Recession depression & redirection

With all this talk of recession and the recent deluge of layoffs, I can't help but feel a little gloom-and-doom about future job prospects since I've been here before: here being the final lap of a degree plan with a fractured economy and little hope for a clear-cut career path.

When I graduated with my undergraduate degree in 2002, the US was still recovering from the blow 9/11 dealt to industry. My shiny new BA in Advertising was a worthless bauble in an economy where companies jettisoned their advertising budgets at the first sign of trouble. I was lucky to have found post-graduation work with the advertising agency where I interned, but instead of a typical salaried position, I was only an hourly wage worker -- earning a measly $7 an hour and prohibited from working more than 40 hours a week.

Five months after graduating, I moved to the Dallas metroplex in hopes of some greener pasture, even if only slightly greener. However, the Dallas marketplace was saturated with unemployed advertising wannabes and has-beens, and copywriters and account coordinators (my two areas of experience) were considered "a dime a dozen." Starbucks even refused to hire me for a simple barista position despite previous coffee shop experience because they feared I'd want advancement opportunities. At that point, though, I just wanted a job, regardless its long-term viability. I finally found work as a receptionist/assistant-to-the-VP at a small B2B agency. There wasn't much opportunity for upward mobility, and after a few twists and turns and years down professional lane, I ended up in my current graduate degree program.

I'm not sure what job prospects will be available when I graduate in May, but I know that I'll have to set myself apart from other applicants if there's any hope of securing a position, and considering that I'm a terrible interviewee, I've got to develop my professional bells and whistles if I want to get my foot in the door. Fortunately, I consider that a thrilling charge and will no doubt glean such a opportunity from this economical downturn -- now it's just a matter of deciding what bells and whistles I need.

A Blurgh! is born

From my experience in blogdom, naming your blog is much harder than actually creating its content (posting consistently, however, is on another plane of difficulty). Despite that knowledge, I still spent the better part of last week trying to come up with something clever and memorable. I started my search with the obligatory stab at a pun-inspired moniker but came up empty-handed. I also considered some theme-related options but then decided it was best not to pigeonhole the content if there's any hope of me keeping up with this blog. So, out of frustration, I settled on Blurgh!

"But Blurgh!?," you say. Let me explain.

Blurgh! is term I stole from 30 Rock that its heroine Liz Lemon uses in lieu of an expletive. I wouldn't say I use Blurgh! as an expletive so much as a filler. It's a catch-all for any exasperation or case-of-the-Mondays that I might experience as well as an escape from commonplace interjections, and its addition to my vocabulary has proved invaluable. I have been known to shout it out in a fit of road rage or toe-stubbing or even mutter it during one of the memory lapses that accompanies motherhood. The brilliance of Blurgh! is its senselessness. It’s very likely that my two-year-old son witnesses those less than graceful moments of mine, and, thanks to Blurgh!, I’ll never worry that his impressionable ears might hear a taboo word that would no doubt be repeated while standing in line at the grocery store among admiring grandmas and mothers-to-be. Any mimicked "blurghs" would just be filed away by passersby as more toddler gobbledygook. Genius. Blurgh! has been a life saver in many regards, and with this blog, it’s once again proving its usefulness.

This is my second active blog as I have another "mommy blog" that I use to tell family, friends, and the random web wanderer how awesome my sons are and what they had for lunch. For that reason, I want to leave Blurgh! open to everything else: current events, random musings, school-related topics, craft projects, and any Blurgh! moments I care to preserve for posterity.