I feel like every time I post these days, I'm in rant mode about something. So let me preface this by stating outright that I've had a migraine, varying in severity from mild to nasty, since yesterday afternoon.

Right now it's heading back toward nasty, RAPIDLY, so I'll make this brief.

Since yesterday, I've upgraded (so to speak) my office support resume and submitted it to four different job openings. One is at the company where I'm temping, two were on monster.com, and one was at an insurance agency in South Philly. I haven't heard back from any of them yet (beyond the automated form letter from the two monster.com submissions).

So when I came home and found a message on our voicemail, from an IT headhunter who downloaded my resume back in 2001, I was very surprised.

I returned her call, but when she found out that I haven't had an IT-related job since 2002 she practically threw me off the phone. She said that in the past few months, IT jobs have begun to pick up, but "all our companies are very strict about wanting candidates with RECENT experience".

By this point, my migraine-frayed temper had had enough. I blurted out, "How can a person get recent experience without recent experience?"

Needless to say, I'm out of the running for whatever the bleep THAT job was (which I realized from the moment she started trying to rush me off the phone). And I'm probably unlikely to be considered for any other IT jobs that come down the pike in the near future, if all the companies have a similar attitude.

I wish I hadn't even heard from that headhunter. Or maybe since my morale's already been in the tank for two weeks, and I already HAD a migraine, now was as good a time as any. That way, her call couldn't screw up my mood any worse than it already is.

I'm tired of this cycle where every time I THINK there's a door opening for me, I walk out through it and wind up getting hailed on.

At least if it was something I was DOING that was wrong, I could find out what it is and fix it. But I'm not even getting far enough along in the process to MAKE an error. Last year at this time, I was blogging about a call I got at home from a law firm whose enthusiasm cooled when they found out I hadn't used macros in Word Perfect. Freaking MACROS that my cat could learn to use were the obstacle that time. Now it's the fact that I lost my IT job EARLY in this economic depression (yes, let's call it what it is) and there were no IT jobs to be HAD for a long time. Pardon ME that my freaking IT experience got put on hold because I was finding OTHER jobs I was qualified for when the mainframe programming openings didn't exist.

I'm so fed up.

And to top it all off, a little while ago I decided that I couldn't take this headache anymore, but I've taken more than enough OTC meds for the day and I really didn't want to take more. So I thought, "I know what, I'll drink some catnip tea. That's good for headaches AND it helps you sleep", both of which effects would suit me just fine right about now.

The trouble is, said catnip tea was nowhere to be found. Mark, who is working late tonight, called me just as I was rummaging through the kitchen cabinets. I asked him where it was, and he said we've run out of it.

Oh, just great. The same person who originally didn't even want to TRY the catnip tea, when I first brought some home, used ALL of it and didn't replenish the supply. ARGH. I'm afraid to ask what ELSE could go wrong today?

Fortunately, Mark will stop at a GNC on the way home and pick up some more.

Which, given the way this day has gone, I'll probably spill it on myself anyway.

I'd better post this before something ELSE goes awry.