Circular Reasoning Prevails

One thing I've noticed about all the overtime at work recently is that I don't really mind the 500$ weekly paychecks. I don't mind that at all, seriously. I think my problem is that I work harder and longer for it than I used to and I have a major objection to that in and of itself.

Yes, I do realize I'm not the only one in the country that has gone from one job to another with a net decrease in pay. I admit to be quite perplexed at how easily my wife tolerates her own, rather massive, income drop, but I never hear a complaint about it from her. Face it, folks, if I didn't complain about it, I simply wouldn't be me.

My biggest problem with getting a different job right now (ignoring the economy) is a problem on paper only, or that of lacking paper to be more exact. I spent ten years working with and learning a great deal about computer networking, and even with that aside, I've got the same period worth of data entry time that should still land me a much less stressful job. Thing is, I don't have any documentation (or degrees) to prove that I have any skills at all. Sure, that's no one's fault but mine – it only serves to illustrate how I incorrectly expected employers to be more interested in workplace experience than book knowledge.

While I'm not entirely confident that a degree would save me in today's economy, it has caused me a lot of grief to not have it. Pretty much every job advertisement to which I would consider responding has declared firmly “those without at least a two-year degree need not apply” or similar. Even then, a lot of such jobs advertise lower pay than I receive today – are the overseas techies really willing and able to work for so much less?

So I guess I've resigned myself to sticking it out in the job I'm in for the foreseeable future... I mean, putting it in another way, if the economy isn't going to start adding “real” jobs until, oh, 2019 or so, I guess I'd better get entrenched where I am or get used to the idea of taking less pay in order to get out. So, like I said at the start of the post, I guess I don't really mind the 500$ weekly paychecks...