Nice Day for a Flight

So I'm sitting here at the Asheville airport. The flight to Charlotte leaves in an hour, and I'm killing time in the brand-new coffee bar/lounge. This is new since the last time I was here and it's quite nice. I've got a great view out over the parking ramp and runway, over to some kind of construction project on the far side. It's a beautiful day today, not a cloud in the sky and perfect temperature (70 degrees).

I'm on my way to Baltimore today. I'll stay with my aunt and cousin for a few nights. The purpose of the trip is to go to a military-oriented career fair on Wednesday. Yes, the job search is still ongoing. No nibbles yet. Some days I feel like it's only going to be a very short time before I'm gainfully employed again, then the next day I'll feel like I'm never going to find a job, ever. Then I'm convinced again that it'll only be a short time before the perfect job calls.

So what am I looking for? Well, it's really a combination of two things. One, I need to feel like I'm making a positive difference. Just adding to some corporation's bottom line does not excite me. So non-profits and some government agencies are high on my list. Second, our end goal is to move to San Diego. Janis is from there and we have family and friends there, particularly a little grandson. So the perfect job for me is a people-related non-profit in San Diego.

That's a pretty small market. I may have already hit everything there is to hit.

So there are a variety of Option B's. These involve various combinations of expanding the geographic area to southern California in general, expanding the the pool of target organizations to contractors who are doing interesting things, or doing a temporary detour to someplace else.

Which is why I'm heading to this career fair. I've been to this one once before and it was quite impressive - it took over the whole floor of the DC Convention Center. There are maybe 70-80 companies that will attend. I've researched them and have about 15 that I want to talk with; of those, maybe four or five are in my top tier. Almost all are defense contractors of some sort; some have locations in southern California, others are doing really interesting things somewhere else. I've got resumes out the wazoo in three different formats, a hundred or so business cards, and a couple of contacts. Let's rock 'n' roll!

As I typed those last words, my airplane landed and is now taxiing to the gate. Time to close this up and head on over. Wish me luck!