a four-hour interview at their offices the following day.  I sat in on a webinar, interviewed with three separate employees and had lunch at the office.  It was the most intense interview I’ve been on in a long time, though they definitely have a cool company.)

I interviewed this morning for a copy writing position with CafePress, a web company in San Mateo, and baseball came up in conversation with my potential employers.

I met first with the head recruiter, and we hit it off.  Besides going to the same college, I learned we are both fans of the San Francisco Giants.  I mentioned having the opportunity to interview Will Clark next month, and we commiserated about how Giants general manager Brian Sabean consistently overpays for aging players.  Sabean had the right approach in the late Nineties, when he used low-priced veteran acquisitions like Jeff Kent, J.T. Snow and Darryl Hamilton, to join Barry Bonds and create a contender; in recent years, however, Sabean has done things like give Barry Zito $50 million more than any other team would’ve paid.  It’s not always been easy to watch.

After meeting with the recruiter, I met with the head of the online acquisition.  Turns out he’s a Dodger fan.  I said, “I’m sorry,” as I like to joke with Laker fans or anyone who went to a rival high school than me.  My interviewer and I laughed a little, and I had to agree with his assertion that the Giants are always about one big bat away from being a contender, as they already have a World Series-caliber pitching staff.  I told him how much I liked Vin Scully’s call of Kirk Gibson’s winning home run in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series.  I found a stream of it on YouTube recently and have watched it a few times.  That was poetry, regardless of whose side you’re on.

Anyhow, I’m back from the interview now, and they just emailed me an application to fill out and fax over.  Thus, I am off now to FedEx Office (I still want to call it Kinko’s) and am crossing my fingers.

I had a job interview this morning, and my interviewer saw on my resume that I had gone to Cal Poly. She smiled and mentioned that she wished her children had gone there. She listed their colleges, saying her youngest had just made the baseball team for St. John’s University. I said I believed that Ron Artest went there, she said Chris Mullin was an alumni, and though I didn’t mention it, I know there’s a scene in Coming to America where Eddie Murphy goes to a St. John’s basketball game. Then I remembered Frank Viola.

Before winning 176 games in the majors, including 24 in his Cy Young award-winning season with the Minnesota Twins in 1988, Viola pitched at St. John’s with another future All Star, John Franco. They even helped the school make the College World Series in 1980. I didn’t bring all this up in the interview, of course, though I mentioned Viola’s name. I’m not sure if my interviewer knew who he was, but then again, St. John’s is really more of a basketball school.

I also brought up in the interview that I can name World Series winners from pretty much any year. I say this to a lot of people I meet, the kind of declaration that screams, Come on, I dare you to stump me. Some take the bait, some don’t. I should probably stop bringing it up with prospective employers, but with that said, it did help get me a job one time. It even used to be on my resume, under a “Fun Facts” section that has since been abandoned. That being said, my interviewer this morning didn’t take the challenge.