To get off the couch, you have to spend more time on it...

With the check from my car sale officially in my wallet, and no chance of me doing my tax return on the horizon, it's pretty apparent that I'm probably about to hit a peak in my bank account, and it's just about time to figure out how to replenish it. It's going to be a long, downward financial slide from here.

So the job search begins.

Up until the move to San Francisco, I've gotten every job I've ever had through a personal connection. It's been a pretty pleasant handoff from one boss to the next. The exception, of course, was that first job I took when I got here--and I left after two months to preserve personal sanity. You see how Craigslist now makes me feel a little creepy.

But, given how few people I know here, it's Craigslist and monster.com for me now, every day. I also tried out Idealist again, despite protesting for months that I was ready for a job that comes with a 401k...but it turns out this recession thing is real. The first day I looked on Idealist for any non-profit job within ten miles of San Francisco, it returned something like 15 results. FIFTEEN! Even a year ago, it would have spit out 100. It's scary out there.

And, truth be told, I think part of what draws me to non-profit work is its ability to skip the bullshit. I don't apply for many corporate positions because I have no idea what the job descriptions MEAN. Does an infection control specialist at Kaiser (which Monster thinks I'd be perfect for) mean that I'd disinfect toilets or make calls to the CDC? Would I enjoy "Driv[ing] and facilitat[ing] process improvements in managing and supporting production operations"?

The Craigslist jobs are at least interesting. The Gorilla Foundation is looking for a gorilla evening monitor three nights a week. It's mostly database entry, although the posting also specifies that one should be "confident around dogs" and have a "calm (gorilla-like) demeanor." I'm not going to say that I don't match these qualifications exactly...it's just that my high-school reunion's coming up. I'm just not sure this is something I want to be talking about with people I haven't seen in ten years.

Today I found a posting from someone looking for a blogger for a "Cute & Fuzzy Animal Blog." I like kittens. But I'm definitely not qualified to do this job, which demands "sensitivity" towards the Dogster.com and Catster.com communities (what are those?) and an "in-depth knowledge of the 'pet and animal meme' universe." THERE IS ONE?!?!

Twice a day, someone posts within the Craigslist non-profit section, "GOT GOOD GENES?? Why not share?!" and on the day "Scrum Master" was suggested in my daily Monster e mail, I started to think, "Why not?" I've heard egg donation's pretty painful, but, frankly, so is monster.com.